Top 100 Organization Leadership Quotes
#1. Leadership is creating an environment in which people want to be part of the organization and not just work for the organization. Leadership creates an environment that makes people want to, rather than have to, do.
Horst Schulze
#2. The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.
John C. Maxwell
#3. To 'turn around' is to end up facing the same way. Maybe that is the problem, all the turning organizations around.
Henry Mintzberg
#4. The smart strategist allows strategy to be shaped by events. Good reactions can make great strategy. Strategy involves competition of goals, and the risk is the difference between those goals and the ability of the organization to achieve them. So part of the risk is created by the strategy.
Max McKeown
#5. The British leadership has acknowledged that it only became possible to end the violence in North Ireland when it stopped thinking of the [Irish Republican Army] as "a terrorist organization" and began treating it as a political actor with genuine grievances that deserved to be addressed.
Richard A. Falk
#6. The more excited and committed you are to your work, the more excited and committed will be the people around you. The leader always sets the tone for the department or organization.
Brian Tracy
#7. Very often, we think of leadership being at the very top of an organisation. I think what's unique about ABG is that we have a very strong cadre of leaders across the organisation who are highly empowered and therefore play a very major role in the growth and evolution of the organization.
Kumar Mangalam Birla
#8. The church wasn't an organization in the first century. They weren't writing checks or buying property. The church has matured and developed over the years. But for some reason, the last thing to change is the structure of leadership.
Andy Stanley
#9. Good general differ from bad generals only in the degree to which they resist the psychopathology of the very organization they serve. Norman Dixon
Patrick Hennessey
#11. High performance leaders capitalize on crises to galvanize the motivation and actions of people in the organization.
Andy Hargreaves
#12. People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
Peter F. Drucker
#13. ISIS has leadership, just like al Qaeda has leadership. It's important to be able to eliminate the individuals that are leading the organization.
James Lankford
#14. A leader's job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be
Jack Welch
#16. As the demands of the positions differed, and as I grew in age and experience, I found that I had changed as a leader. I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to achieve that?
Stanley McChrystal
#17. However, leadership is not confined to the CEO. Leadership is better understood as a process that can take place at any level of an organization.16
Jody Hoffer Gittell
#18. Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.
Peter Drucker
#19. In leadership, there are no words more important than trust. In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved
Mike Krzyzewski
#20. Al Qaeda is not the organization now that it was before. It is under stress organizationally. Its leadership spends more time trying to figure out how to keep from getting caught than they do trying to launch operations.
Cofer Black
#21. It is the sensitive people in any organization that become aware of the need to discover the acceptable "middle" ground between "profit only" and "people only" and act accordingly.
Herman L Glaess
#22. Hell yeah! Twitter was proof that leaderless self-organizing systems could be true agents of change.
Biz Stone
#23. The importance of momentum in your organization cannot be understated!
Miles Anthony Smith
#24. Reliance is the ultimate measure of a team's or organization's culture. It's not 'Would I recommend a friend to work here?' It's 'Would this group of people put their ass on the line for me?' And 'Would I do the same for them?
Bill Jensen
#25. In Leading with Honor, Lee uses gripping stories from the POW camps to engage the reader and teach invaluable principles of leadership. I highly recommend this book for developing leaders at all levels in any organization, military of civilian.
William R. Looney III
#26. When you feel good about the value you offer the organization, communicating and demonstrating your value to others is much easier.
Bonnie Marcus
#27. Certainly a leader needs a clear vision of the organization and where it is going, but a vision is of little value unless it is shared in a way so as to generate enthusiasm and commitment. Leadership and communication are inseparable.
Claude Taylor
#28. Your organization needs you to be the lead, not the lid. If you're not growing as a leader, you've become the lid
Saji Ijiyemi
#29. Despite their inglorious end, the legions remain to this day, thousands of years after their creation, the most pre-eminent example of how detailed organization, tight discipline, and inspiring leadership can take a group of individuals and turn them into a winning team.
Stephen Dando-Collins
#30. Nobody thought the direct business model would work. But work it did, and spectacularly. Until it didn't. And therein lies the tale.
Heather Simmons
#31. When you accepted your job, you were not chosen solely to fill a position on the organization chart; you were chosen to fill a responsibility.
David Cottrell
#33. The most valuable "currency" of any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. Every leader has the solemn moral responsibility to develop these to the maximum in all his people. This is the leader's highest priority.
W. Edwards Deming
#34. The fastest surging woman leadership position is heading non-profit organizations. Women are not rejecting leadership positions
they're rejecting politics.
