Quotes About Leadership

Leadership can't be claimed like luggage at the airport. Leadership can't be inherited, even though you may inherit a leadership position. And leadership can't be given as a gift - even if you've been blessed with an abundance of leadership skills to share with someone else. Leadership must be earned by mastering a defined set of skills and by working with others to achieve common goals.

Communication is the conduit of leadership from the Prime Minister down to the leading hand of a small group of council workers fixing the roads. Leadership uncommunicated is leadership unrequited!

The demands of leadership have changed. The highest levels if leadership require mastery of a new task: job creation. Traditional leadership through politics, military force, religion, or personal values won't work in the future like it has in the past.

Leadership is not bullying and leadership is not aggression. Leadership is the expectation that you can use your voice for good. That you can make the world a better place.

The People's democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working class. For it is only the working class that is most far-sighted, most selfless and most thoroughly revolutionary. The entire history of revolution proves that without the leadership of the working class revolution fails and that with the leadership of the working class revolution triumphs.

As women's leadership qualities come to play a more dominant role in the public sphere, their particular aptitudes for long-term negotiating, analytic listening, and creating an ambiance in which people work with zest and spirit will help reconcile the split between the ideals of being efficient and being humane. This integration of female values is already producing a more collaborative kind of leadership, and changing the very ideal of what strong leadership actually is.

I have participated as a leader in many organizations where the leadership culture was just mean - ugly, where competitiveness, and destructive relationships stymied progress. There should be healthy tension and candid debate, but leadership teams need to practice communication, relationship building, emotional intelligence, and be aligned around common purpose to achieve organizational success. Senior leaders, chief executive officers, others need to ensure they are fostering the right environment for leadership otherwise all of that ugliness will trickle through the organization.

Leadership is a concept we often resist. It seems immodest, even self-aggrandizing, to think of ourselves as leaders. But if it is true that we are part of a community, then leadership is everyone's vocation, and it can be an evasion to insist that it is not. When we live in the close-knit ecosystem called community, everyone follows and everyone leads.

Jesus said several times, “Come, follow me.” His was a program of “do what I do,” rather than “do what I say.” His innate brilliance would have permitted him to put on a dazzling display, but that would have left his followers far behind. He walked and worked with those he was to serve. His was not a long-distance leadership. He was not afraid of close friendships; he was not afraid that proximity to him would disappoint his followers. The leaven of true leadership cannot lift others unless we are with and serve those to be led.

It is not wise, or even possible, to divorce private behavior from public leadership.... By its very nature, true leadership carries with it the burden of being an example.

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.

An old African leader says about leadership, he says that leadership should never be shared; it should always remain in the hands of the dispossessed people. We will lead the revolution.

Intelligence we gathered at the time indicated that this was in fact leadership and we struck the leadership.

Leadership means setting an example. When you find yourself in a position of leadership, people follow your every move.

A person's own definition of leadership defines the glittering crown of his leadership.

The single biggest barrier to effective leadership is, in my view, the leadership industry itself. Instead of telling people the skills and behaviors they need to be effective in getting things done, we tell them almost the opposite - blandishments about how we wish people would be, and how we wish workplaces were. That information is worse than useless as, to the extent people believe it, they often wind up losing their jobs.

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.

Animals struggle with each other for food or for leadership, but they do not, like human beings, struggle with each other for thatthat stands for food or leadership: such things as our paper symbols of wealth (money, bonds, titles), badges of rank to wear on our clothes, or low-number license plates, supposed by some people to stand for social precedence. For animals the relationship in which one thing stands for something else does not appear to exist except in very rudimentary form.

Some are born leaders, some achieve leadership, and some have leadership thrust upon them. Which of these are you, or would you rather not bother?

Leadership - leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses.

The true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.

The majority of America's colossal fortunes have been made by entering industries in their early stages and developing leadership in them.... Think of what opportunities the present and the future contain in such fields as ship-building and ship-owning, aircraft, electrical development, the oil industry, different branches of the automotive industry, foreign trade, international banking, invention, the chemical industry, moving pictures, color photography, and, one night add, labor leadership.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. Many people who approach the area of vision in leadership have it backwards. They believe that if the cause is good enough, people will automatically buy in and follow. But that's not how leadership works. People don't follow worthy causes; they follow worthy leaders with a cause they can believe in. They buy into the leader first.

Times of upheaval require not just more leadership but more leaders. People at all organizational levels, whether anointed or self-appointed, must be empowered to share leadership responsibilities.

I think leadership comes from the top down, but a great leader knows when the time is right to act, and leadership involves the ability to mobilize and galvanize the people, and to inspire the people to follow.

I think it could get passed in a lame duck? Probably tough. But impossible? No, or I wouldn't be wasting my time. It's going to take some leadership, and it takes a time where leadership is more important than people's political career at times.

Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty.

Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less...titles don't have much value when it comes to leading. True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned, it comes only from influence, and that cannot be mandated. It must be earned.

Courageous leadership is not fearless leadership. What makes you a leader is how you deal with your fears.

I believe strongly that a group's potential is eventually limited by the strength of its leadership. I'm an outsider, but it still looks to me like the leadership in the Java w orld is Fouled Up Beyond ALL Recognition. Java ISVs don't know whether to listen to Mom or Dad. Everybody knows IBM should just buy Sun and clean up the mess. When are they going to do it?

The end point of leadership is not just the position of power we reach, but the continual change and deepening we experience that makes a difference in our lives, our work, our world. Our leadership journeys are only at midpoint when we have achieved a position of power.

Year after year after year, people write books about managing innovation or about leadership, for example, without ever going through the pain of saying, "This kind of leadership will cause this result in these circumstances and a very different result in those circumstances." This is academic malpractice of the worst kind.

Leadership is about going somewhere. If you and your people don’t know where you are going, your leadership doesn’t matter.

It takes leadership to improve safety.

It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.

I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to the point of responsibility. I don`t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.

Character is more important than any other leadership trait.

There are different views about what's good for our country, our economy, and our leadership in the world.

As a woman, my style defines my leadership. It's a gentler, more compassionate approach. I consult, I listen and I compromise where it's in the best interest of the citizens.

This women's moment to embrace the power-to for good in life and leadership.

Leadership is the process of motivating, mobilizing, resourcing, and directing people to passionately and strategically pursue a vision from God that a group jointly embraces.

Coaching will become the model for leaders in the future... I am certain that leadership can be learned and that terrific coaches... facilitate learning.

Leadership is about calling people to do things beyond themselves.

I think you have a deeply anxious leadership in China that knows its legitimacy is drifting away, that’s sending its [personal] money and its children abroad because they have no faith in the future of their own regime.

As Ive progressed in my career, Ive come to appreciate -- and really value -- the other attributes that define a companys success beyond the P&L: great leadership, long-term financial strength, ethical business practices, evolving business strategies, sound governance, powerful brands, values-based decision-making.

Leadership is absolutely about inspiring action, but it is also about guarding against mis-action.

The Dalai Lama. He is a very wise man of great inner peace who believes that happiness is the purpose of our lives. Through his teachings and leadership, he continues to make this world a better place in which to live.

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since.