Mary Parker Follett Quotes

69 Sourced Quotes

The foreman today does not merely deal with trouble, he forestalls trouble. In fact, we don't think much of a foreman who is always dealing with trouble; we feel that if he is doing his job properly, there won't be so much trouble.

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
Power is not a pre-existing thing which can be handed out to someone, or wrenched from someone. We have seen again and again the failure of "power" conferred. You could give me dozens of cases. The division of power is not the thing to be considered, but the method of organization which will generate power.

Mary Parker Follett
Now that we are recognizing more fully the value of the individual, now that management is defining more exactly the function of each, many are coming to regard the leader as the man who can energize his group, who knows how to encourage initiative, how to draw from all what each has to give.

Mary Parker Follett
Coercive power is the curse of the universe; coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.

Mary Parker Follett
The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them, they have a vision of the future.

Mary Parker Follett
The study of human relations in business and the study of the technology of operating are bound up together.

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

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

Mary Parker Follett
A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.

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
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
We can confer authority; but power or capacity, no man can give or take. The manager cannot share his power with division superintendent or foreman or workmen, but he can give them opportunities for developing their power

Mary Parker Follett
I do not think that we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems, with psychological, ethical and economical aspects, and as many others as you like.

Mary Parker Follett
The leader is one who can organize the experience of the group... and thus get the full power of the group. The leader makes the team. This is pre-eminently the leadership quality — the ability to organize all the forces there are in an enterprise and make them serve a common purpose.

Mary Parker Follett
In the small group then is where we shall find the inner meaning of democracy, its very heart and core.

Mary Parker Follett
While leadership depends on depth of conviction and the power coming therefrom, there must also be the ability to share that conviction with others.

Mary Parker Follett
It is of equal importance with the discovery of facts to know what to do with them.

Mary Parker Follett
The leader should have the spirit of adventure, but the spirit of adventure need not mean the temperament of the gambler. It should be the pioneer spirit which blazes new trails. The insight to see possible new paths, the courage to try them, the judgment to measure results — these are the qualifications of the leader.

Mary Parker Follett
I am free when I am functioning here in time and space as the creative will.... freedom by our definition is obedience to the law of one's nature.

Mary Parker Follett
Conflict is resolved not through compromise, but through invention.

Mary Parker Follett
Another idea that is changing is that the leader must be one who can make quick decisions. The leader to-day is often one who thinks out his decisions very slowly.

Mary Parker Follett
The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it.

Mary Parker Follett
There is a pernicious tendency to make the opinions of the expert prevail by crowd methods, to rush the people instead of educating them.

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
It is not opposition but indifference which separates men.

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
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
The best leaders try to train their followers themselves to become leaders.... they wish to be leaders of leaders.

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