Quotes & Sayings About Leadership And Change

Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life. — Charles Dickens

Millennials, instead of a danger, are really a reflection of the society in which they grew up in, and in which all of us now live. — Crystal Kadakia

Strategy has no value if your culture and leadership mindset are wrong — Tony Dovale

Don't just DO something. Stand there! (and get perspective and understanding) — Scott J. Simmerman Ph.D.

Our evolution depends on our memory. If we keep forgetting the mistakes of the past, only to keep repeating them, then we will never change. And if we keep recycling through the exact same kind of leaders - the kind who do not propel us forward, but only hold us back - then perhaps what we really need now is a completely different style of leadership altogether. We need heart-driven leaders, not strictly mind-driven ones. We need compassionate humanitarians, not greedy businessmen. Peacemakers, not war instigators. We need unity, not division. Angels, not devils. — Suzy Kassem

I say that they can be solved; there is no problem that cannot be, but faith is necessary. Think of the faith I had to have eighteen years ago, a single man on a lonely path. Yet I have come to leadership of the German people ... Life is hard for many, but it is hardest if you are unhappy and have no faith. Have faith. Nothing can make me change my own belief. — Adolf Hitler

But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit. — Thomas Frank

Yesterday's decision-making strategies are ill-equipped to deal with petabyte information flows. — Paul Gibbons

Change in leadership brands must be influenced and proactively effected at a personal level, it can never be forced from outside with sustainable effectiveness. Saddam Hussein, Muammar al Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak are all political trophies, yet the effects of the military or "civil" initiatives that toppled them, are nothing to be proud of considering what continues to happen in countries like Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria, after the use of force to bring political change. — Archibald Marwizi

One of the problems in the biotech world is the lack of women in leadership roles, and I'd like to see that change by walking the walk. — Jennifer Doudna

We have good leadership only by chance, not by management.

And we need to change that! — Amit Chatterjee

My hope and prayer for all who read this book is a reformation - that an army of African-American men will make their way back into the church, back into the leadership of the church, back into leading a change in the church to be and do what it is called to be and do, so that we may have power to do good for our people, and people all over the world, in a way that no government or service organization has been or will be able to do, and that no one will be able to take away. — Eric Redmond

Leaders motivate people to understand that they can do better than they've already done and go farther than they've reached. — Israelmore Ayivor

China and India will take the global leadership on climate change: they are suffering for it. — Malcolm Turnbull

Learning how to respond to and master the process of change - and even to excel at it - is a critical leadership skill for the twenty-first century. Constant, rapid change will be a fact of life for all of us. — Jennifer James

Oil policy, policy toward the United States, policy toward Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, very unlikely, I think, to see significant change. These policies were the policies that had a wide family consensus. The question I think would be if the king becomes sick, whether you have weak Saudi leadership in the Arab world and the Middle East rather than strong Saudi leadership, but I think the fundamental policies will continue, the ones we're familiar with under King Abdullah. — Elliott Abrams

Creating change-agile businesses will eliminate the need for what we today call change management. — Paul Gibbons

Master Yourself and you master your environment! Such is the nature of wisdom. — D. Nicole Williams

I'd always heard people say and I'm sure you heard it too, "Change takes time." But, my parents taught me the more important lesson, very silently but with even greater clarity, "Change takes time. But, it also takes people." People who are willing to put in their everything. Change doesn't happen by itself. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business. They know there is nothing a man in Washington can do to plug a hole a mile down in the gulf.
On the other hand, they demand that the president 'take control.' They demand that he hold press conferences, show leadership, announce that the buck stops here and do something. They want him to emote and perform the proper theatrical gestures so they can see their emotions enacted on the public stage.
They want to hold him responsible for things they know he doesn't control. Their reaction is a mixture of disgust, anger, longing and need. It may not make sense. But it doesn't make sense that the country wants spending cuts and doesn't want cuts, wants change and doesn't want change. — David Brooks

