Leadership - Quotes

Effective leadership is not about controlling from the top; it is about unleashing the power of people. - Gordon R. Sullivan & Michael V. Harper

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. - Peter Drucker

Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention. - Deepak Chopra

Example is leadership. - Albert Schweitzer

First rule of leadership: everything is your fault. - Unknown 

Good leadership is largely invisible. When everything runs smoothly, no one notices. - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Good leadership is not obtained by issuing orders but by conviction and delegation – genuine leaders recognize and achieve agreement to an exciting and challenging vision. - Gerhard Zapke-Schauer

If becoming a high performing organization is the destination, leadership is the engine. - Ken Blanchard

If leadership is the act of going beyond what is ... it begins by going beyond what is within ourselves. - Kevin Cashman

If the experience of leadership is like being at the edge of an unfamiliar chasm, the act of leadership is building a bridge across that chasm. - Kevin Cashman

Leadership and learning are indispensable to one another. - John F Kennedy

Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. - Woodrow Wilson

Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table. - Hubert H. Humphrey

Leadership is a two-way street, loyalty up and loyalty down. - Grace Murray Hopper

Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation. - Tom Peters

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts your absence. - Unknown

Leadership is action, not position. - Donald H. McGannon

Leadership is defined not by the position you hold but by the people who follow you. - Charlene Li

Leadership is defined not by the scale of the opportunity but by the quality of the response. - Chris Lowney

Leadership is evoking in others the capacity to dream. -John C. Maxwell

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do in order to achieve what they want to achieve. - Tom Landry 

Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. - Peter F. Drucker

Leadership is most effective when those acting in that capacity realize that their effect on others must be indirect. This indirectness means influencing others by changing yourself. - Greg Robinson

Leadership is much less about what you do, and much more about who you are. If you view leadership as a bag of manipulative tricks or charismatic behaviours to advance your own personal interests, then people have every right to be cynical. But if your leadership flows first and foremost from inner character and integrity of ambition, then you can justly ask people to lend themselves to your organization and its mission. - Jim Collins

Leadership is not a job, not a role one plays at work and then puts aside during the commute home in order to relax and enjoy real life. Rather, leadership is the leader's real life. - Chris Lowney

Leadership is not about titles, position, or flow charts. it is about one life influencing another. - John Maxwell

Leadership is not about your ambition. It is about bringing out the ambitions of your team. - Cheryl A. Bachelder

Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities; and while no one individual possesses all the needed talents to go into leadership, each man can develop a combination to make him a leader. - Vince Lombardi

Leadership is not just the province of people at the top. Leadership can occur at all levels and by any individual. In fact, we see that it is important for leaders to develop leadership in those below them. - Bernard M. Bass & Ronald E. Riggio

Leadership is not magnetic personality - that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people" - that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. - Peter F. Drucker

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. - Karl Popper

Leadership is not something you do to people, but something you do with people. - Ken Blanchard

Leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. When the leader in everyone is liberated extraordinary things happen. - James M. Kouzes & Barry Posner

Leadership is seeing the possibilities in a situation while others are seeing the limitations. - John C. Maxwell

Leadership is taking responsibility while others are making excuses. - John C. Maxwell

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible. - Colin Powell

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. - Dwight D Eisenhower

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. - Warren G. Bennis

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average. - Jim Rohn

Leadership is the expectation that you can use your voice for good. That you can make the world a better place. - Sheryl Sandberg

Leadership is the outward expression of our inner character. - Dick Abel

Leadership is the power of one harnessing the power of many. - John C. Maxwell

Leadership is the readiness to stand out in a crowd. - John C. Maxwell

Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen. - Alan Keith

Leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure. - Arleigh Burke

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skilful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. - Harry Truman

My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. - General Montgomery

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings. - Peter Drucker

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

Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who ... have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well. - J. K. Rowling

Real leadership is not seeking the applause from followers; real leadership is applauding the followers who become leaders. - Onyi Anyado

That's what leadership is all about, identifying quality people, giving them the opportunity and experience to create and develop to continue to make the company successful. The best leaders identify and mentor potential leaders. A leader's most important legacy is the leaders he or she develops. - Kenneth E. Strong & John A. Dicicco

The challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humour, but without folly. - Jime Rohn

The first act of leadership is coming to grips with yourself, who you are, where you are, and what is of value to you, and shaping yourself by acts of conscious will into what you want to become. - Fenwick W. English

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

The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. - Harvey S. Firestone

The only real training for leadership is leadership. - Unknown

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow. - Seth Godin

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already. - John Buchan

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. - Theodore Hesburgh

True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can't be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing a title can buy is a little time – either to increase your level of influence with others or to erase it. - John C. Maxwell

True leadership strengthens the followers. It is a process of teaching, setting an example, and empowering others. If you seek to lead, your ability will ultimately be measured in the successes of those around you. - David Niven

Without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often filled with mistrust and arrogance. -  Eric Shinseki

You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership. - Dwight Eisenhower