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.
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
The First Lady is an unpaid public servant elected by one person - her husband.
The secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is to give the other side the illusion of control. Don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Ask questions, that begin with 'How?' or 'What?' so your opponent uses mental energy to figure out the answer.
The conservative values of limited government and freedom for all coincide with the movement for full freedom and equality for LGBT Americans.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.
For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.
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