Quotes About Leadership

Products come and go, leaders come and go, trends come and go," says Yamashita, "but through all of that, you need to know the answer to the question What is true about us, at our core?

Then Grove posed an interesting question to his partner: If we were kicked out of the company, what do you think the new CEO would do? Grove and Moore reasoned that a new leader would feel no emotional attachment to the declining memory-chip business and would probably leave it behind. So they did likewise, shifting Intel's focus to microprocessors—which set the stage for remarkable growth in the years to follow.

Keith Yamashita says companies can try to find their cause by asking, What does the world hunger for?

All of which means that, whereas in the past one needed to appear to have "all the answers" in order to rise in companies, today, at least in some enlightened segments of the business world, the corner office is there for the askers

Cooperrider says that "organizations gravitate toward the questions they ask.

The clients who hired Drucker may have started out expecting the great consultant to offer brilliant solutions to all their problems. But as he told one client, "The answers have to be yours.

most creative, successful business leaders have tended to be expert questioners. They're known to question the conventional wisdom of their industry, the fundamental practices of their company, even the validity of their own assumptions.

The most important thing business leaders must do today is to be the 'chief question-asker' for their organization," says the consultant Dev Patnaik of Jump Associates. However, Patnaik adds a cautionary note: "The first thing most leaders need to realize is, they're really bad at asking questions.

When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don't have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.

When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.

It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.

If you have a great manager, you want to pay him very well.

There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long— PEOPLE. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It's people that kill every revolution.

Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it

Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.

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.

You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.

I am not fit for this office and never should have been here.

Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little.