A Dozen Favourite Leadership Quotes

One thing we can be sure of is that the definition of leadership is very different for individual people. Here are some of my favourite leadership quotes …

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
Kenneth Blanchard

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight Eisenhower

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
George S. Patton

The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.
Elaine Agather

Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women.
Groucho Marx

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
Theodore Roosevelt

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

Be the change that you want to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter F. Drucker

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.
Henry Ward Beecher

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.
John Buchan

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Nelson Mandela, written by Marianne Williamson.

Helen Krag,
Agile Learning & Development Ltd.
Influence for Positive Change

Tags: influence, leadership