leadership   

The most effective leader is the one
who satisfies the psychological
needs of his or her followers.

David Ogilby

No person will make a great leader who wants to do it all him- or herself or to get all the credit for doing it.

Andrew Carnegie

     
Leadership is not magnetic personality--that can just as well be a glib tongue.  It is not making friends and influencing people--that is flattery.  Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond it normal limitations.

Peter Drucker
   
The high sentiments always win in the end; the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time.  When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

George Orwell
  
  
Six traits of effective leaders:  Make others feel important.  Promote a vision.  Follow the golden rule.  Admit mistakes.  Criticize others only in private.  Stay close to the action.

Christian Nevell Bovee
   
If people are coming to work excited. . . if they're making mistakes freely and fearlessly. . . if they're having fun. . . if they're concentrating on doing things rather than preparing reports and going to meetings--then somewhere you have leaders.

Robert Townsend
    

People make history and not the other way around.  In periods
where there is no leadership, society stands still.  Progress
occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize
the opportunity to change things for the better.

Harry S. Truman

   

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You need the ability to fail.  I'm amazed at the number of
organizations that set up an environment where they do not
permit their people to be wrong.  You cannot innovate
unless you are willing to accept some mistakes.

Charles Knight

    
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision.
You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.

Theodore M. Hesburgh
   

You do not lead by hitting people over the head--that's
assault, not leadership.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

    

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day
you have stopped leading them.  They have either lost confidence
that you can help them or concluded that you do not care.
Either case is a failure of leadership.

Colin Powell

   
A leader who doesn't hesitate before sending his or her
nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

Golda Meir
   

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

Desmond Tutu

   

"Leadership" is a concept we often resist.  It seems immodest, even
self-aggrandizing, to think of ourselves as leaders.  But if it is true that
we are made for community, then leadership is everyone's vocation,
and it can be an evasion to insist that it is not.  When we live in the
close-knit ecosystem called community, everyone follows
and everyone leads.

Parker J. Palmer
Let Your Life Speak

The power for authentic leadership, Havel tells us, is found not in
external arrangements but in the human heart.  Authentic leaders in
every setting--from families to nation-states--aim at liberating the
heart, their own and others', so that its powers can liberate the world.

   

   

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If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more,
do more, and become more, you are a leader.

John Quincy Adams
    

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

John F. Kennedy

   

A leader, once convinced that a particular course of action is
the right one, must be undaunted when the going gets tough.

Ronald Reagan

  

   

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped
with it yourself.  Before you can move their tears, your
own must flow.  To convince them, you must yourself believe.

Winston Churchill

   

A leader takes people where they want to go.  A great leader takes
people where they don't necessarily want to go,
but ought to be.

Rosalynn Carter

      

Time is neutral and does not change things.
With courage and initiative, leaders change things.

Jesse Jackson

    

   

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to
produce more leaders, not more followers.

Ralph Nader

leadership   

The quality of leaders is reflected in the standards
they set for themselves.

Ray Kroc
    

The task of leaders is to get their people from where they are
to where they have not been.

Henry Kissinger

    

Leadership is the ability to put the right people in the
right jobs and then sit on the sidelines and
be a rousing good cheerleader.

unattributed

    

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We must ask of any person seeking leadership, Do you truly wish to help
others, or is your quest for position an ego trip?  Are you here to make the
world a better place, or to fortify your own kingdom?  We don’t have to
look very far to see politicians and business moguls who care little for the
masses, but rather seek to puff their profile, line their pockets, or cater to
special interest groups. In our era anyone can get elected or appointed,
even people of despicable character.  Individuals without ethics or
compassion can also rise to altitude in business and religion.  Unscrupulous
leaders may have their day, but sooner or later the Tao will pluck
them from office because they have betrayed integrity.
What is of the Tao endures; what is not perishes.

Alan Cohen
The Tao Made Easy

  

   
Leadership is a combination of strategy and character.
If you must be without one, be without the strategy.

H. Norman Schwarzkopf
   

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

Eleanor Roosevelt

   

Power isn’t control at all--power is strength, and giving that strength
to others.  A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make
him or her stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his or her
strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.

Beth Revis
Across the Universe

   
   
Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go
along with huge crowds following them.  Leaders are people
who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see,
whether anyone is following them.  "Leadership qualities" are
not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but
those that enable them to do without them.  They include, at
the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility,
resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the
ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are
going badly.  True leaders, in short, do not make
people into followers, but into other leaders.

John Holt
Teach Your Own
   

Jesus said several times, “Come, follow me.”  His was a program of “do
what I do,” rather than “do what I say.”  His innate brilliance would have
permitted him to put on a dazzling display, but that would have left his
followers far behind.  He walked and worked with those he was to serve.
His was not a long-distance leadership.  He was not afraid of close
friendships; he was not afraid that proximity to him would disappoint
his followers.  The leaven of true leadership cannot lift others
unless we are with and serve those to be led.

Spencer W. Kimball

  

Leaders must lead.  Where others see obstacles, they must see
opportunities. When others see problems, they must see possibilities.
Civilization is not built on a negation but on an affirmation--an affirmation
of the bright and promising possibilities that the future holds for
those who are enterprising enough to pursue them.

David J. Vaughan
Give Me Liberty

   

       
   

Alone in his car heading west, it's easy for Jason
to feel sorry for himself and mad at the world.  But
then he gives a ride to Hector and learns that life
isn't nearly as negative as we sometimes see it,
and that the prejudice and discrimination that
he's experiencing aren't unique to him--and aren't
impossible to overcome.  The friendship between
this young man and his 70-year-old passenger is
an inspiring story of love and dealing with
obstacles in our lives.    
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