Leadership Quote

Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing.
– Warren Bennis, Ph.D.

If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
- Admiral Grace Hopper

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.
- Andre Maurois

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
- John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. economist “The Age of Uncertainty”

The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.
- Henry Miller

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.
- Lewis H. Lapham

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. . . . The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
- Theodore Roosevelt

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. . . . The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
- Walter Lippmann

The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization.
- Fred Fiedler & Martin Chemers Improving

Leadership Effectiveness
Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.
- Peter Drucker

A friend of mine characterizes leaders simply like this: “Leaders don’t inflict pain. They bear pain.”
- Max DePree

Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them!
- Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless ... someone’s got to make a wake up call.
- Warren Bennis

When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally.
- Lao Tse

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers
- Ralph Nader

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.
- Admiral Arleigh A. Burke

Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.
- Ross Perot

An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
- Stephen R. Covey, Principle-centered Leadership