Leadership expert Michael Hyatt reflected on Karnazes's life and drew three conclusions about why we should embrace discomfort: 1. Comfort is overrated. It doesn't lead to happiness. It makes us lazy - and forgetful. It often leads to self-absorption, boredom, and discontent. 2. Discomfort can be a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt. 3. Discomfort is often a sign we're making progress. You've heard the expression, "no pain, no gain." It's true! When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort.2 — Samuel Chand

When a leader is at their limit the last thing they want to hear is that they need to change even more. Maintaining good rhythms of rest, exercise and fun create more energy for a leader to be willing and open for change. — Gary Rohrmayer

21st century leaders will be growers, not knowers. — Paul Gibbons

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

Behaviorism was a busted flush, but neo-behaviorist theories, especially choice architecture, achieve behavioral change without coercion or the downsides of carrots and sticks. — Paul Gibbons

I think in any situation, so much of effective leadership is when it comes from your own personality. And I feel very fortunate to be comfortable in the Colts locker room, where people can be who they are, and they don't have to change it when they show up to work that day. — Andrew Luck

If cynicism and criticism is the way to worry about the country..
The country better start worrying about itself & it's social police...
Change is about Vision & Mission and not about social NEGATIVITY.. — Abha Maryada Banerjee

We know we must address climate change. We may not have sorted out every detail, but we are willing to take a leadership position and embrace open dialogue ... that will get us all to our common goals of protecting our world for future generations, — Alain J. P. Belda

What business needs now is exactly what women are able to provide, and at the very time when women are surging into the work force. But perhaps even more important than work force numbers is the fact that women
who began this sweeping entry in the mid-seventies
are just now beginning to assume positions of leadership, which give them the scope to create and reinforce the trends toward change. The confluence is fortunate, an alignment that gives women unique opportunities to assist in the continuing transformation of the workplace ... — Sally Helgesen

Belief has the power to change your inner state and your outer world. — John Paul Warren

The great task of statesmanship is to apply past lessons to new situations, to draw correct analogies to understand and act upon present forces, to recognise the need for change ... — Malcolm Fraser

The need for security and power riding on energies that should be making life better and easier for the masses remains a great error in leadership focus. Why should the discovery of uranium's potential become a curse instead of a blessing? I am sure any type of power (nuclear and leadership included) in the wrong hands has the unfortunate potential to become a curse. A lot more is involved, including greed that causes the wealthy to sponsor violence and chaos. All, in order to profit from conflict, yet disregarding the harm caused to the vulnerable majority. — Archibald Marwizi

In truth, there will never be enough power in the presidency for an incumbent to make good on a purely constructive leadership project, and it is unlikely that there will ever be another president stretched so thinly by a determination to use great power to do just that. Lyndon Johnson was a full-service president who had at his disposal an alignment of political resources, economic resources, international resources, and military resources unmatched in the annals of presidential history. The problem is that in a full-service presidency, where no interest of political significance is denied a modicum of legitimacy, resources turn fickle; the exercise of power consumes authority. Committed to a wholly affirmative result, Johnson could not rest content to let anyone carry the brunt of change. — Stephen Skowronek

Creativity cannot be really regulated, but it can be encouraged. The redevelopment or revitalization of a city is an art. It depends on the individual strengths of a place and the will of the leadership to bring about change. The goal is to establish a cultural infrastructure. — Charles Landry

If you see a poor man come into your majlis, try to speak to him before you speak to the other people," the king told his son. "Never make a decision on the spot. Say you will give your decision later. Never sign a paper sending someone to prison unless you are 100 percent convinced. And once you've signed, don't change your mind. Be solid. You will find that people try to test you." Fahd was delivering his basic course in local leadership - Saudi Governance 101.
"If you don't know anything about a subject, be quiet until you do. Recruit some older people who can give you advice. And if a citizen comes with a case against the government, take the citizen's side to start with and give the officials a hard time the government will have no shortage of people to speak for them. — Robert Lacey

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

Don't let Deepak Chopra manage your change program. — Paul Gibbons

Times are changing, and we must change with them. The twenty-first-century church does and will continually face radical change and much uncertainity with undefined problems that require organizatonal models and leadership qualities and competencies far different from those that were successful in the twentieth century. — Steve Raimo

