LEADERSHIP QUOTES VI

quotations about leadership

To some extent, leaders are storytellers; really, though, they are characters in stories. They play leading roles, but in dramas they can't predict and don't always understand. Because the serialized drama of history is bigger than any one character's arc, leaders can't guarantee our ultimate narrative satisfaction. Because events, on the whole, are more protean than people, leaders grow less satisfying with time, as the stories they're ready to tell diverge from the stories we want to hear.

JOSHUA ROTHMAN

"Shut Up and Sit Down", The New Yorker, February 29, 2016


The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.

ANDRE MAUROIS

"The Art of Leadership", The Art of Living

Tags: Andre Maurois


A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.

STEPHEN KING

Under the Dome

Tags: Stephen King


Leadership is much less about what you do, and much more about who you are. If you view leadership as a bag of manipulative tricks or charistmatic behaviors to advance your own personal interests, then people have every right to be cynical. But if your leadership flows first and foremost from inner character and integrity of ambition, then you can justly ask people to lend themselves to your organization and its mission.

JIM COLLINS

foreward, Hesselbein on Leadership


Truly inspiring leaders are authentic, that is, they have done their strategic homework, they have a vision that matches the people they are working with, and they believe in that vision deeply. They are not faking it.

RONALD J. BURKE & CARY L. COOPER

Inspiring Leaders


Leadership is not something you do to people, but something you do with people.

KEN BLANCHARD

Leading at a Higher Level


He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk.

JOHN C. MAXWELL

Leading from the Lockers


That's the first rule of command; be consistent! You can be sadistic, you can be lazy, you can be stupid, but if you're consistent the crew will still let you sit in when they play dominoes.

JAMES ALAN GARDNER

Expendable

Tags: James Alan Gardner


The first act of leadership is coming to grips with yourself, who you are, where you are, and what is of value to you, and shaping yourself by acts of conscious will into what you want to become.

FENWICK W. ENGLISH

The Art of Educational Leadership


Because leadership is contextual and culturally contingent, its practice cannot be divorced from the specific socio-cultural context within which it occurs. Leadership development must begin to make contextual sense to its recipients, and to the social contexts in which they will be practicing as leaders.

VANESSA IWOWO

"Leadership: one size does not fit all contexts", Business Review, April 20, 2016


It often happens that less depends upon the valor of an army than the skill of the leader.

ARISTOPHANES

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Aristophanes


Leaders are said to be responsive to what their followers want because the followers choose the leader and leaders want to keep their leadership positions. The assumption that leaders will be responsive to followers because leaders want to win and hold power is a useful starting point for understanding the politics of leadership in any democratic institution. However, such an assumption may become misleading if leaders are understood to care only about retaining their leadership positions. If some congressional leaders are strongly committed to political goals beyond remaining leader--and we shall see that some are--we would not expect those leaders always to be inclined to take their bearings from what their followers want. When opportunities arise to pursue other intensely held goals, some may be willing to act independently of followers and even risk their leadership positions in pursuit of those goals. If so, leaders who are more risk-tolerant may be consequential for influencing outcomes in a wider range of political situations than just those situations in which their followers are already mostly in agreement.

RANDALL STRAHAN

Leading Representatives


Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

address at the Episcopal National Cathedral, Washington D.C., Mar. 31, 1968

Tags: Martin Luther King, Jr.


Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities; and while no one individual possesses all the needed talents to go into leadership, each man can develop a combination to make him a leader.

VINCE LOMBARDI

attributed, Run to Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership

Tags: Vince Lombardi


Leadership is a form of captivity, in which one is both separated from others and exposed to their judgment.

JOSHUA ROTHMAN

"Shut Up and Sit Down", The New Yorker, February 29, 2016


Bad leadership is an oxymoron.

JOSEPH CLARENCE ROST

Leadership for the Twenty-first Century


Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.

FRANK HERBERT

Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


I see [it said that] leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the ... nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

speech in House of Commons, Sep. 30, 1941

Tags: Winston Churchill


Today's leaders find the magic in their players.

STEVE CHANDLER & SCOTT RICHARDSON

100 Ways to Motivate Others


Leadership is not something you own and keep for yourself. It is a responsibility you are entrusted with for a period of time, and it is a duty you fulfill.

KEITH D. HARRELL

The Attitude of Leadership