The chief executive who knows his strengths and weaknesses as a leader is likely to be far more effective than the one who remains blind to them. He also is on the road to humility -- that priceless attitude of openness to life that can help a manager absorb mistakes, failures, or personal shortcomings.
A leader knows what's best to do; a manager knows merely how best to do it.
Every ruler is harsh whose laws is new.
Skill in the art of communication is crucial to a leader's success. He can accomplish nothing unless he can communicate effectively.
The minute a person whose word means a great deal to others dare to take the open-hearted and courageous way, many others follow.
Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
If you have fear of those that command you, spare those that obey you.
A leader is a person you will follow to a place you wouldn't go by yourself.
The first task of a leader is to keep hope alive.
The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.
Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.
Managers are people who do things right; leaders are people who do the right thing.
If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
— Bible
Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you're ready to play as tough as you're able to, you'd better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you're not giving it all you've got. Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It's being able to take it as well as dish it out. That's the only way you're going to get respect from the players.
A leader is a dealer in hope.
When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.
Men are lead by trifles.
Every private in the French army carries a Field Marshall wand in his knapsack.
An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.
Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.
There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.
When we think we lead we are most led.
The successful man doesn't use others, other people use the successful man, for above all the success is of service.
Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.
'Tis a dainty thing to command, though 'twere but a flock of sheep.
The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.
I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion's roar.
If you lead the people with correctness, who will dare not be correct?
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
Leaders don't inflict pain -- they share pain.
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.
No affection and a great brain, these are the people to command the world.
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
The man who follows a crowd will never be followed by a crowd.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Leadership is not magnetic personality--that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people --that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
Each person must decide for himself what he wants each day. As a leader, I will expose you to the options and the likely consequences of those options. I'll even share my opinion if asked, but I'll never confuse it with the opinion, which simply doesn't exist.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
You do not lead by hitting people over the head -- that's assault, not leadership.
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
To be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men.
Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.
The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.
The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.
We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.
In really good companies, you have to lead. You have to come up with big ideas and express them forcefully. I have always been encouraged -- or sometimes forced -- to confront the very natural fear of being wrong. I was constantly pushed to find out what I really thought and then to speak up. Over time, I came to see that waiting to discover which way the wind was blowing is an excellent way to learn how to be a follower.
A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under.
There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led
A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group.
Right or wrong, the customer is always right.
Who has not served cannot command.
The person who renders loyal service in a humble capacity will be chosen for higher responsibilities, just as the biblical servant who multiplied the one pound given him by his master was made ruler over ten cities...
Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.
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.
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.
I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.
There are no office hours for leaders.
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
Napoleon affords us an example of the danger of elevating one's self to the absolute, and sacrificing everything to the carrying out of an idea.
Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.
The leader seeks to communicate his vision to his followers. He captures their attention with his optimistic intuition of possible solutions to their needs. He influences them by the dynamism of his faith. He demonstrates confidence that the challenge can be met, the need resolved, the crisis overcome.
Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too.
Those who can command themselves command others.
Ethics must begin at the top of an organization. It is a leadership issue and the chief executive must set the example.
There is great force hidden in a gentle command.
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
In the great mass of our people there are plenty individuals of intelligence from among whom leadership can be recruited.
One secret of leadership is that the mind of a leader never turns off. Leaders even when they are sightseers or spectators, are active; not passive observers.
Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.
I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team.
Leaders create an environment which everyone has the opportunity to do work which matches his potential capability and for which an equitable differential reward is provided.
Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right.
Morale is faith in the man at the top.
Leaders are readers.
The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Führer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.
Keep cool and you will command everyone.
It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.
The highest of distinctions is service to others.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.
If I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control.
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.
— Lao-Tzu
When the best leader's work is done the people say, We did it ourselves.
— Lao-Tzu
I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.
— Lao-Tzu
To lead people walk behind them.
— Lao-Tzu
The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, We did it ourselves.
— Lao-Tzu
It is the Vague and Elusive. Meet it and you will not see its head. Follow it and you will not see its back.
— Lao-Tzu
Most of the ladies and gentlemen who mourn the passing of the nation's leaders wouldn't know a leader if they saw one. If they had the bad luck to come across a leader, they would find out that he might demand something from them, and this impertinence would put an abrupt and indignant end to their wish for his return.
A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.
I'm their leader, I've got to follow them.
Public sentiment is everything, without it nothing can fail, without it nothing can succeed.
It is a characteristic of all movements and crusades that the psychopathic element rises to the top.
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant.
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.
Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.
The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert.
Some men must follow, and some command, though all are made of clay.
The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.
Popularity is not leadership.
Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness, and he who is a leader must always act alone. And acting alone, accept everything alone.
