Quotes about Leadership

Often the crowd does not recognize a leader until he has gone, and then they build a monument for him with the stones they threw at him in life.

If a Christian is not willing to rise early and work late, to expend greater effort in diligent study and faithful work, that person will not change a generation. Fatigue is the price of leadership. Mediocrity is the result of never getting tired.

Leaders who want to show sensitivity should listen often and long and talk short and seldom. Many so-called leaders are too busy to listen. True leaders know that time spent listening is well invested.

Our sense of humor is a gift from God that should be controlled as well as cultivated. Clean, wholesome humor will relax tension and relieve difficult situations. Leaders can use it to displace tension with a sense of normal.

The spiritual leader will not procrastinate when faced with a decision, nor vacillate after making it. A sincere but faulty decision is better than weak-willed trial balloons or indecisive overtures. To postpone decision is really to decide for the status quo. In most decisions the key element is not so much knowing what to do but in living with the results.

If done as God wants.' then leadership will surely include intercessory prayer. The saintly Bishop Azariah of India once remarked to Bishop Stephen Neill that he found time to pray daily, by name, for every leader in his extensive diocese. Little wonder that during his thirty years of eldering there, the diocese tripled its membership and greatly increase in spiritual effectiveness

Leaders must draw the best out of people, and friendship does that far better than prolonged argument or mere logic.

The secular mind and heart, however gifted and personally charming, has no place in the leadership of the church.

Courageous leaders face unpleasant and even devastating situations with equanimity, then act firmly to bring good from trouble, even if their action is unpopular. Leadership always faces natural human inertia and opposition. But courage follows through with a task until it is done.

A leader is a person who has learned to obey a discipline imposed from without, and has then taken on a more rigorous discipline from within. Those who rebel against authority and scorn self-discipline -- who shirk the rigors and turn from the sacrifices -- do not qualify to lead.

When all the facts are in, swift and clear decision is another mark of a true leader. A visionary may see, but a leader must decide. An impulsive person may be quick to declare a preference; but a leader must weigh evidence and make his decision on sound premises.

James and John wanted the glory, but not the cup of shame; the crown, but not the cross; the role of master, but not servant.