Quotes on Leadership

You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington.

If you want to build a boat, do not instruct the men to saw wood, stitch the sails, prepare the tools and organize the work, but make them long for setting sail and travel to distant lands.

I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.

The CEO's role in raising a company's corporate IQ is to establish an atmosphere that promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration.

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.

Be the chief but never the lord.

We can do no great things-only small things with great love.

Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow.

Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.

Where there is no vision, there is no hope.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

We do not see the world as it is. We see the word as we are.

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.

Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.

A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

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