QuoteProject
If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.
Dee Hock
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Effective leadership requires significant investment in self-management and relationship management.

In this quote, Dee Hock emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and personal development in leadership. By allocating time to manage one's own ethics, character, and motivation, a leader sets a strong foundation for influencing and guiding others. Furthermore, understanding and managing relationships with those in authority and peers is essential for successful leadership dynamics, underscoring that leadership is as much about managing oneself as it is about managing others.

Themes

LeadershipSelf-ManagementEthicsCharacterRelationshipsInfluence

In practice

Example use cases

In a team meeting to emphasize the importance of personal responsibility in leadership.

More from Dee Hock

Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for belief, principle, and morality.
Dee HockRead
Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping
Dee HockRead
We are now at a point in time when the ability to receive, utilize, store, transform and transmit data - the lowest cognitive form - has expanded literally beyond comprehension. Understanding and wisdom are largely forgotten as we struggle under an avalanche of data and information.
Dee HockRead
You learn nothing form your successes except to think too much of yourself. It is from failure that all growth comes, provided you can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and then try again.
Dee HockRead
It is not making better people of others that management is about. It's about making a better person of self. Income, power, and titles have nothing to do with that.
Dee HockRead
Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength and idiotic to replicate your weakness. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.
Dee HockRead

Similar quotes

It's important to take criticism seriously - not personally.
Hillary ClintonRead
All power is lodged in, and consequently derived from, the people. We should wear it as a breastplate, and buckle it on as our armour.
George MasonRead
We've backed off in good faith to try and give you a chance to straighten this problem out. But I am going to beg with you for a minute. I'm going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.
James MattisRead
First organize the inner, then organize the outer ... First organize the great, then organize the small. First organize yourself, and then organize others.
Zhuge LiangRead
Quality begins with the intent, which is fixed by management.
W. Edwards DemingRead
When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.
Guillermo Del ToroRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.