Celinda Lake
#35. A good organization can be destroyed by poor leadership".
Peter Smith
#36. Management is the process of assuring that the program and objectives of the organization are implemented. Leadership on the other hand has to do with casting vision and motivating people.
John C. Maxwell
#37. Key to the societal significance of tomorrow's leaders is the way they embrace the totality of leadership, not just including 'my organization' but reaching beyond the walls as well.
Frances Hesselbein
#38. Today's president, CEO or managing director needs to be a disruptive influence with imagination, vision, and courage to lead the organization into new and dangerous territory. The leader must be an entrepreneurial driver who can inspire the team to boldly venture into uncharted lands.
Paul Sloane
#39. The essence of leadership is building bonds of trust in your organization.
Colin Powell
#40. Leadership is all about people. It is not about organizations. It is not about plans. It is not about strategies. It is all about people-motivating people to get the job done. You have to be people-centered.
Colin Powell
#41. I emphasize self-esteem, self-confidence, and dignity, not as an ideal, but as a real test of community organization. Without leadership development, community organizations do not have staying power.
Paul Wellstone
#42. A risk-taking environment starts at the top of a corporation. If the CEO doesn't have this spirit, chances are you won't find it anywhere else in the organization.
Mary Kay Ash
#43. Over time, is it easier or harder to sustain your influence within your organization? With charisma alone, influence becomes increasingly more difficult to sustain. With character, as time passes, influence builds and requires less work to sustain.
John C. Maxwell
#44. Co-leadership should permeate every organization at every level.
David A. Heenan
#45. One of the greatest responsibilities of an organization's leadership is to communicate with unwavering clarity the values on which the organization has been built.
Vern Dosch
#46. If becoming a high performing organization is the destination, leadership is the engine.
Ken Blanchard
#47. The organization of supplies, the command of men, anything in any way constructive requires more than intellect; it requires energy and drive and an unrelenting will to serve the cause, regardless of one's personal interests.
Erwin Rommel
#48. Leaders are creatures of their environment, but unlike most creatures, they are also movers of it. As movers of and within the organization, they push it forward, at the same time shaping it as much as it shapes them.
John Baldoni
#49. Leadership happens at every level of the organization and no one can shirk from this responsibility.
Jerry Junkins
#50. I believe one of the requirements of good leadership is the ability to listen - really listen - to those in your organization. An effective leader is very good at listening, and it's difficult to listen when you are talking.
John Wooden
#51. Too many talk about a company's leadership, referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that: senior executives. Leadership doesn't automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.
Travis Bradberry
#52. The first step in turning around your organization's performance? Think positively about the people you lead.
Cheryl A. Bachelder
#53. A $10,000 investment in Dell at its 1988 initial public offering would have yielded a fortune of ~$6 million at the stock's peak.
Heather Simmons
#54. We can never fall short when it comes to recruiting, hiring, maintaining and growing our workforce. It is the employees who make our organization's success a reality.
Vern Dosch
#55. Success comes to people with leadership skills, a sound vision, enthusiasm, and the willingness to put forth the effort to build an organization and find others who will do the same.
Mark Yarnell
#56. As the leadership team, we're taking bold and decisive action to evolve our organization and culture. This includes difficult steps, but they are necessary to position Microsoft for future growth and industry leadership.
Amy Hood
#57. [That] speaks to one of the most important roles of a leader; to boil down an organization's many priorities into a simple plan, so that employees can remember it, internalize it, and act on it.
Adam Bryant
#58. The concert we give is winning. And if all the people in our organization whose instrument is scouting of player development or major league scouting or player knowledge, all play well, we're going to have the most beautiful symphony of success. And I think we have.
John Schuerholz
#59. I think leadership is never singular. In a good organization, it's plural.
Mike Krzyzewski
#60. The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place.
Dee Hock
#61. Life is a series of choices and all we can do is make them.
Kamal Ravikant
#62. Old school mission statements defined what an organization did. Contemporary mission statements define why an organization does what it does.
Del Suggs
#63. Any time you can degrade or take away the top leadership of an organization, it's a positive step forward.
Marco Rubio
#65. In order to sustain the integrity of the organization, a business must dedicate time and resources to education, leadership development, and personnel development. Don't focus on the product. Focus on the team.
Robert Kiyosaki
#66. In a volunteer organization there has to be time for community.
Andy Stanley
#67. Whether you have a leadership title or not, you have the potential to either lead your organization beyond all expectations or inhibit its growth through entropy.
