A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers.
Interpretation
A good leader must maintain a connection with their followers and not lead them too far away from their current understanding or capabilities.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote emphasizes the importance of a leader's relationship with their followers. It suggests that effective leadership requires a leader to be aware of the needs, abilities, and perspectives of their team, ensuring that they guide them at a pace that everyone can keep up with. If a leader moves too far ahead without considering their followers, they risk losing their support and making it difficult for others to follow.
In practice
In a workshop on team dynamics, to emphasize the role of leaders, you might use this quote.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
When we say there's a dearth of women directors, it's not that there's a lack of women who direct: it's a lack of opportunities and access for women to direct and be supported in that.
In our experience, what we have found is the rare commodity is a good management team. And good management teams manage through good and bad cycles and manage to grow their business over a long period of time.
When management owns stock, then rewarding the shareholders becomes a first priority, whereas when management simply collects a paycheck, then increasing salaries becomes a first priority.
To those whom much is given, much is expected.
Nothing is possible without men; nothing is lasting without institutions.
Achievement comes to someone when he is able to do great things for himself. Success comes when he empowers followers to do great things with him. Significance comes when he develops leaders to do great things for him. But a legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into the position to do great things without him.
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