Quotes about Leadership





These quotes about leadership are organized in this order:

1) Change Management
2) Clarity
3) Effectiveness
4) Humility
5) Humor
6) Legacy
7) Management
8) Paradoxical
9) Personal Wisdom
10) Universal Truths

Enjoy …

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1) Quotes about leadership - Change Management

The only safe ship in a storm is leadership.
Faye Wattleton

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
Jesse Jackson

Most of the CEO’s who fail think they will find the solution to their problems in Finance, Marketing, Strategic Planning, etc., but they don’t look for the solution to their problems inside themselves.
Patrick Lencioni

The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
Warren Bennis

2) Quotes about leadership - Clarity

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

If the CEO’s behavior is 95 per cent healthy while the rest of the organization is only 50 per cent sound, it is more effective to focus on that crucial and leveraged 5 per cent that makes up the reminder of the CEO’s behavior.
Patrick Lencioni

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
Theodore M. Hesburgh

3) Quotes about leadership - Effectiveness

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
George S. Patton

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

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

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

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.
Theodore Roosevelt

Managers are people who do things right - while leaders are people who do the right thing.
Warren Bennis

4) Quotes about leadership - Humility

When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say, “It happened naturally.”
Lao Tse

Good leaders must first become good servants.
Robert Greenleaf

5) Quotes about leadership - Humor

Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men - the other 999 follow women.
Groucho Marx

Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too.
Robert Half

6) Quotes about leadership - Legacy

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
Walter Lippman

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
Warren Bennis

7) Quotes about leadership - Management

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

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles - but today it means getting along with people.
Gandhi

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management - and politics to mere technique.
James MacGregor Burns

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

8) Quotes about leadership - Paradoxical

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

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

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

9) Quotes about leadership - Personal Wisdom

The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.
Andrew Carnegie

The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.
Elaine Agather

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

Leaders aren't born - they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.
Vince Lombardi

10) Quotes about leadership - Universal Truths

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

Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.
H. Ross Perot

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.
Isaac Newton

All Leadership is influence.
John C. Maxwell

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I hope these quotes are an inspiration, a guide, and a source of positive change in your personal and professional life.

To learn about the skills you need to manage the performance of your direct reports, go to my Management Skills page.

To learn about the skills you need to lead the performance of your entire organization, go to my Leadership Skills page.

To learn about other useful skills, go to my More Skills page.

If you would like your organization to put into practice the meaning of some of these quotes about leadership through my speaking, training or consulting services, please click on this link.

You will find "Leader Newsletter" very practical & useful too.
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