Just stamping out anti-science and bad science will eliminate an enormous amount of business waste — Paul Gibbons

21st Century Managers must change their thinking because they are now in the business of managing Mindsets & thinking, which impacts actions and behaviors. — Tony Dovale

That which a team does not want to discuss, it most needs to discuss. — Paul Gibbons

In any organization of which I have played a leadership role, our trump card has never been great numbers but the way we worked with neighborhood people in conjunction with professionals in suits and ties. I want the Obama generation to try to understand this concept, and use it as a real yardstick for their ability to make change. My life personifies the straddling of two cultures: the world of Amherst and Yale and the world of Newark, New Jersey. As you will see, it is the power of the streets combined with the power of the suites that is the most effective mix for making things happen. Anybody who comes to you and says "we want change," without addressing the intersection of these two powerful forces in combination, is just whistling status quo. — Junius Williams

Humanity can not afford to have 21st Century businesses run on 20th Century science, and (worse) pseudoscience. — Paul Gibbons

Every time I set my face to seeking God in a fresh way, God begins to change my heart, my mind, my preaching, and my leadership skills. When any believer commits his or her heart to seeking the Lord, everything is going to change. — Daniel Henderson

It is time to euthanize change management. — Paul Gibbons

For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people. — Paul Kriwaczek

Dr. King's leadership reaffirmed the promise of our democracy: that everyday people, working together, have the power to change our government and our institutions for the better. — Maria Cantwell

It's important to remember that peace, liberty and freedom changes many aspects in our thoughts as far as life is concerned. — Auliq Ice

A prophet is one who sees what is happening and being done in the present that they can tell us what will happen to us if we do not change now, immediately, turning from our present course. — Megan McKenna

Only experience can refine a leader's art. High-uncertainty projects are full of anxiety, change, and ambiguity that the team must deal with. It takes a different style of project management, a different pattern of team operation, and a different type of project leader. I've labeled this type of management leadership-collaboration. — Jim Highsmith

You need strong leadership to effectuate change, and the easiest way is to keep everything status quo. And sometimes changes are necessary. If not, you build up too much potential energy. — Ronnie Chan

Due to climate change and growing world population, the demand for vital requirements for human survival will continue to rise. If the world is not producing as much food as demanded, the prices will continue to rise affecting the poor and lower classes more, in every society. It is sad, looking at the shocking statistics of people who die every day as well as the spread of preventable diseases in developing nations, just because people do not have access to clean drinking water. So are we proud of our leadership contribution? Are we doing enough to increase food production, harvest rain water and replenish underground water reserves? — Archibald Marwizi

Do you want to sell sugar water all your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world? — Steve Jobs

Leadership deals with people and their dynamics, which are continually changing. The challenge of leadership is to create change and facilitate growth. — John C. Maxwell

By learning more, by doing more, by becoming more, and by creating a common vision, a leader is a person who can inspire others to change for the better. — Debasish Mridha

You can provide the conditions for the motivation of others and the leadership to help them find a way but they must have the intrinsic spark, the desire, to move, to overcome the inertia of the status quo and change things. — Graham Speechley

Make a difference, change the game for the better, leave a legacy, be a guide that someone else can follow and make better, and then someone else will follow that and make that better. — Carlos Wallace

It is the first time in the history of Rwanda that political change in the highest leadership of the country has taken place in peace and security. — Paul Kagame

When man has nothing but his will to assert
even his good-will
it is always bullying. Bolshevism is one sort of bullying, capitalism another: and liberty is a change of chains. — D.H. Lawrence

Business is the most important institution on the planet for furthering human flourishing. — Paul Gibbons

Effective leaders help others to understand the necessity of change and to accept a common vision of the desired outcome. — John P. Kotter

