Quotes about Leadership

Many people wait for something to happen or someone to take care of them. But people who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary, consistent with correct principles, to get the job done.

Leadership is communicating to another their worth and potential so clearly they are inspired to see it in themselves.

Taking initiative means] recognizing our responsibility to make things happen

if you are an effective manager of yourself, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will. You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source. And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.

To value oneself and, at the same time, subordinate oneself to higher purposes and principles is the paradoxical essence of highest humanity and the foundation of effective leadership.

But is it possible that under that apparently disloyal behavior, these employees question whether I really act in their best interest? Do they feel like I'm treating them as mechanical objects? Is there some truth to that?

They want other people to be the way they want them to be. They often want to clone them, and they surround themselves with "yes" people—people who won't challenge them, people who are weaker than they.

if "success" were important in any area of life, it was supremely important in our role as parents.

While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won't find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.

Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Leadership is communicating others' worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.

Management is a bottom line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish? In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. You