With the passing of Steve Jobs, here are some quotes on leadership we can all reflect on.
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
- Steve Jobs
“The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.”
- Steve Jobs
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
- Steve Jobs
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
- Peter F. Drucker
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say ‘we did it ourselves.’”
- Lao Tzu
“The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.”
- Warren Bennis
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.”
- Max DePree
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
- John Quincy Adams
“The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.”
- Eric Hoffer
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
- Abraham Lincoln
“Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.”
- Ross Perot
“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
“Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.
- Harold S. Geneen
“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”
- John Maxwell
“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.”
-Theodore Hesburgh
“The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.”
- Kenneth Blanchard
“Leaders conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.”
- John Gardner
“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership.”
- Jim Loehr
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”
- General George Patton
“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
- Bill Gates
“Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
– Norman Schwarzkopf
“Ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.”
- Margaret Wheatley
“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”
- Harvey S. Firestone
“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.”
- Arnold Glasow
“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
- Ralph Nader
“You don’t lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”
- Stephen Covey
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
“A leader is a dealer in hope.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte
“To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone.”
- Harry Truman
“Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing.”
- Albert Schweitzer
“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
