quotations about leadership
Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50 percent of your time leading yourself--your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20 percent leading those with authority over you and 15 percent leading your peers. If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.
DEE HOCK
attributed, 100 Ways to Motivate Others
Leadership is defined not by the scale of the opportunity but by the quality of the response.
CHRIS LOWNEY
Heroic Leadership
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY
attributed, Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity
The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way.
HENRY MILLER
The Wisdom of the Heart
Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
PETER F. DRUCKER
attributed, The Fundamentals of Leadership
The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
When there is danger, a good leader takes the front line; but when there is celebration, a good leader stays in the back of the room.
NELSON MANDELA
O: The Oprah Magazine, Apr. 2001
A wise, right, and true estimate of one's own powers is necessary to their highest and best use. The general who overestimates his forces leads them to defeat; he who underestimates them does not lead them at all.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Leadership is about creating the future, not predicting it.
MARSHALL SASHKIN & MOLLY G. SASHKIN
Leadership that Matters
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.
JAMES CALLAGHAN
The Harvard Business Review, Nov. 1, 1986
Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.
COLIN POWELL
The Powell Principles
If the experience of leadership is like being at the edge of an unfamiliar chasm, the act of leadership is building a bridge across that chasm.
KEVIN CASHMAN
Leadership from the Inside Out
Leadership is the catalytic gift that energizes, directs, and empowers all the other gifts.
BILL HYBELS
Courageous Leadership
Woe to the country which hath lost its leader; woe to the ship when its captain is no more.
TALMUD
If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it.
BILL MAULDIN
The Brass Ring
There are many leaders, not just one. Leadership is distributed. It resides not solely in the individual at the top, but in every person at every level who, in one way or another, acts as a leader to a group of followers -- wherever in the organization that person is, whether shop steward, team head, or CEO.
DANIEL GOLEMAN, RICHARD BOYATZIS & ANNIE MCKEE
Primal Leadership
A good leader makes a good follower.
BION
attributed, Day's Collacon
Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.
JOHN H. ZENGER & JOSEPH FOLKMAN
The Extraordinary Leader
Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through ... such is the basic method of leadership.
MAO ZEDONG
"Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership", Jun. 1, 1943
Leadership is taken, not given.
LOUISE STERLING & SUE DAVIDOFF
The Courage to Lead