To ensure that we are leading with our feet firmly planted on the soil of what is, we must live by the seven commandments of current reality:
Thou shalt not pretend.
Though shalt not turn a blind eye.
Thou shalt not exaggerate.
Thou shalt not shoot the bearer of bad news.
Thou shalt not hide behind the numbers.
Thou shalt not ignore constructive criticism.
Thou shalt not isolate thyself.
Attempting to lead while turning a blind eye to reality is like treading water: It can only go on for so long, eventually you will sink. As a next generation leader, be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. And if you don't like what you see, change it. — Andy Stanley

Alignment, to us, means bringing pieces into the same line - the same direction. The metaphor is that a magnet will make pieces of iron point toward it. Agreement is share intellectual understanding. Tribes are clusters of people, and people are complex and nonrational at times. If a tribe is united only by agreement, as soon as times change, agreement has to be reestablished. If people learn new ideas or see a problem from a new perspective, they no longer agree, so tribes based on agreement often discourage learning, questioning, and independent thought. Tribes based on alignment want to maximize each person's contribution, provided that they stay pointed in the same direction like magnetized iron filings. — Dave Logan

We need to change the leadership model in the world. That's my passion in life: changing hearts and minds about leadership. — Bob Vanourek

An entrepreneurial spirit makes you someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business enterprise, talent or calling to become an agent of change. — Archibald Marwizi

The term "leadership" connotes critical experience rather than routine practice. This is suggested in the following comment by Barnard: The overvaluation of the apparatus of communication and administration is opposed to leadership and the development of leaders. It opposes leadership whose function is to promote appropriate adjustment of ends and means to new environmental conditions, because it opposes change either of status in general or of established procedures and habitual routine. This overvaluation also discourages the development of leaders by retarding the progress of the abler men and by putting an excessive premium on routine qualities.[6] {37} — Philip Selznick

In most important ways, leaders of the future will need the traits and capabilities of leaders throughout history: an eye for change and a steadying hand to provide both vision and reassurance that change can be mastered, a voice that articulates the will of the group and shapes it to constructive ends, and an ability to inspire by force of personality while making others feel empowered to increase and use their own abilities. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

I want to change the world and I used to think I needed to do some big, significant thing. More recently I see this can be accomplished one relationship at a time. — Oliver Thomas

In life, all things are not constant or equal, the inequalities are so loud; change and uncertainty are the order of the day. It is these changes, inequalities and uncertainties that make it more imperative that you deliberately plan your way to success. — Archibald Marwizi

We have minds that are equipped for certainty, linearity and short-term decisions, that must instead make long-term decisions in a non-linear, probabilistic world. — Paul Gibbons

Adopt and change before any major trends or changes. — Jack Ma

I am very optimistic about the long run prospects for democracy in China. Chinese society is being dramatically and rapidly transformed. And there's rising evidence that the new generation not only lacks faith in communism anymore, they think it's a joke. They're very cynical about their leadership and they want democratic change. — Larry Diamond

Leadership must evolve into a "science-based craft", like surgery. — Paul Gibbons

The reasons why institutions fail and societies change are complex, and simplistic explanations should evoke automatic suspicion. Sometimes external causes - droughts, plagues or foreign invasions - can unsettle a nation, or its leadership may prove inadequate because of personal factors. In every case, a society faces problems, and is solutions or lack of response set a course for the future. — Thomas W. Africa

I regularly invite educators and leaders to send me their questions, and hundreds of them do so every month. The most common question, however, is one to which my response is probably most disappointing. The question is "How do I get better buy-in from my staff before I implement some critically needed changes?" The answer is "You don't. — Douglas B. Reeves

The rules of the world are changing. It is time for the rules of teaching and teachers' work to change with them. — Andy Hargreaves

If you care about real change, deep structural change, that involves politics, and all politics is friction. It takes leadership, and the willingness to create that friction, that leads to social change. — Nick Hanauer

One of the most common ways to overcome resistance to change is to educate people about it beforehand. Communication of ideas helps people see the need for and the logic of a change. The education process can involve one-on-one discussions, presentations to groups, or memos and reports. — John P. Kotter

Think of managing change as an adventure. It tests your skills and abilities. It brings forth talent that may have been dormant. Change is also a training ground for leadership. When we think of leaders, we remember times of change, innovation, and conflict. Leadership is often about shaping a new way of life. To do that, you must advance change, take risks, and accept responsibility for making change happen. — Charles E. Rice

