Quotes on Being A Leader

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.

Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.

A leader leads by example not by force.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.

A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.

High sentiments always win in the end. The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.