No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.
Interpretation
True leadership involves collaboration and sharing credit rather than seeking personal glory.
Andrew Carnegie emphasizes that effective leadership is not about individual accomplishment or recognition, but rather about empowering others and working as a team. A leader must be willing to share responsibilities and the success that comes with it, understanding that collaboration leads to greater achievements than solitary efforts can provide.
In practice
In a motivational speech about teamwork, I would use this quote to illustrate the importance of collaboration.
Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.
To kill a man will be considered as disgusting [in the twentieth century] as we in this day consider it disgusting to eat one.
It is not the rich man's son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.
You are what you think. So just think big, believe big, act big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, love big and live big.
Speculation is a parasite feeding upon values, creating none.
Don't be content with doing only your duty. Do more than your duty. It's the horse that finishes a neck ahead that wins the race.
One of the greatest things I fear is letting down my people. I wouldn't live with that type of conscience, of having let down my people after they've been brutalized for so long.
The truth is that teamwork is at the heart of great achievement.
Any great and inspiring leader or organization that ever existed set out to do something completely unrealistic.
This is the only leadership life I get, my one and only shot at following God the way I feel him prompting me to do so. This isn't some pre-game warm-up. It's the game, and the clock is ticking!
Good counselors lack no clients.
I've actually come to respect the most irritatingly challenging people I've worked with as really valuable in improving group decision-making and what to do and what to invest in.
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