Leadership From Stephen Covey Quotes & Sayings

Effective leadership is the only competitive advantage that will endure. That's because leadership has two sides- what a person is character and what a person does- competence. — Stephen Covey

If you are an effective manager of your self, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will. — Stephen Covey

Management is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right-brain activity. It's more of an art it's based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you're dealing with personal leadership issues. — Stephen Covey

Only 20 percent of employees working in large organizations surveyed feel their strengths are in play every day. Thus, eight our of ten employees surveyed feel somewhat miscast in their role. — Stephen Covey

The first job of a leader - at work or at home - is to inspire trust. It's to bring out the best in people by entrusting them with meaningful stewardships, and to create an environment in which high-trust interaction inspires creativity and possibility. — Stephen M.R. Covey

In many situations involving service recovery - the problem itself became the catalyst for the creation of even greater trust as the companies took the issues head-on and worked through the difficult problem in a way that restored confidence. — Stephen Covey

Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them. — Stephen Covey

Trust is equal parts character and competence ... You can look at any leadership failure, and it's always a failure of one or the other. — Stephen Covey

Management is formal authority given from above. Leadership is moral authority given from below and all around. — Stephen Covey

Results matter! They matter to your credibility. — Stephen Covey

Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms. — Stephen Covey

Leadership is communicating people's worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it themselves. — Stephen Covey

leadership is communicating others' worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves. Right — Stephen R. Covey

When trust is high, the dividend you receive is like a performance multiplier, elevating and improving every dimension of your organization and your life ... In a company, high trust materially improves communication, collaboration, execution, innovation, strategy, engagement, partnering, and relationships with all stakeholders. — Stephen Covey

Most people think of leadership as a position and therefore don't see themselves as leaders. — Stephen Covey

Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual phrased, it, "like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic". — Stephen Covey

In effective personal leadership, visualization and affirmation techniques emerge naturally out of a foundation of well thought through purposes and principles that become the center of a person's life. — Stephen Covey

Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside out on four levels: 1) personal (my relationship with myself); 2) interpersonal (my relationships and interactions with others); 3) managerial (my responsibility to get a job done with others); and 4) organizational (my need to organize people - to recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, solve problems, and create aligned structure, strategy, and systems). — Stephen R. Covey

If you don't choose to do it in leadership time up front, you do it in crisis management time down the road. — Stephen Covey

How does humility manifest itself in leadership and in life? A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having the ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about building the team than exalting self, about recognizing contribution than being recognized for making it. — Stephen Covey

In order to have influence, you have to be influenced. — Stephen Covey

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. — Stephen Covey

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. — Stephen Covey

What you do has far greater impact than what you say. — Stephen Covey

To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don't pay the price day in and day out, you'll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind. — Stephen Covey

Leadership is a choice, not a position. — Stephen Covey

True leadership is moral authority, not formal authority. Leadership is a choice, not a position. The choice is to follow universal timeless principles, which will build trust and respect from the entire organization. Those with formal authority alone will lose this trust and respect. — Stephen Covey

The two additional unique human endowments that enable us to expand our proactivity and to exercise personal leadership in our lives are imagination and conscience. — Stephen R. Covey

Through real-life stories, Kristin Kaufman illustrates the core idea of being present in the moment and opening oneself up to new ideas in order to become an authentic leader in life. — Stephen R. Covey

The exercise of true leadership is inversely proportional to the exercise of power. — Stephen Covey

Over time, I have come to this simple definition of leadership: Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust. — Stephen Covey

Management works in the system; leadership works on the system. — Stephen Covey

Personal leadership is not a singular experience. It doesn't begin and end with the writing of a personal mission statement. It is, rather, the ongoing process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things. — Stephen R. Covey