Motivational Quotes

Leadership

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

- Peter Drucker

Best Quotes about Leadership

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

Updike, John

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

Lombardi, Vince

I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.

Geneen, Harold S.

Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

Do your best to be the lead dog otherwise the view never changes.

Leadership has to do with direction. Management has to do with the speed, coordination and logistics in going in that direction. The WORKERS are chopping their way through the jungle. The MANAGERS are coordinating, making sure the tools are sharp, etc. The LEADERS climb a tree and shout Wrong jungle!! The MANAGERS shout back Be quiet! We're making progress!

The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.

Lukas, Wayne

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

Peter Drucker

10.

Leadership is not magnetic personality--that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people --that is flattery. 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.

Drucker, Peter F.

11.

It is the Vague and Elusive. Meet it and you will not see its head. Follow it and you will not see its back.

Lao-Tzu

12.

Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.

Ford, Henry

13.

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

Stendhal, Henri B.

14.

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

Lee Iacocca

15.

A leader is a person you will follow to a place you wouldn't go by yourself.

Barker, Joel A.

16.

No one would have doubted his ability to reign had he never been emperor.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

17.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

18.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher --a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.

19.

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

Seneca

20.

Every leader needs to look back once in a while to make sure he has followers. Source Unknown Effective leaders are known by the questions they ask rather than the statements they make.

21.

The person who has no enemies has no followers.

Piatt, Don

22.

The golden rule for every business man is this: Put yourself in your customer's place.

Marden, Orison Swett

23.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead -- and find no one there.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

25.

Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.

Aeschylus

26.

A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under.

Ervin, Sam

27.

Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.

Diogenes of Sinope

28.

The world of the 90s and beyond will belong to managers or those who make the numbers dance, as we used to say, or those who are conversant with all the business jargon we used to sound smart. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders -- people who not only have an enormous amount of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.

Welch, John

29.

I'm their leader, I've got to follow them.

Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre

30.

The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Bennis, Warren

31.

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

Augustine, St.

32.

Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.

Peters, Thomas J.

33.

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without'playing up'to anyone - even to himself.

Andre Malraux

34.

You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.

Knox, John

35.

I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

36.

The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

The high sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears, and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

Orwell, George

38.

The penalty of leadership is loneliness.

Robinson, H. Wheeler

39.

If I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

40.

That is no use at all. What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.

Melbourne, Lord

41.

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.

Bennis, Warren

42.

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

Patton, George S.

43.

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

Roosevelt, Theodore

44.

The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way.

Miller, Henry

45.

The leader seeks to communicate his vision to his followers. He captures their attention with his optimistic intuition of possible solutions to their needs. He influences them by the dynamism of his faith. He demonstrates confidence that the challenge can be met, the need resolved, the crisis overcome.

Haggai, John

46.

If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.

Thatcher, Margaret

47.

The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.

Sheehy, Gail

48.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.

Maxwell, John C.

49.

Self-regulation will always be a challenge, but if somebody's going to be in charge, it might as well be me.

Daniel Akst

50.

If you want to be comfortable -- take an easy job. If you aspire to leadership, take off your coat.