Leadership Quotes
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” - Peter Drucker
Another great quote from Peter Drucker. There’s always a debate about the definitions of Leadership and Management are and which is better. Peter Drucker concisely points out what each is and that they are both important.
“My job is not to be easy on people, my job is to make them better” – Steve Jobs
This must not be read as meaning you have to be a tough boss but rather a reminder of what your focus is. Your focus as a leader is to get everyone in your team to achieve their full potential. Sometimes this requires firmness and other times, empathy.
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch
“A leader's job is not to do the work for others, it's to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.” - Simon Sinek
Jack Welch and Simon Sinek point this out because the impact of your team can be much higher than the impact of just yourself. It’s better to spend your energy developing them instead of trying to get all the work done yourself. In the long run, it will lead to higher output and Employee Engagement.
“Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.” – Richard Branson
Even in the age of Machine Learning and Business Intelligence, leaders are still highly dependent on feedback from their team in order to make good decisions. Leaders also need to understand the needs of the individuals in their teams. It is critical that leaders master listening skills in order to be effective in their roles.
"One of the best paradoxes of leadership is a leader's need to be both stubborn and open-minded. A leader must insist on sticking to the vision and stay on course to the destination. But he must be open-minded during the process." – Simon Sinek
If you are too open-minded could pull your vision all over the place and cause your team to lose faith in it. If you are too stubborn, you may fail to adapt your vision to changing circumstances and fail altogether. It takes great amounts of wisdom to find the balance.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
This quote from Maya Angelou always reminds me that people are fundamentally emotional creatures with their own needs and desires. You must treat them as such in order to be a truly effective leader.
“Vision without execution is hallucination.” - Arianna Huffington
Too many times I’ve seen an amazing vision or solution to a problem done the injustice of terrible execution. Execution is a skillset on its own and must be taken seriously. Leaders must realise that grand visions require grand execution. If you doubt your execution ability, then go learn a system like OKR and get things done!
Company Culture Quotes
“Our number one priority is company culture. Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand will just happen naturally on its own.” – Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos
Zappos is famous for having amazing customer service and great company culture. Tony Hsieh has captured many of the ideas in his book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. As you can imagine, he’s a huge proponent of the culture first mentality.
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients” – Richard Branson, Virgin Founder
Branson has always been a culture-first guy. He looks after his staff and they look after the Virgin Brand.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” - Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker is a famous management consultant whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation.
“Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion.” – Brian Chesky, Co-Founder, CEO, Airbnb
Brian Chesky points out here that Culture is the shared set of values and beliefs that tie everyone at a company together. If set correctly, it can keep everyone aligned and focused on the mission.
"If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." – Steve Jobs
In this context, we read this as pointing to Top Cultures taking time (and lots of work!) to form. They didn’t happen by accident.
“If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.” – Tony Robbins
A nice reminder from Tony Robbins that in order to see a change you must make a change.
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