quotations about leadership
Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The Power of Leadership
Life is the leader's laboratory, and exemplary leaders use it to conduct as many experiments as possible. Try, fail, learn. Try, fail, learn. Try, fail, learn. That's the leader's mantra. Leaders are learners. They learn from their failures as well as their successes, and they make it possible for others to do the same.
JAMES M. KOUZES & BARRY Z. POSNER
The Leadership Challenge
The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as the leader.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
True leaders understand that leadership is not about them but about those they serve. It is not about exalting themselves but about lifting others up.
SHERI L. DEW
Saying It Like It Is
Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through ... such is the basic method of leadership.
MAO ZEDONG
"Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership", Jun. 1, 1943
If becoming a high performing organization is the destination, leadership is the engine.
KEN BLANCHARD
Leading at a Higher Level
In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.
SHERYL SANDBERG
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
BIBLE
Matthew 15:14
What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.
LORD MELBOURNE
attributed, Lord M.
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.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Essential Lippmann
A leader is a dealer in hope.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
attributed, And I Quote
Because our desire for a coherent vision of the world is bottomless, our hunger for leadership is insatiable, too. Leaders make the world more sensible, but never sensible enough.
JOSHUA ROTHMAN
"Shut Up and Sit Down", The New Yorker, February 29, 2016
You know you're a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity.
COLIN POWELL
"10 Leadership Tenets from Colin Powell", Stanford Graduate School of Business
When the shepherd is a wolf, the flock becomes only so much meat.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
You aren't leading unless people are following.
RON EDMONDSON
"7 Times Leadership is at Its Best -- A Delicate Tension", Crossmap, April 18, 2016
Leadership is the name that people use to make sense out of complex events and the outcomes of events they otherwise would not be able to explain. In other words, people attribute leadership to certain individuals who are called leaders because people want to believe that leaders cause things to happen rather than have to explain causality by understanding complex social forces or analyzing the dynamic interaction among people, events, and environment.
JOSEPH CLARENCE ROST
Leadership for the Twenty-first Century
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Essential Lippmann
Leadership is love made visible.
DARYA FUNCHES
attributed, Speak the Truth and Point to Hope
The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.
KEN BLANCHARD
Leading at a Higher Level