Quotes About Leadership

This escapade taught me a lesson," Nimitz later recalled, "to look with lenient and tolerant eye on first offenders when in later years they appeared before me as a Commanding Officer holding Mast."8

Halsey was a guy who got things done and King definitely liked and respected that quality.

Yes, in the last war King had convinced Admiral Henry T. Mayo of the importance of delegating and then trusting his destroyer captains; he had preached the importance of individual training and career advancement so as to be fully capable of executing such instructions; but when push came to shove, King had always had a terrible time biting his own sharp tongue and trusting that his orders would be carried out.

Leadership," said Nimitz, "consists of picking good men and helping them do their best for you. The attributes of loyalty, discipline and devotion to duty on the part of subordinates must be matched by patience, tolerance and understanding on the part of superiors.

the result of this engagement plainly indicates that a cool-headed commander who gets into the fight first and proceeds to business has the best of the battle from the start.

The general once described Eisenhower as "the best clerk I ever had," and after serving MacArthur as an aide in both Washington and the Philippines, Eisenhower was well versed in his theatrical ways. "In many ways MacArthur is as big a baby as ever," Eisenhower noted. "But we've got to keep him fighting." 20

General Douglas MacArthur was the most brilliant, most important, and most valuable military leader in American history—at least that's what Douglas MacArthur thought. When asked by a proper British gentlewoman if he had ever met the famous general, Dwight D. Eisenhower—himself about to march into history—supposedly replied, "Not only have I met him, ma'am; I studied dramatics under him for five years in Washington and four years in the Philippines.

Then King repeated the doctrine of taking calculated risks with concentrated forces that Nimitz had just employed at Coral Sea and Midway. "Don't forget the proposition," the admiral told the reporters, "that the minute you try to be strong everywhere, you have only the men available—it means you will be weak everywhere.

All histories do show, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.

Life isn't easy, and leadership is harder still.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Where, where was Roderick then!One blast upon his bugle hornWere worth a thousand men!

There were bickerings, outright fights, screaming tantrums, but Ted's vision of the Greater Denishawn had come true.

Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize about my next steps. I often just keep walking along, through whichever door opens. I have been on a journey and this journey has never stopped. When the journey is acknowledged and sustained by those I work with, they are a source of inspiration, energy and encouragement. They are the reasons I kept walking, and will keep walking, as long as my knees hold out.

Leadership has become a heavy industry. Concern and interest about leadership development is no longer an American phenomenon. It is truly global. Though I will probably be in less demand, I wanted to move on.

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.

Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.

The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to the same failure something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic, something that made them feel that desperate sense of hitting bottom--as something they thought was almost a necessity. It's as if at that moment the iron entered their soul that moment created the resilience that leaders need.

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

It's also critical for company leaders to be on the lookout for ways in which questioning gets punished—though the punishment may not be obvious or intentional. The operative question is If an employee asks questions at our company, is he or she asking for trouble

In Hal Gregersen's study of business leaders who question, he found that they exhibited an unusual "blend of humility and confidence"15—they were humble enough to acknowledge a lack of knowledge, and confident enough to admit this in front of others.

one of the most important things a leader can do is project a clear and distinctive point of view that others can follow. But that clear vision is arrived at, and constantly modified and sharpened, through deep reflection and questioning.

To figure out the internal values, Yamashita urges company leaders to look back in time and consider this question: Who have we (as a company) historically been when we've been at our best? At the finest moments in a company's history, Yamashita holds, its core values usually came shining through. But from time to time it may be necessary to revisit that past to reaffirm the company's higher purpose.

At the same time, as Yamashita points out, it's just as important to look forward when asking big questions about purpose. He urges clients to work on Whom must we fearlessly become? That can be a difficult challenge, he says, because it requires "envisioning a version of the company that does not exist yet.