quotations about leadership
True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can't be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing a title can buy is a little time -- either to increase your level of influence with others or to erase it.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
You know you're a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity.
COLIN POWELL
"10 Leadership Tenets from Colin Powell", Stanford Graduate School of Business
Who aspires to remain leader must keep in advance of his column. His fear must not play traitor to his occasions. The instant he falls into line with his followers, a bolder spirit may throw himself at the head of the movement initiated, and in that moment his leadership is gone.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Developing the Leader Within You
The best leaders turn their followers into leaders, realizing that the journey ahead requires many guides.
JAMES M. KOUZES & BARRY Z. POSNER
A Leader's Legacy
Today's leaders find the magic in their players.
STEVE CHANDLER & SCOTT RICHARDSON
100 Ways to Motivate Others
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
GEORGE S. PATTON
"Reflections and Suggestions", War As I Knew It
Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Leadership is a form of captivity, in which one is both separated from others and exposed to their judgment.
JOSHUA ROTHMAN
"Shut Up and Sit Down", The New Yorker, February 29, 2016
In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.
SHERYL SANDBERG
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Leadership is most effective when those acting in that capacity realize that their effect on others must be indirect. This indirectness means influencing others by changing yourself.
GREG ROBINSON & MARK ROSE
A Leadership Paradox
Leadership is love made visible.
DARYA FUNCHES
attributed, Speak the Truth and Point to Hope
The man fit to command may be compared with the architect, who adjusts the plan and directs its execution. His skill must extend to every part of the work; that of his workmen is limited by their respective tasks.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Leadership is the name that people use to make sense out of complex events and the outcomes of events they otherwise would not be able to explain. In other words, people attribute leadership to certain individuals who are called leaders because people want to believe that leaders cause things to happen rather than have to explain causality by understanding complex social forces or analyzing the dynamic interaction among people, events, and environment.
JOSEPH CLARENCE ROST
Leadership for the Twenty-first Century
You aren't leading unless people are following.
RON EDMONDSON
"7 Times Leadership is at Its Best -- A Delicate Tension", Crossmap, April 18, 2016
There is nothing worse than a leader who is too far ahead of the people he or she is trying to lead. Have you ever tried to follow someone in a car? Some people are good at leading you -- some aren't. But, the best leadership is always taking you somewhere you haven't been before -- stretching you towards something new.
RON EDMONDSON
"7 Times Leadership is at Its Best -- A Delicate Tension", Crossmap, April 18, 2016
I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
DESMOND TUTU
The Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 20, 1984
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Good leadership is largely invisible. When everything runs smoothly, no one notices.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.
HUBERT H. HUMPHREY
speech in Gainesville, Florida, Oct. 20, 1966