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.

Leadership is not about personality, possessions, or charisma, but all about who you are as a person. I used to believe that leadership was about style but now I know that leadership is about substance, namely character.

We have a problem with women in leadership across the board. This leadership gap - this problem of not enough women in leadership - is running really deep and it's in every industry. My answer is we have to understand the stereotype assumptions that hold women back.

We think leadership is about rank and power, but better to think of leadership as the responsibility for other human beings. That leadership and rank may not go together. So it manifests in this remarkable way.

The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party and for a party of the Lenin type. Nevertheless, we must emphasize this old truth, because for about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin. And this, of course, could not but reflect negatively on the position of the party and its work.

The key thing for a CEO to keep their head in the game is recognize that there's turbulent times, plan for, you know, bad luck as well as good luck, keep people focused on what the key, you know, business wins are, and you know, provide the energy that people always need in order to, you know, to go into battle because, you know, work is hard and go into work and do that well. And provide a good leadership beacon for that. In other words, it's the same thing that makes good leadership in any other time.

We know that leadership is very much related to change. As the pace of change accelerates, there is naturally a greater need for effective leadership.

What is your legacy? Are you intentional about the sort of influence you want to have on the world around you? Being aware of how you want to be remembered gives you a perspective on what is truly important. Leadership is influence, and relationships are the foundation of leadership. Nothing is more predictive of your legacy than the quality of people you surround yourself with.

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.

If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership.

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 is no longer about position - but passion. It's no longer about image but impact. This is Leadership 2.0.

The leader builds dispersed and diverse leadership - distributing leadership to the outermost edges of the circle to unleash the power of shared responsibility.

Too often when people think of their journey into leadership, they envision a career path. What they should be thinking about is their own leadership development!

You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not to do it. And, therefore, you learn how to do it.

What are most people hungry for? I believe it is spiritual and moral leadership. Increases in technology, scientific inventions, and medical miracles have been marvelous and incredible. But we must use them properly to bring us joy, and that requires spiritual and moral leadership.

The purpose of leadership is not to make the present bearable. The purpose of leadership is to make the future possible.

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.

The difference between government and leadership is that leadership has a soul.

I believe that feminists of the more aggressive persuasion are frustrated women unable to find the proper male leadership. If a woman were receiving the right kind of love and attention and leadership, she would not want to be liberated from that.

If leadership requires a fired-up sense of purpose and imagination, it also demands a profound connection to the society to be led.

The idea of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussia. The real Prussian spirit means a synthesis between restraint and freedom, between voluntary subordination and conscientious leadership, between pride in oneself and consideration for others, between rigor and compassion. Unless a balance is kept between these qualities, the Prussian spirit is in danger of degenerating into soulless routine and narrow-minded dogmatism.

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.

Humility is the cornerstone of leadership.

In a climate of uncertainty and fear, without strong and visionary leadership, people panic.

My height doesn't define my skill set. To be a great quarterback, you have to have great leadership, great attention to detail and a relentless competitive nature - and I try to bring that on a daily basis.

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.

The authorization I propose would provide the flexibility to conduct ground combat operations in other more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership, it would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected or intended, such as intelligence collection and sharing, missions to enable kinetic strikes or the provision of operational planning and other forms of advice and assistance to partner forces.

We will certainly be focused on making sure that the prosperity we have been able to accomplish in the past 8 years under the leadership of Mr. [Barack] Obama, continues.

The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead.

I believe that the mindset that allows you to spend your working life thanking and congratulating people rather than being unpleasant to them is the mainstay of good leadership.

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.

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.

The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. She therefore makes sure she puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position the person who has the strength to do the outstanding pacesetting job. This always requires focus on the one strength of a person and dismissal of weaknesses as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.

I don't have any faith, but I have a lot of hope, and I have a lot of dreams of what we could do with our intelligence if we had the will and the leadership and the understanding of how we could take all of our intelligence and our resources and create a world for our kids that is hopeful.

The difference between mere management and leadership is communication.

Leadership is simply the ability of an individual to coalesce the efforts of other individuals toward achieving common goals. It boils down to looking after your people and ensuring that, from top to bottom, everyone feels part of the team.

I began at some point to understand the whole idea of accountability and responsibility and leadership, and I think that was something that really birthed something in me, where I knew I wanted to be part of a larger equation in our society.

Comrade Deng Xiaoping - along with other party elders - gave the party leadership their firm and full support to put down the political disturbance using forceful measures.

If anybody ran a business like that they would be out of business quickly, and Barack Obama's leadership is driving this business, the United States of America, toward a fiscal cliff.

I think the guys are starting to rally around my leadership style and the way I do things. I've been waiting for this opportunity my whole life.

Above all, leadership is a position of servanthood.

I'm a bit tight with money, but so what? I look at the money I'm about to spend on myself and ask myself if IKEA's customers can afford it... I could regularly travel first class, but having money in abundance doesn't seem like a good reason to waste it.. If there is such a thing as good leadership, it is to give a good example. I have to do so for all the IKEA employees.

Leadership is not just about what you do but what you can inspire, encourage and empower others to do.

The whole Chinese system - not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society - is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information. That's why the country can't face up to open competition - unless it resorts to measures like North Korea.

Consensus is the absence of leadership.

I don't know why you should isolate women in this regard. If you have a traditional leader who says 'I am the sole exclusive ruler, I am the autocrat', it will affect everybody in the area, whether they are men or women. The challenge that South Africa faces, and it is not a new challenge, a whole range of African countries have faced this challenge, is that where you have institutional traditional leadership, which in our country is protected by the Constitution, how does that institution function side by side with a democratic system?

I was 21 and had spent the last few years in Stanford University Engineering School at California. Many people advised me to take up a nice, cushy job rather than face the challenges of running a hydrogenated oil business. Looking back, I am glad I decided to take charge instead. Essentially leadership begins from within. It is a small voice that tells you where to go when you feel lost. If you believe in that voice, you believe in yourself.