Quotes about Leadership

Leadership is developed, not discovered. It's a process.

If you want to become a better leader, let go of control and start fostering cooperation. Good leaders stop bossing people around and start encouraging them. That is the secret to being a people-oriented leader, because much of leadership is encouragement.

Live the legacy you want to leave. I believe that to have any credibility as a leader, you must live what you say you believe. If you want to create a legacy, you need to live it first. You must become what you desire to see in others.

Effective leaders who reach their potential spend more time focusing on what they do well than on what they do wrong. To be successful, focus on your strengths and develop them. That's where you should pour your time, energy, and resources.

Make it your job to put other people on top today.

Choose who will carry on your legacy. I don't know what you want to accomplish in life, but I can tell you this: a legacy lives on in people, not things. Too often leaders put their energy into organizations, buildings, systems, or other lifeless objects. But only people live on after we are gone. Everything else is temporary.

If you could pick only one word to describe yourself, what would it be?

The Higher the Level of Leadership, the Greater the Sacrifice: The higher you go, the more it's going to cost you. And it doesn't matter what kind of leadership career you pick. You will have to make sacrifices. You will have to give up to go up.

People don't want to be managed. They want to be led. Whoever heard of a world manager? World leader, yes. Education leader, yes. Political leader. Religious leader. Scout leader. Community leader. Labor leader. Business leader. Yes. They lead.

Good leaders don't take anything for granted. They keep working and keep leading. They understand that leadership must be earned and established. They remain dissatisfied in a way, because dissatisfaction is a good one-word definition for motivation. Good leaders strive to keep the people and organization moving forward toward its vision. They recognize that organizations can sometimes be filled with appointments, but teams can be built only by good leadership.

Not everyone wants to be out of the spotlight as she did. But it's important for a leader to learn to work in obscurity because it is a test of personal integrity. The key is being willing to do something because it matters, not because it will get you noticed.

The day that I realized I could no longer do everything myself was a major step in my development as a person and a leader. I've always had vision, plenty of ideas, and vast amounts of energy. But when the vision gets bigger than you, you really only have two choices: give up on the vision or get help. I chose the latter.