quotations about leadership
Little leading makes much following.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Bad leadership is an oxymoron.
JOSEPH CLARENCE ROST
Leadership for the Twenty-first Century
Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities; and while no one individual possesses all the needed talents to go into leadership, each man can develop a combination to make him a leader.
VINCE LOMBARDI
attributed, Run to Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership
Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.
DAN SIMMONS
The Fall of Hyperion
There are two kinds of leaders: those who are interested in the flock, and those who are interested in the fleece.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Leaders are said to be responsive to what their followers want because the followers choose the leader and leaders want to keep their leadership positions. The assumption that leaders will be responsive to followers because leaders want to win and hold power is a useful starting point for understanding the politics of leadership in any democratic institution. However, such an assumption may become misleading if leaders are understood to care only about retaining their leadership positions. If some congressional leaders are strongly committed to political goals beyond remaining leader--and we shall see that some are--we would not expect those leaders always to be inclined to take their bearings from what their followers want. When opportunities arise to pursue other intensely held goals, some may be willing to act independently of followers and even risk their leadership positions in pursuit of those goals. If so, leaders who are more risk-tolerant may be consequential for influencing outcomes in a wider range of political situations than just those situations in which their followers are already mostly in agreement.
RANDALL STRAHAN
Leading Representatives
When one sheep leads the way all the rest follow.
CHINESE PROVERB
I see [it said that] leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the ... nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in House of Commons, Sep. 30, 1941
Leadership is about mobilising people to tackle tough changes and thrive, while authority simply looked at protection, direction and order and can be a strait jacket if not used correctly.
KIRK HUMPHREY
"The Time for Adaptive Leadership is Right Now", Barbados Advocate, April 24, 2016
If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
Truly inspiring leaders are authentic, that is, they have done their strategic homework, they have a vision that matches the people they are working with, and they believe in that vision deeply. They are not faking it.
RONALD J. BURKE & CARY L. COOPER
Inspiring Leaders
Leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure.
ARLEIGH BURKE
attributed, Naval Leadership: Voices of Experience
To some extent, leaders are storytellers; really, though, they are characters in stories. They play leading roles, but in dramas they can't predict and don't always understand. Because the serialized drama of history is bigger than any one character's arc, leaders can't guarantee our ultimate narrative satisfaction. Because events, on the whole, are more protean than people, leaders grow less satisfying with time, as the stories they're ready to tell diverge from the stories we want to hear.
JOSHUA ROTHMAN
"Shut Up and Sit Down", The New Yorker, February 29, 2016
Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
address at the Episcopal National Cathedral, Washington D.C., Mar. 31, 1968
That's the first rule of command; be consistent! You can be sadistic, you can be lazy, you can be stupid, but if you're consistent the crew will still let you sit in when they play dominoes.
JAMES ALAN GARDNER
Expendable
What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason.
ROBERT HARRIS
Pompeii
Because leadership is contextual and culturally contingent, its practice cannot be divorced from the specific socio-cultural context within which it occurs. Leadership development must begin to make contextual sense to its recipients, and to the social contexts in which they will be practicing as leaders.
VANESSA IWOWO
"Leadership: one size does not fit all contexts", Business Review, April 20, 2016
There is nothing worse than a leader who is too far ahead of the people he or she is trying to lead. Have you ever tried to follow someone in a car? Some people are good at leading you -- some aren't. But, the best leadership is always taking you somewhere you haven't been before -- stretching you towards something new.
RON EDMONDSON
"7 Times Leadership is at Its Best -- A Delicate Tension", Crossmap, April 18, 2016
At the heart of leadership is the leader's relationship with followers. People will entrust their hopes and dreams to another person only if they think the other is a reliable vessel.
DAVID GERGAN
Eyewitness to Power
Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.
COLIN POWELL
"10 Leadership Tenets from Colin Powell", Stanford Graduate School of Business