You are your own raw material. When you know what you consist of and what you want to make of it, then you can invent yourself.

I'd always rather err on the side of openness. But there's a difference between optimum and maximum openness, and fixing that boundary is a judgment call. The art of leadership is knowing how much information you're going to pass on - to keep people motivated and to be as honest, as upfront, as you can. But, boy, there really are limits to that.

That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.

Understand the "Gretzky Factor": Cultivate an instinct, a "touch", call it what you will, that enables you to know both where the "puck" is now and where it will be soon.

The first job of a leader is to define a vision for the organization...the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.