To be an excellent leader, you have to be a superb follower.
Herb KelleherRead
You don't hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.
Interpretation
Attitude is more important than skills when hiring new employees.
Herb Kelleher emphasizes the importance of attitude over skills in the hiring process. While skills can be taught and developed over time, a positive attitude and the right mindset are essential for fostering a productive and cohesive team culture.
In practice
In a job interview, refer to this quote to highlight the importance of a candidate's mindset.
To be an excellent leader, you have to be a superb follower.
You [the employees] are involved in a crusade.
If you're crazy enough to do what you love for a living, then you're bound to create a life that matters.
We will hire someone with less experience, less education, and less expertise, than someone who has more of those things and has a rotten attitude. Because we can train people. We can teach people how to lead. We can teach people how to provide customer service. But we can't change their DNA.
The business of business is people.
If the employees come first, then they're happy. A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy so they keep coming back, which pleases the shareholders. It's not one of the enduring green mysteries of all time, it is just the way it works.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
A country of a thousand war-chariots cannot be administered unless the ruler attends strictly to business, punctually observes his promises, is economical in expenditure, loves the people, and uses the labor of the peasantry only at the proper times of year.
To get important work done, most leaders organize people into teams. They believe that when people collaborate toward a common goal, great things can happen. Yet in reality, the whole is often much less than the sum of the parts.
If a President of the United States ever lied to the American people, he should resign.
The fact is, employees cannot make breakthroughs if they can't openly and honestly disagree with their peers and their leader. Indeed, great leaders don't just permit conflict; they actively try to elicit it from reluctant employees as well.
The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
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