Simon T. Bailey
#68. To be an objective leader means aligning your models with the needs of the organization. There is no question anymore that collaboration, seeking out diverse perspectives and developing new ways to look at challenges and opportunities, is a key leadership competency.
Elizabeth Thornton
#69. True leadership is moral authority, not formal authority. Leadership is a choice, not a position. The choice is to follow universal timeless principles, which will build trust and respect from the entire organization. Those with formal authority alone will lose this trust and respect.
Stephen Covey
#70. Develop your leaders into a competitive advantage. Reconnect your leader-power to success.
Gene Morton
#71. The very first task of leadership is to set the vision for the organization. If you don't set the vision, you're not the leader.
Rick Warren
#72. A level 4 leader's greatest asset is his ability to engage, empower, and equip his people; this is what creates the momentum for a significant change in the organization. He invests 80% in his people and 20% in the process.
Farshad Asl
#73. Without organization and leadership toward a realistic goal, there is no chance of realizing more than a small percentage of your potential.
John Wooden
#74. What is the cost of replacing and bringing up to speed one of your managers, supervisors, or front-line employees who left because they were frustrated with your organization's leadership?
Liz Weber
#75. Showing leadership doesn't mean every employee will run the organization; that would lead to chaos. Businesses do need someone to set the vision and then lead the team to it.
Robin S. Sharma
#76. A knowledgeable manager can lend to the success of an organization "almost" as much as a poorly trained manager can damage it.
Mark W. Boyer
#77. There is an interplay between great leadership, events, trends, the organization, the people in it, the market 'out there' that goes far beyond one person exercising their will over others.
That's not what leadership is any more.
Phil Dourado
#78. Ethics must begin at the top of an organization. It is a leadership issue and the chief executive must set the example.
Edward F. Hennessey
#79. No organization should be allowed near disaster unless they are willing to cooperate with some level of established leadership.
Irwin Redlener
#80. If you don't have an emotionally healthy staff you won't move forward as an organization.
Jeff Henderson
#81. The leader is the organization's top strategist ... systematically envisioning the future and specifically mapping out how to get there.
Bill Hybels
#82. Recognize that being one of the only black people in an organization, or just in a meeting, automatically makes you very visible. Use this to help yourself. Look at it as an opportunity, and leverage that opportunity by making a visible contribution.
Kenneth I. Chenault
#83. Irrelevance happens when the speed of change outside an organization is greater than speed of change inside an organization.
Rick Warren
#84. If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. Part of leadership (a big part of it, actually) is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time. Long enough that the critics realize that you're going to get there one way or another ... so they follow.
Seth Godin
#85. Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.
Peter Drucker
#86. Women need to be in key operational roles where they run businesses in the organization. Sometimes when organizations focus on leadership diversity, they're mostly in areas like HR or non-operating line functions.
Gracia Martore
#87. If the people in an organization think the company is small, they will act that way. If they think the company is big, they will act that way.
David J. Greer
#88. Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.
James C. Collins
#89. Great leaders create great cultures regardless of the dominant culture in the organization.
Bob Anderson
#90. Work without joy is drudgery. Drudgery does not produce champions, nor does it produce great organizations.
John Wooden
#91. Organizational culture is just like the "Operation System" of the organization, you need reboot periodically to keep it running smoothly.
Pearl Zhu
#92. If you want to lead a family/team/organization, learn to lead/manage yourself first.
Bradford Winters
#93. A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization.
Patrick Lencioni
#94. Those who disrupt their industries change consumer behavior, alter economics, and transform lives.
Heather Simmons
#95. Having a person of Dr. Berthiaume's calibre leading Library and Archives Canada will be a solid asset to the organization. His extensive experience in the management of large cultural organizations and his strong leadership are important qualifications for this position.
Shelly Glover
#96. Like creating a masterpiece, quitting is an art: you have to decide what to keep within the frame and what to keep out.
Richie Norton
#97. The wisdom and goal of innovative CIOs are to help the organization think clearly about the two horizons of future, the short-term gain, and the long term win.
Pearl Zhu
#98. People who are role models for the principles and values of the organization, who buy in and understand the vision of what the organization is trying to accomplish, and have the personality to inspire other people to the vision. You know, that's what team chemistry and leadership is all about.
Nick Saban
#99. The thing we've learned from the last 20 years of counterterrorism is the significant value you get from removing leadership from the battlefield in degrading the organization.
Michael Morell
#100. Building a cohesive leadership team is the first critical step that an organization must take if it is to have the best chance at success.
Patrick Lencioni
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