Though I am always nervous of a sound bite especially in this day and age, I also believe that we should stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before us, in order that we can see further than those before us.
The Executive Coaching Guru persona enables me to coach and work with top tier leadership teams, members of which very often have quotes that mean something powerful to them…I like to capture these leadership quotes; as they are often so powerful. If you have a quotation that you feel can add benefit, please let me know.
- “I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element, it is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous…..” – J.W.Goethe
- “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results” – George S.Patton
- “Most ailing organisations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects. They are not suffering because they cannot resolve their problems, but because they cannot see their problems” – John Gardener
- “You have to stop in order to change direction” – Erich Fromm
- “The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart” – John Welwood
- “With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.” – Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis
- “The individual increasingly comes to know who he is through the stand he takes when he expresses his ideas, values, beliefs and convictions, and through the declaration and ownership of his feelings” – Clark Moustakas
- “Have some group that will tell you the truth and whom you can tell the truth. If you have people like that around you, what else matters” – Warren Bennis
- “Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs” – Vaclav Havel
- “All that is neccessary for the triumph of evil, is that good people do nothing” – Edmund Burke
- “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet” – Father Theodore Hesburgh
- “Leadership is a journey, not a destination. It is a marathon not a sprint. It is a process, not an outcome” – John Donahoe
- “To see what is right and not do it, is the want of courage” – Confucius
- “Bad habits are eliminated not by others, but by ourselves” – Vince Lombardi
- “Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent” – Stephen Covey
- “Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is a success!” – Henry Ford
- Alice: “Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?”
Puss: ”That depends a great deal on where you want to go?”
Alice: “I don’t much care where!”
Puss: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go” – Lewis Carol - “Vision without execution is hallucination” – Thomas Edison
- “When you become a leader, your challenge is to inspire others, develop them and create change through them. You’ve got to flip that switch and understand that it’s about serving the folks on your team” – Jaime Irick (Western Zone Director of Sales for GE Homeland Protection)
- “Most of us have jobs that are to small for our spirits” – Studs Terkel
- “Performance is your reality. Forget everything else. It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality” – Harold Geneen
- “Leaders with principles are less likelty to get bullied or pushed around because they can draw clear lines in the sand” – Narayana Murthy
- “There is no truly great performance, without a little fanatism” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Over seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureacratic thinking. People who are serious committed to personal mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up” – Michael Gelb
- “Only those who risk going too far, can possibly find out how far they can go” – TS Eliot
- “To every person there comes in their lifetime that special moment when they are figurativey tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tradegy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for the work which could be their finest hour” – Winston Churchill
- “Know Thyself” – Inscribed on the temple wall at Delphi. Circa 6BC
- “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished” - Benjamin Franklin
- “All people dream, but unequally. Those that dream at night in the dusty recesses of their minds, awake to find that their dreams are vanity. Dreamers of the day are dangerous people; they act out their dreams to make reality” – TE Lawrence
- “You do not lead people by hitting them over the head – that’s assault, not leadership” – Dwight Eisenhower
- “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt
