quotations about leadership
There are two kinds of leaders: those who are interested in the flock, and those who are interested in the fleece.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Little leading makes much following.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
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
Despite the trend to see leaders as benign, ethical, moral, centered people, they're not always. Some theorize that it's not even necessary: in fact, sometimes good behavior is actually counter-productive, and slows down implementation. Forget about finding your emotional true north. Just get it done.
MEGHAN M. BIRO
"5 Great Ways To Hack Your Leadership Style", Forbes, April 22, 2016
When one sheep leads the way all the rest follow.
CHINESE PROVERB
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
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
Leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure.
ARLEIGH BURKE
attributed, Naval Leadership: Voices of Experience
Leadership is about mobilising people to tackle tough changes and thrive, while authority simply looked at protection, direction and order and can be a strait jacket if not used correctly.
KIRK HUMPHREY
"The Time for Adaptive Leadership is Right Now", Barbados Advocate, April 24, 2016
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
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
If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
Good leadership is largely invisible. When everything runs smoothly, no one notices.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
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
What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason.
ROBERT HARRIS
Pompeii
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
There is nothing worse than a leader who is too far ahead of the people he or she is trying to lead. Have you ever tried to follow someone in a car? Some people are good at leading you -- some aren't. But, the best leadership is always taking you somewhere you haven't been before -- stretching you towards something new.
RON EDMONDSON
"7 Times Leadership is at Its Best -- A Delicate Tension", Crossmap, April 18, 2016
I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
DESMOND TUTU
The Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 20, 1984
Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.
COLIN POWELL
"10 Leadership Tenets from Colin Powell", Stanford Graduate School of Business