quotations about leadership
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
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
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.
ANDREW CARNEGIE
attributed, Managing Software Development Projects: Formula for Success
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
Leadership is a matter of performance not position. The person who sets a good example in your office is a leader. So is the father who proudly watches his daughter sell Girl Scout cookies in their neighborhood, and the teenager who holds the door open for you in the grocery store, even though his friends are snickering in the background. The best leaders help you move from where you are to where you need to be. Most important, they realize and cultivate the potential in others to be a positive influence regardless of their position.
RANDY PENNINGTON
"Leadership Choices for a Positive Future", Huffington Post, April 26, 2016
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
The right man comes at the right time.
ITALIAN PROVERB
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
The first act of leadership is coming to grips with yourself, who you are, where you are, and what is of value to you, and shaping yourself by acts of conscious will into what you want to become.
FENWICK W. ENGLISH
The Art of Educational Leadership
A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.
STEPHEN KING
Under the Dome
Today's leaders find the magic in their players.
STEVE CHANDLER & SCOTT RICHARDSON
100 Ways to Motivate Others
Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.
ANDRE MAUROIS
"The Art of Leadership", The Art of Living
Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.
HUBERT H. HUMPHREY
speech in Gainesville, Florida, Oct. 20, 1966
What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.
LORD MELBOURNE
attributed, Lord M.
It often happens that less depends upon the valor of an army than the skill of the leader.
ARISTOPHANES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Good leadership is largely invisible.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
The best boss is the one who bosses the least.
RALPH MOODY
Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers
Leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. When the leader in everyone is liberated extraordinary things happen.
JAMES M. KOUZES & BARRY Z. POSNER
The Leadership Challenge
Despite the trend to see leaders as benign, ethical, moral, centered people, they're not always. Some theorize that it's not even necessary: in fact, sometimes good behavior is actually counter-productive, and slows down implementation. Forget about finding your emotional true north. Just get it done.
MEGHAN M. BIRO
"5 Great Ways To Hack Your Leadership Style", Forbes, April 22, 2016