Quotes

1. A company is like a ship. Everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. – Morris Wilks
2. A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. – General George S. Patton
3. A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. – James Crook
4. A real leader faces the music, when he doesn’t like the tune. – Mark Twain
5. Always get back to your core principles. – Mike Krzyzewski
6. Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them. – John Whitmore
7. Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. – Henry Ford
8. Communicate everything to your associates. The more they know, the more they care. Once they care, there is no stopping them. – Sam Walton
9. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. – George S. Patton
10. Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. – Steven Covey
11. Effective team leaders adjust their style to provide what the group can’t provide for itself. – Kenneth Blanchard
12. Embrace the hell out of personal responsibility. – Mike Krzyzewski
13. Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves. – Ulysses S. Grant
14. Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you. – Lao Tzu
15. Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again. – Henry Ford
16. Few people are successful unless other people want them to be. – Charlie Brown
17. Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. – William Arthur Ward
18. Good leaders make people feel that they are at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. – Warren Bennis
19. I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done. – Henry Ford
20. I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones. – John Cage
21. If there is any one secret to success, it lies in the ability to get to the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own. – Henry Ford
22. If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are. – John W. Gardner
23. I have three treasures which I guard and keep. The first is compassion. The second economy. The third humility. From compassion comes courage. From economy comes the means to be generous. From humility comes responsible leadership. – Lao-tse
24. I must respect the opinions of others even if I disagree with them. – Herbert Henry Lehman
25. I never criticize a player until they are first convinced of my unconditional confidence in their abilities. – John Robinson
26. I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. – Ralph Nader
27. If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
28. If employees understand the reasons behind the rules and regulations, the chances are excellent that they will respect them. – Johnson & Johnson Co. (Employee Relations Manual 1932)
29. If he works for you, you work for him. – Japanese Proverb
30. If I, the group leader, expect you, the group member, to be weak, then I elicit the weak part of you. If I expect you to be able to cope, I elicit your strength. – Will Schutz
31. If leaders are careless about basic things – telling the truth, respecting moral codes, proper professional conduct – who can believe them on other issues? – James Hayes
32. If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. – Anonymous
33. If people are coming to work excited… if they know they’re making a difference in the world…if they’re making mistakes freely and fearlessly…if they’re having fun…if they’re concentrating on getting things done, rather than preparing reports — then somewhere (perhaps everywhere) you have leaders. – Robert Townsend
34. If there is no wind, row. – Japanese proverb
35. If you need ownership and responsibility from core workers, patriarchy can’t get you there. – Peter Block
36. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. – W. Somerset Maugham
37. If you want someone to develop a specific trait, treat them as though they already had it. – Goethe
38. I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being. – Jackie Robinson
39. It is not sufficient to be worthy of respect in order to be respected. – Alfred Nobel
40. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. – Thomas Paine
41. Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. – Vince Lombardi
42. Leaders need to strike a balance between action and patience. – Doug Smith
43. Leadership can’t be claimed like luggage at the airport. Leadership can’t be inherited, even though you may inherit a leadership position. And leadership can’t be given as a gift — even if you’ve been blessed with an abundance of leadership skills to share with someone else. Leadership must be earned by mastering a defined set of skills and by working with others to achieve common goals. – David Cottrell
44. Leaders who win the respect of others are the ones who deliver more than they promise, not the ones who promise more than they can deliver. – Mark Clement
45. Leadership is doing what is right when no one is watching. George Van Valkenburg
46. Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without strategy. – H. Norman Schwarzkopf
47. Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. – Dwight Eisenhower
48. Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it. – Marian Anderson
49. Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms. – Warren Bennis
50. Little value comes out of the belief that people will respond progressively better by treating them progressively worse. – Eric Harvey
51. Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. – Peter F. Drucker
52. Managers control. Leaders create commitment. – Jonh Zenger
53. Men are respectable only as they respect. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
54. Never let a person’s weakness get in the way of their strength. – Mike Krzyzewski
55. Nothing is so potent as the silent influence of a good example. – James Kent
56. Nothing stops an organization faster than people who believe that the way you worked yesterday is the best way to work tomorrow. – Jon Madonna
57. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. – Henry Ford
58. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. – Confucius
59. Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission. – Zig Ziglar
60. People cannot be managed. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led. – H. Ross Perot
61. People don’t care how much you know––until they know how much you care. – John C. Maxwell
62. People prefer to follow those who help them, not those who intimidate them. – C. Gene Wilkes
63. Probably no greater honor can come to any man than the respect of his colleagues. – Cary Grant
64. Respect a man, and he will do all the more. – John Wooden
65. Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it. – Bill Bradley
66. Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means. – Albert Einstein
67. Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I may remember. But involve me, and I’ll understand. – Chinese Proverb
68. The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he/she wants done, and self–restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. – Theodore Roosevelt
69. The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. – Henry Ford
70. The essence of leadership is the capacity to build and develop the self–esteem of the workers. – Irwin Federman
71. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. – Max DePree
72. The goal of many leaders is to get people to think more highly of the leader. The goal of a great leader is to help people to think more highly of themselves. – J. Carla Nortcutt
73. The leader is a teacher who succeeds without taking credit. And, because credit is not taken, credit is received. – Lao Tzu
74. The marksman hitteth the mark partly by pulling, partly by letting go. – Egyptian proverb
75. The mediocre leader tells. The good leader explains. The superior leader demonstrates. The great leader inspires. – Buchholz & Roth
76. The most valuable “currency” of any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. Every leader has the solemn moral responsibility to develop these to the maximum in all his people. This is the leader’s highest priority. – W. Edwards Deming
77. The question, ‘Who ought to be boss?’, is like asking, ‘Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?’ Obviously, the man who can sing tenor. – Henry Ford
78. The role of the leader is to foster mutual respect and build a complementary team where each strength is made productive and each weakness irrelevant. – Stephen Covey
79. There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do. – Henry Ford
80. To get a feel for the true essence of leadership, assume everyone who works for you is a volunteer. – J. Kouzes & B. Posner
81. To grasp and hold a vision, that is the very essence of successful leadership. – Ronald Reagan
82. Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can be and should be, and he will become as he can and should be. – Goethe
83. Truly great leaders spend as much time collecting and acting upon feedback as they do providing it. – Alexander Lucia
84. Trust is a risk game. The leader must ante up first. – Irwin Federman
85. Vision without execution is just hallucination. – Henry Ford
86. We are reluctant to let go of the belief that if I am to care for something I must control it. – Peter Block
87. We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead. – William Arthur Ward
88. We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead. – William Arthur Ward
89. We must become the change we want to see. – Mahatma Gandhi
90. We’ll either find a way or make a way. – Hannibal
91. What I need is someone who will make me do what I can. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
92. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. – Viktor Frankl
93. What you cannot enforce, do not command. – Sophocles
94. When leadership is defined not as a position you hold but as a way of ‘being,’ you can discover that you can lead from wherever you are. – Rosamund Stone Zander
95. When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally. – Lao Tse
96. You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. – Henry Ford