Leadership Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Leadership is all about caring, daring and sharing!
Caring for people, Daring to Act fearlessly,
& Sharing the success with all!

On winning in the face of obstacles:

Motivation, teamwork, leadership, patience, constantly looking over you shoulders at the rivals and never over-stretching yourself.

Ranulph Fiennes

Many political experts have told me that nobody will vote for me because America is not ready for such decisive and dynamic leadership. They tell me these things, and I say nay to the negative nincompoops who never nourished the nihilistic nerve to name a novice to nail down the nomination.

To determine whether or not you have the ingredients to be charismatic, answer the following questions: What are your real feelings about who you are? What do you believe in? Do you have goals or a mission in life? Do you project optimism? Do others turn to you for leadership? Non-charismatic people spend their lives auditioning for others and hoping they'll be accepted. Charismatic people don't doubt their ability to add value to a situation, so they move forward with their mission.

Ardent, intelligent, sweet, sensitive, cultivated, erudite. These are the adjectives of praise in an androgynous world. Those who consider them epithets of shame or folly ought not to be trusted with leadership, for they will be men hot for power and revenge, certain of right and wrong.

Carolyn Heilbrun

I will be ruthless in ridding the army of people who cannot live up to its values. And I need everyone of you to support me in achieving this. The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept. that goes for all of us, but especially those, who by their rank, have a leadership role.

Management is a business skill; you can study it and learn about it. Leadership is a human skill; to become a better leader you need to learn more about humans, starting with yourself.

Speak... of the separation of ownership and active leadership. Ordinarily the problem is stated in terms of the divorce between ownership and "control". This last word is badly overused, and it needs to be precisely defined... Our procedure... will be to study the ownership of officers and directors and then to ascertain the extent to which non-management stockholdings are sufficiently concentrated to permit through ownership the wielding of considerable power and influence (control?) over management by an individual, group or another corporation.

Robert Aaron Gordon

[When it comes to leadership] intentionality rules.

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.

Henning von Tresckow

In general, growth is an intrinsic source of change with potentially unintended effects and some subunits are better positioned than others to protect themselves against such effects. Oligarchical tendencies are present in almost all membership-based organizations, such as unions and voluntary associations, and if unchecked, can lead to transformations. Organizations with diffuse goals or innovative leadership are sometimes able to survive the crisis of complementing their original mission by moving onto other goals.

Howard E. Aldrich

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

Joseph C. Wilson

Whatever market a company might dominate today, it is likely to change substantially over the next ten years. There's no such thing as "sustaining" leadership; it must be reinvented again and again.

Above everything else, perhaps, was today's concept of working together. I don't mean its totalitarian version, for which Jack Havig had total loathing, or that togetherness, be it in a corporation or a commune, which he despised. I mean an enlightened pragmatism that rejects self-appointed aristocrats, does not believe received doctrine is necessarily true, stands ready to hear and weigh what anyone has to offer, and maintains well-developed channels to carry all ideas to the leadership and back again.

Leadership isn't a zero sum game. When one of us shines it doesn't diminish the others, it reflects on all of us.

At the vital moment there seems to be a failure of leadership, and also a failure of the general human spirit among the peoples. I hope I am wrong, but I have a sense of impending calamity, a fear that the war was only the vanguard of calamity... I cannot look at that draft treaty without a sense of grief and shame.

The true measure of leadership is influence - nothing more, nothing less.

John C. Maxwell

Very few people can succeed in their careers without having to manage, supervise and lead other people...virtually everyone is part of a team, and at some point in their working lives they must take a leadership role – if only to chair a team meeting or a project in their boss' absence.

Nigel Cumberland

Paranoia can feed on itself and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Paranoid Boss spends his energy searching out and exposing the conspiracy against him.... the focus and leadership that should have been committed to departmental objectives is wasted and the whole operation goes in the tank—thus confirming the paranoid boss's contention...

Leadership is based on a spiritual quality; the power to inspire, the power to inspire others to follow

Fifty years from today, Americans will revere the name, 'Obama.' Because like his Canadian predecessors, he chose the tough responsibilities of national leadership over the meaningless nostrums of sterile partisanship that we see too much of in Canada and around the world.

In the great mass of our people there are plenty individuals of intelligence from among whom leadership can be recruited.

I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal.

The coaching process is unique in how it accomplishes leadership development. The coach works not by providing answers per se but by asking questions through which the leader gains new insights and takes new actions.

Aubrey Malphurs

The leadership and other processes of the organization must be such as to ensure a maximum probability that in all interactions and all interactions and all relationships with the organization each member will, in the light of his background, values, and expectations, view the experience as supportive and one which builds and maintains his sense of personal worth and importance.