Mary Parker Follett Quotes

69 Sourced Quotes

We often tend to think that the executive wishes to maintain standard, wishes to reach a certain quality of production, and that the worker has to be goaded in some way to do this. Again and again we forget that the worker is often, usually I think, equally interested, that his greatest pleasure in his work comes from the satisfaction of worthwhile accomplishment, of having done the best of which he was capable.

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

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
The state accumulates moral power only through the spiritual activity of their citizens.

Mary Parker Follett
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