Quotes Characteristic of Leadership

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

The first step to leadership is servanthood.

Winston Churchill
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.

Rosabeth Moss Kantor
Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
The time is always right to do what is right.

Lao Tzu
To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate. When the best leader's work is done the people say, "We did it ourselves."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf
Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.

Stephen Covey
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Management works in the system; leadership works on the system.

Rosalynn Carter
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.

George Patton
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Mary Pickford
You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.

Mary D. Poole
Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.

Peter Drucker
No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective.

Unknown Author
A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.

Sam Rayburn
You cannot be a leader and ask other people to follow you unless you know how to follow, too.

Admiral James B. Stockdale
Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers. We are tired of leaders we fear, tired of leaders we love, and of tired of leaders who let us take liberties with them. What we need for leaders are men of the heart who are so helpful that they, in effect, do away with the need of their jobs. But leaders like that are never out of a job, never out of followers. Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away.

Harold S. Geneen
Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.

Arnold Glasgow
One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

Theodore Roosevelt
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

Gene Mauch
You can't lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself.

Kenneth Blanchard
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

Ralph Nader
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

George Van Valkenburg
Leadership is doing what is right when no one is watching.

Terence
He makes a great mistake ... who supposes that authority is firmer or better established when it is founded by force than that which is welded by affection.

Warren Bennis
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.

John Steinbeck
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.

Unknown
A good leader inspires others with confidence in him; a great leader inspires them with confidence in themselves.

Colin Powell
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparatory hard work and learning from failure.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.

Jack Welch
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

To see a list of great leadership qualities click here

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