You need to change the questions you ask yourself and of your situations, in order to change the trajectory of your life. These are questions that will help you define and refine your purpose. — Archibald Marwizi

Fixing things requires change and change always creates conflict. But that is why you are a leader. — Andy Stanley

There is no nation on the planet better able to adapt to this change than our nation. We must able to work collaboratively with others. We must anticipate these threats before they happen. This is the new sort of challenge, the new sort of threat that does, in fact, require new thinking, fresh approaches and new leadership. — Hillary Clinton

Most of all I discovered that my change of mind was closely connected with a change of heart. As a young man, I was comfortable with teachings that supported my leadership role. The role of women was a great topic for debate because it really didn't affect me and my identity. However, as I have been able to better receive God's calling to leadership as a call to humility rather than supremacy, I have been more able to receive women in leadership as well. It is here where I believe that my mind and heart and the Scriptures are most connected. — Robert Fryling

The best way to encourage out of the box thinking is to draw the box correctly in the first place. — Paul Gibbons

The end point of leadership is not just the position of power we reach, but the continual change and deepening we experience that makes a difference in our lives, our work, our world. Our leadership journeys are only at midpoint when we have achieved a position of power. — Janet Hagberg

My personal convictions drive me to join those like-minded, in the recruitment of a growing army without guns, no hatred or prejudice, but with a leadership voice of influence and harnessing resources to create the change they desire. The major problems facing the world, particularly our beloved African continent, will not be won by sanctions, cruelty, ethnic cleansing, revenge, guns or bullets. The challenges are not largely externally motivated, so the platform to change them must shift. Shift from selfish to selfless, from external to internal, from behaviours to beliefs. Some of them are externally sponsored but self-inflicted, whilst most of them are due to greed, short-sightedness, abuse and selfishness. — Archibald Marwizi

Denmark needs change, Denmark needs to move on and Denmark needs my leadership. — Helle Thorning-Schmidt

Change is easy to propose, hard to implement, and especially hard to sustain. — Andy Hargreaves

When the Islamic revolution began in 1979 under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, it aroused considerable admiration in the Arab street. It presented a model of organised popular action that deposed one of the region's most tyrannical regimes. The people of the region discerned in this revolution new hope for freedom and change. — Wadah Khanfar

Leadership is not a voice crying in the wilderness, aloof and apart. It requires an ability to command as well as to inspire, to learn in the process of collaboration and to build a team with a common purpose that can take action and execute the change they envision. — Bob Rae

The change "grief cycle", for some people, may be excitement, enthusiasm, engagement, effort, and excellence. — Paul Gibbons

Imagine going to work every day to do only and exactly what you love!! All the work gets done because of the abundant diversity of your team. Different skills, interests and talents are woven together into a whole that is much greater than the sum of the parts! — Denise Moreland

A dollar put into a book and a book mastered might change the whole course of a boy's life. It might easily be the beginning of the development of leadership that would carry the boy far in service to his fellow men. — Henry Ford

Every single achievement you make, every single life you change and every single skill you acquire brings you one step closer to becoming a better leader. Every day you can improve the leader in you to become a better person and a greater leader. — Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum

People don't change that much. Instead of trying to put in what God left out, try drawing out what God left in! — Curt Coffman

Believing in your potential and calling upon your courage to change will fuel your professional growth and help you accomplish goals. — John Manning

Leaders are fascinated by future. You are a leader if and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress and deeply dissatisfied with status quo. Because in your head, you can see a better future. The friction between 'what is' and 'what could be' burns you, stirs you up, propels you. This is leadership. — Marcus Buckingham

When you choose to act on your problems, you cease to be a victim of circumstance and become a force of change; that's when you transition to not only being a survivor, but to being a leader or hero too, and an inspiration to those still in the victim's mindset. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Leaders make things better and that requires change. — Andy Stanley

We need leadership books that offer information as well as inspiration. Pop leadership is one of the most destructive forces today. — Paul Gibbons