Mary Parker Follett - Power Quotes

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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
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
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
Power-over is resorted to time without number because people will not wait for the slower process of education.

Mary Parker Follett
Part of the task of the leader is to make others participate in his leadership. The best leader knows how to make his followers actually feel power themselves, not merely acknowledge his power.

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

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

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

Mary Parker Follett