He is the richest man who enriches his country most; in whom the people feel richest and proudest; who gives himself with his money; who opens the doors of opportunity widest to those about him; who is ears to the deaf; eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. Such a man makes every acre of land in his community worth more, and makes richer every man who lives near him.
The golden rule for every business man is this: Put yourself in your customer's place.
That perfect bliss and sole felicity, the sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women.
The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.
Leadership is action, not position.
A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.
That is no use at all. What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.
When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without -- oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!
The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way.
A crown, golden in show is but a wreath of thorns.
Impatience is the cause of most of our irregularities and extravagances Command by obeying.
— Motto
The wealth of kings is in the affections of their subjects.
— Motto
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn't know where he is going.
Show me the leader and I will know his men. Show me the men and I will know their leader.
I don't think that a leader can control to any great extent his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.
Leadership must be established from the top down.
It's important for the explorer to be willing to be led astray.
A great leader never sets himself above his followers except in carrying responsibilities.
The 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.
A prince should be slow to punish, and quick to reward.
— Ovid
Leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done.
You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.
The best leaders are those most interested in surrounding themselves with assistants and associates smarter than they are. They are frank in admitting this and are willing to pay for such talents.
We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.
Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
Eagles don't flock, you have to find them one at a time.
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.
All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.
The best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.
The person who has no enemies has no followers.
It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
Among the blind the one eyed is king.
— Proverb
An army of deer would be more formidable commanded by a lion, than a an army of lions commanded by a stag.
— Proverb
When a blind man bears the standard, pity those who follow.
Those that rule must hear and be deaf, must see and be blind.
The right man comes at the right time.
Never do that by proxy which you can do yourself.
You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.
The penalty of leadership is loneliness.
The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.
A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.
Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.
Perhaps in His wisdom the Almighty is trying to show us that a leader may chart the way, may point out the road to lasting peace, but that many leaders and many peoples must do the building.
Our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead -- and find no one there.
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
The lead dog gets the best view. The rest of the dogs view is butt ugly. Of course, the lead dog is also the first to fall into the ravine.
The best leaders of all, the people know not they exist. They turn to each other and say We did it ourselves.
Great leaders understand human behavior rather than the cybernetics of any function.
When placed in command -- take charge.
Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good.
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
The world cannot be governed without juggling.
The boss drives people; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says I; The leader says WE. The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says, GO; the leader says lets, GO!
He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.
— Seneca
When the leadership is right and the time is right, the people can always be counted upon to follow -- to the end at all costs.
The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.
To be omnipotent but friendless is to reign.
What you cannot enforce, do not command.
It is a great pity when the one who should be the head figure is a mere figure head.
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.
Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
No one would have doubted his ability to reign had he never been emperor.
I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.
Certainly a leader needs a clear vision of the organization and where it is going, but a vision is of little value unless it is shared in a way so as to generate enthusiasm and commitment. Leadership and communication are inseparable.
Leadership is the activity of influencing people to cooperate towards some goal which they come to find desirable and which motivates them over the long haul.
If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.
Leadership is not a position. You are not a leader because you have the title of manager. Leadership is something that we earn from followers on a day to day basis.
A good leader needs to have a compass in his head and a bar of steel in his heart.
True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.
I learned that a great leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it.
I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
A leader has been defined as one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
The well being of the people is the supreme law.
The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and self-restraint not to meddle with how they do their jobs.
Successful leaders have the courage to take action where others hesitate.
People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher --a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.
Outstanding leaders appeal to the hearts of their followers -- not their minds.
Leadership is like the old galley ships. 100s are rowing, but only one (the captain) knows where they are going
Leadership has to do with direction. Management has to do with the speed, coordination and logistics in going in that direction. The WORKERS are chopping their way through the jungle. The MANAGERS are coordinating, making sure the tools are sharp, etc. The LEADERS climb a tree and shout Wrong jungle!! The MANAGERS shout back Be quiet! We're making progress!
Every leader needs to look back once in a while to make sure he has followers. Source Unknown Effective leaders are known by the questions they ask rather than the statements they make.
Do your best to be the lead dog otherwise the view never changes.
Efficiency tends to deal with Things. Effectiveness tends to deal with People. We manage things, we lead people
If you want to be comfortable -- take an easy job. If you aspire to leadership, take off your coat.
A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.
Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance.
Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.
When a customer enters my store, forget me. He is king.
Leadership is a serving relationship that has the effect of facilitating human development.
Blessed is he who has learned to admire but not envy, to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not manipulate.
The world of the 90s and beyond will belong to managers or those who make the numbers dance, as we used to say, or those who are conversant with all the business jargon we used to sound smart. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders -- people who not only have an enormous amount of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.
Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.
Education is the mother of leadership.
No man has ever risen to the real stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.
It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved.