Quotes About Leadership

The need for uniformity is a sign of insecurity on the part of management. Strong managers don't care when team members cut their hair or whether they wear ties. Their pride is tied only to their staff's accomplishments

The person who fails is a hero, the backbone of the change effort. Failure gains that person more respect, not less.

Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you're risk-averse, you won't do it. And that's a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure.

The catalyst is important because the project is always in a state of flux. Someone who can help a project to jell is worth two people who just do work.

Risk management is the explicit quantitative declaration of uncertainty. But in some corporate cultures, people aren't allowed to be uncertain. They're allowed to be wrong, but they can't be uncertain. They are obliged to look their bosses and clients in the face and lie rather than show uncertainty about outcomes. Uncertainty is for wimps.

Management is hard, and not because there is so much work to do (an overworked manager is almost certainly doing work he/she shouldn't be doing). Management is hard because the skills are inherently difficult to master. Your mastery of them will affect your organization more than anything going on under you.

THERE'S LEADERSHIP, and then there's "leadership." The first conveys vision, engenders confidence, and encourages striving toward common goals. The other doesn't.

When managers are overworked, they're doing something other than management; the more they allow themselves to be overworked, the less real management gets done.

Internal competition has the direct effect of making coaching difficult or impossible.

a manager who is 40 percent used up making operations happen is not viewed as 60 percent reclaimable expense. Rather, he/she is viewed as someone doing leadership 60 percent of the time. If there is an incentive to change this formula, it suggests looking for ways to decrease the time spent running operations to free up more capacity for leading the transformation.

Part of my job leading the line for Watford is to occupy centre-halves - by that I mean those battles with Huth, say, to try to win headers when the ball is played forward. But I also look to bring centre-halves out of position to the flanks and make space for my team-mates in the middle.

I never thought I was breaking a glass ceiling. I just had to do what I had to do, and it never occurred to me not to.

When I came in, the city was on the edge of bankruptcy. I'm proud of what I did. I built the foundation that mayors after me built upon - particularly Bloomberg. But the foundation was essential because if it hadn't occurred, we would have been another Detroit.

During the rocky times, it never occurred to me that one day I would hold a position of respect and responsibility in the community.

In a way, certain sections of the media always wanted to knock me because I had captained my country and been skipper at Old Trafford. It was all a bit odd really.

I don't have all the answers, so my goal is to make sure that the 180-some odd members of the RSC each have a seat at the table where we can talk about their vision.

It's odd to say we had our first African American president before our first African-American-owned movie studio, but we're making progress.

It's quite confusing and odd when a footballer, instead of playing, is interested in bringing in players who are his friends.

You can't blame someone for not knowing what his or her job should be if you don't ask for it right off the bat.

I think a bishop who doesn't give offence to anyone is probably not a good bishop.

It is not difficult to govern. All one has to do is not to offend the noble families.

When you're the lead, as I was in 'Offender,' you don't have to be perfect all the time; you've got time to get it right.

In politics, you must learn to say 'no' without offending people. That is an art that one must master: to satisfy a person even when you have to say 'no' to him.

We have what we call a dictator offense. We dictate to defenses by making them do what we want them to do. And we do it by creating formations.