Quotes About Leadership

Part of the manager's job is to act as scapegoat, shielding his club's owners from blame.

in business doing nothing is often the hardest thing. (And not just in business. Harold Macmillan, prime minister during the Cuban missile crisis, mused then 'on the frightful desire to do something, with the knowledge that not to do anything was prob. the right answer'.)

Mao has never accepted the failure of the "Great Leap". As one of the texts reproduced below demonstrates, he would have preferred to see China perish from famine rather than readjust his own vision or recognize his mistakes.

A leader must be constantly aware of the power of his words .... and his silences.

Social technology gives leaders a vital new platform with which to connect their companies to the myriad stakeholders who have an interest in their well being.

As a speaker, business leader or marketer of any type, the onus is now on each of us to become equally capable of communicating very personally with a seemingly endless number of people connected by social technologies.

Many corporate leaders and employees have the right intentions, but it can be overwhelming when you consider how everything is affected from leadership styles, to organizational structure, to employee engagement, to customer service an marketplace.

project starts to go off target the

Make no little plans," he urged. "They have no magic to stir men's blood.

Big corporations aren't always the bad guys; but it's the sensible way to bet.

I'd prefer to be admired and respected, but I'll settle for everyone else being shit-scared of us, if that means we can get the job done. Decisions

I also try to use a technique that has worked well for me in relationships: if someone believes really strongly that we should do something, whether it's the assistant producer or the executive in charge, we generally do it. Enthusiasm trumps apathy.

But he didn't say anything, he just turned the lens on me. I waited for him to lead us in, but he said nothing. And then it struck me, one of those moments when a switch just flips in your head. Ah. So this is how it's going to be. I need to lead, and the camera will follow.

Power is always personal: any study of a Western democratic leader today reveals that, even in a transparent system with its short periods in office, personalities shape administrations. Democratic leaders often rule through trusted retainers instead of official ministers. In any court, power is as fluid as human personality.

The formation of Stalin's character is particularly important because the nature of his rule was so personal.

Who is fit to be elected?' asked Napoleon. 'A Caesar, an Alexander only comes along once a century, so that election must be a matter of chance.

Very few politicians, who have chosen a political career, can fulfill the aspirations and survive the strains of an elevated office that in a monarchy was filled so randomly. Each tsar had to be simultaneously dictator and supreme general, high priest and Little Father. They required all the qualities listed by the sociologist Max Weber: the personal gift of grace, the virtue of legality, and "the authority of the eternal yesterday.

He asked, 'How can you make a revolution without firing-squads?

Stalin was formed by much more than a miserable childhood, just as the USSR was formed by much more than Marxist ideology.

The autocracy was legitimized by its ever-expanding multi-faith, multi-ethnic empire, yet the later emperors regarded themselves as the leaders first of the Russian nation but then of the entire Slavic community. The more they embraced Russian nationalism, the more they excluded (and often persecuted) their huge non-Russian populations,

La guerra, explicaba Napoleón, no era «un arte difícil», sino «una cuestión de ocultar el miedo el mayor tiempo posible. Solo de ese modo se logra intimidar al enemigo y el éxito está fuera de dudas».

Old Molotov was asked if he dreamed about Stalin: "Not often but sometimes. The circumstances are very unusual. I'm in some sort of destroyed city and I can't find a way out. Afterwards, I meet HIM..."1

The only man to shake hands with Lenin, Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Roosevelt and Churchill, Molotov was Stalin's closest ally. Nicknamed "Stone-Arse" for his indefatigable work rate, Molotov liked to correct people ponderously and tell

Simon Sebag Montefiore