Mary Parker Follett Quotes

69 Sourced Quotes

Conflict is resolved not through compromise, but through invention.

Mary Parker Follett
It is a mistake to think that social progress is to depend upon anything happening to the working people: some say that they are to be given more material goods and all will be well; some think they are to be given more "education" and the world will be saved. It is equally a mistake to think that what we need is the conversion to "unselfishness" of the capitalist class.

Mary Parker Follett
We no longer think that the best leader is the greatest hustler or the most persuasive orator or even the best trader. The great leader is he who is able to integrate the experience of all and use it for a common purpose.

Mary Parker Follett
I am convinced that any feeling of exaltation because we have people under us should be conquered, for I am sure that if we enjoy being over people, there will be something in our manner which will make them dislike being under us.

Mary Parker Follett
Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.

Mary Parker Follett
We must remember that most people are not for or against anything; the first object of getting people together is to make them respond somehow, to overcome inertia. To disagree, as well as to agree, with people brings you closer to them. I always feel intimate with my enemies.

Mary Parker Follett
It is possible to conceive conflict as not necessarily a wasteful outbreak of incompatibilities, but a normal process by which socially valuable differences register themselves for the enrichment of all concerned.

Mary Parker Follett
We must face life as it is and understand that diversity is its most essential feature.

Mary Parker Follett
When leadership rises to genius it has the power of transforming, of transforming experience into power. And that is what experience is for, to be made into power. The great leader creates as well as directs power.

Mary Parker Follett
Leader and followers are both following the invisible leader-the common purpose.

Mary Parker Follett
There is too great a tendency (perhaps encouraged by popular journalism) to deal with the dramatic moments, forgetting that these are not always the most significant moments.... To find the significant rather than the dramatic features of industrial controversy, of a disagreement in regard to policy on board of directors or between managers, is essential to integrative business policies.

Mary Parker Follett
The group process contains the secret of collective life, it is the key to democracy, it is the master lesson for every individual to learn, it is our chief hope or the political, the social, the international life of the future.

Mary Parker Follett
No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.

Mary Parker Follett
In crowds we have unison, in groups harmony. We want the single voice but not the single note; that is the secret of the group.

Mary Parker Follett
The most successful leader of all is one who sees another picture not yet actualized.

Mary Parker Follett
Crowd action is the outcome of agreement based on concurrence of emotion rather than of thought.

Mary Parker Follett
There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.

Mary Parker Follett
What people often mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity, and it is of the utmost importance that these should not be considered the same.

Mary Parker Follett
Democracy is not brute numbers; it is a genuine union of true individuals...the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.

Mary Parker Follett
Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but Few have made me want to do something..

Mary Parker Follett
It is not opposition but indifference which separates men.

Mary Parker Follett
We certainly do not want to abolish power, that would be abolishing life itself, but we need a new orientation toward it.

Mary Parker Follett
It seems to me that whereas power usually means power-over, the power of some person or group over some other person or group, it is possible to develop the conception of power-with, a jointly developed power, a co-active, not a coercive power.

Mary Parker Follett
We can never catch up with life... we shall always be eating the soft part of our melting ice and meanwhile the nice hard part is rapidly melting too.

Mary Parker Follett
Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, nor absorbed.

Mary Parker Follett