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Knowledgebase:QuotationsArticles | Research | Interviews | Speeches | Journals | Multimedia | Quotations | Websites To achieve greatness, start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. Conductors of great symphony orchestras do not play every musical instrument; yet through leadership the ultimate production is an expressive and unified combination of tones. The ability to make people feel strong is the single most important contribution of leaders. When an organization has a clear sense of its purpose, direction and desired future state, and when this image is widely shared, individuals are able to find their own roles both in the organization and in the large society of which they are a part. I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Partnership does not mean you always get what you want. It means you may lose your argument, but you never lose your voice. Leadership is not wielding authority, its empowering people. I know my players better than they know themselves. How else could I get the best out of them? A leadership approach tends often unconsciously to be elitist. I describe leadership as no mere game among elitists, but as a structure of action that engages persons, to varying degrees. Only the inert, the alienated, and the powerless are unengaged. The processes of leadership must be seen as part of the dynamics of conflict and power. Leadership is a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders. And when we think we lead, we are most led. Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others. The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears down to the ground. Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, Put First Things First, Think Win/Win, Seek First to Understand.Then to Be Understood, Synergize, and Sharpen the Saw. A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. Diversity allows each of us to contribute in a special way to make our special gifts a part of the effort. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. Jazz-band leaders must choose the music, find the right musicians, and perform-in public. But the effect of the performance depends on so many things-the environment, the volunteers playing in the band, the need for everybody to perform as individuals and as a group, the absolute dependence of the leader on the members of the band, the need of the leader for the followers to play well. What a summary of an organization. Leadership means that a group, large or small, is willing to entrust authority to a person who has shown judgment, wisdom, personal appeal, and proven competence. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. Leadership [is] the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. In the small matters trust the mind, in the large one's the heart. Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. We must become the change we want to see. A leader is useless when he acts against the promptings of his own conscience. What we need, and what seems to be emerging in some of our communities, is something new-networks of responsibility drawn from all segments coming together to create a wholeness that incorporates diversity. The participants must come to be at home with change and exhibit a measure of shared values, a sense of mutual obligation and trust. Above all, they must develop a sense of responsibility for the future of the whole city and region. Most of those seeking to develop young potential leaders have in mind one ideal model that is inevitably constricting. We should give young people a sense of the many kinds of leaders and styles of leadership, and encourage them to move toward those models that are right for them. Clearly, those who hope to lead had better understand both rationally and intuitively the people who might be their followers, and the society in which they are all embedded. They had better comprehend the values of our common culture, past and present, know how our political and economic systems work, and know how and why science has changed our world. Leadership is the process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers. Most of what leaders have that enable them to lead is learned. Leadership is not a mysterious activity. It is possible to describe the tasks that leaders perform. And the capacity to perform those tasks is widely distributed in the population. My grandfather once told me there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group because there was less competition there. The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community-these are the most vital things education must try to produce. If we can achieve them in the citizens of our land, then, given the right to knowledge and the free use thereof, we shall have brought to America the wisdom and the courage to match her destiny. The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The best test is do those served grow as persons: do they while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society, will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived? The true leader serves. Serves people. Serves their best interests, and in so doing will not always be popular, may not always impress. But because true leaders are motivated by loving concern rather than a desire for personal glory, they are willing to pay the price. When one teaches, two learn. Education has now become the chief problem of the world, its one holy cause. The nations that see this will survive, and those that fail to do so will slowly perish.There must be re-education of the will and of the heart as well as of the intellect, and the ideals of service must supplant those of selfishness and greed. The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind. Leadership is no longer the province of the few, the privileged, or even the ambitious. Don't agonize, organize. It is time for a new generation of leadership to cope with new problems and opportunities. For there is a new world to be won. Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. The ultimate measure of a human is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Life's most persistent and urgent question, what are we doing for each other. The time is always right to do what is right. Leadership is a relational process of people together attempting to accomplish change or make a difference to benefit the common good. Leadership, the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations. The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and to share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought to other people's lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them. The true leader must submerge himself in the fountain of the people. I do the best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten thousand angels swearing I was right would make no difference. The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in others the conviction and the will to carry on. A leader will never lack for legitimate excuses to explain away his breaches of faith. Modern history will furnish innumerable examples of this behavior, showing how the man succeeded best who knew best how to play the fox. But it is a necessary part of this nature that you must conceal it carefully; you must be a great liar and a hypocrite. Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived. Competence goes beyond words. It's the leaders ability to say it, plan it, and do it in such a way that others know that you know how-and know that they want to follow you. People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care. Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them. Leadership is action, not position. What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things. The real leader has no need to lead; he is content to point the way. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. You can learn more about a person through an hour of games than you can through conversing with him for a year. You take people as far as they go, not as far as you would like them to go. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Leadership is a superb opportunity for reapplying, applying in new conditions, the simple rules of human conduct to which we always go back. Without leadership alert and sensitive to change, we are all bogged up or lose our way. The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right hand down to them amplified and developed. Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and collaborators who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes. In a society safe and worthy to be free, teaching which produces a willingness to lead, as well as a willingness to follow, must be given to all. The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created-created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination. Success is a journey, not a destination. Reason and judgment are all the qualities of a leader. If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing. We have made at least a start in discovering the meaning of human life when we plant shade trees under which we know full well we will never sit. When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally. As far as 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.' If you want to make enemies, try to change something. Everybody does have a leader inside. |
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