There’s no magic formula to becoming a great leader, but words of wisdom from those who have achieved greatness will help. Learn from their mistakes and triumphs. At Brief, we talk a lot about tasks and communication. Being a great leader requires you to be great both at doing things and showing other people how to do them as well. So, here’s a list of 95 amazing quotes that will make you a better leader.
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish. —Sam Walton Click To Tweet
You don’t lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership. —Dwight Eisenhower Click To Tweet
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. —Colin Powell Click To Tweet
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. —Publilius Syrus Click To Tweet
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. —Steve Jobs Click To Tweet
Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day. —Jesse Jackson Click To Tweet
What you do has far greater impact than what you say. —Stephen Covey Click To Tweet
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. —Stephen Covey Click To Tweet
You don’t need a title to be a leader. —Multiple Attributions Click To Tweet
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… Click To Tweet
Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths. —John Zenger Click To Tweet
Earn your leadership every day. —Michael Jordan Click To Tweet
There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity and courage. —Fuchan Yuan Click To Tweet
A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position. —John Maxwell Click To Tweet
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. —Max DePree Click To Tweet
Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow. —Chinese Proverb Click To Tweet
I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody. —Herbert Swope Click To Tweet
Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership. —Donald Rumsfeld Click To Tweet
To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less. Click To Tweet
Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems. —Brian Tracy Click To Tweet
Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. —Peter Drucker Click To Tweet
I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. —Ralph Nader Click To Tweet
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. —Norman Schwarzkopf Click To Tweet
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. —Ralph Waldo Emerson Click To Tweet
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. —John Maxwell Click To Tweet
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. —General Dwight Eisenhower Click To Tweet
Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position. —Brian Tracy Click To Tweet
The supreme quality of leadership is integrity. —Dwight Eisenhower Click To Tweet
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. —Andrew Carnegie Click To Tweet
I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be. —Warren Bennis Click To Tweet
To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult. —Friedrich Nietzsche Click To Tweet
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities. —Maya Angelou Click To Tweet
Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you’ll be criticized anyway. —Eleanor Roosevelt Click To Tweet
Education is the mother of leadership. —Wendell Willkie Click To Tweet
Never give an order that can't be obeyed. —General Douglas MacArthur Click To Tweet
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing. —Benjamin Franklin Click To Tweet
The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. —Harvey Firestone Click To Tweet
He who has learned how to obey will know how to command. —Solon Click To Tweet
It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. —Latin Proverb Click To Tweet
Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be led. —Ross Perot Click To Tweet
The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes. —Tony Blair Click To Tweet
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. —Bill Gates Click To Tweet
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. —John Quincy Adams Click To Tweet
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. —Eleanor Roosevelt Click To Tweet
The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. — John Maxwell Click To Tweet
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet. — Theodore M. Hesburgh Click To Tweet
We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity. —Marco Rubio Click To Tweet
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. —Kenneth Blanchard Click To Tweet
Where there is no vision, the people perish. —Proverbs 29:18 Click To Tweet
People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. —John Maxwell Click To Tweet
A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Click To Tweet
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand. —General Colin Powell Click To Tweet
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. —General George Patton Click To Tweet
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. —John F. Kennedy Click To Tweet
Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. —Woodrow Wilson Click To Tweet
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. —Theodore Roosevelt Click To Tweet
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be. —Rosalynn Carter Click To Tweet
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. —Thomas Jefferson Click To Tweet
He who has great power should use it lightly. —Seneca Click To Tweet
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. —Warren Bennis Click To Tweet
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on. —Walter Lippman Click To Tweet
Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them. —John C. Maxwell Click To Tweet
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. —Peter Drucker Click To Tweet
A leader is a dealer in hope. —Napoleon Bonaparte Click To Tweet
A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit. —John Maxwell Click To Tweet
Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. —Vince Lombardi Click To Tweet
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. — John Quincy Adams Click To Tweet
It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership. —Nelson Mandela Click To Tweet
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. —Aristotle Click To Tweet
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly. —Jim Rohn Click To Tweet
My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. —General Montgomery Click To Tweet
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet. —Reverend Theodore Hesburgh Click To Tweet
One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. —Arnold Glasow Click To Tweet
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. —John F. Kennedy Click To Tweet
A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops. —John J Pershing Click To Tweet
Leadership is the key to 99 percent of all successful efforts. —Erskine Bowles Click To Tweet
You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. —Ken Kesey Click To Tweet
True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well. —Bill Owens Click To Tweet
A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the… Click To Tweet
Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better. —Bill Bradley Click To Tweet
The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision. —Ken Blanchard Click To Tweet
To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way. —Pat Riley Click To Tweet
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 Click To Tweet
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. —Jack Welch Click To Tweet
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. —Stephen Covey Click To Tweet
Whatever you are, be a good one. —Abraham Lincoln Click To Tweet
A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward. —Ovid Click To Tweet
The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. —Eric Hoffer Click To Tweet
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing. —Tom Peters Click To Tweet
Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. —Harry S. Truman Click To Tweet
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. —Warren Bennis Click To Tweet
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.—Max Lucado Click To Tweet
A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. —Jim Rohn Click To Tweet
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. —Abraham Lincoln Click To Tweet
We hope you find these quotes as inspiring as we do. What is your favourite quote and why? Comment below and share your thoughts!
