Quotes & Sayings About Responsibility And Leadership

We think leadership is about rank and power, but better to think of leadership as the responsibility for other human beings. That leadership and rank may not go together. So it manifests in this remarkable way. — Simon Sinek

Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The price of LEADERSHIP is RESPONSIBILITY ... and part of that responsibility is to STAY POSITIVE whether you feel like it or not. — Lou Holtz

Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility. — Herb Kelleher

It was leadership here at home that gave us strong American influence abroad, and the collapse of imperial Communism. Great nations have responsibilities to lead, and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile, because they might just wind up lowering our flag. — Ronald Reagan

Leadership happens at every level of the organization and no one can shirk from this responsibility. — Jerry Junkins

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it. — Mao Zedong

On the other hand, the waging of peace as a science, as an art, is in its infancy. But we can trace its growth, its steady progress, and the time will come when there will be particular individuals designated to assume responsibility for and leadership of this movement. — Fredrik Bajer

My responsibility is leadership, and the minute I get negative, that is going to have an influence on my team. — Don Shula

Assume responsibility for outcomes as well as for the processes and people you work with. How you achieve results will shape the kind of person you become. — C. K. Prahalad

I feel it is our inherent duty as a humane society, above any intangible responsibility, to invest in our world's children's potential, passion and confidence. — Masiela Lusha

Ultimately, only diplomacy can bring about a durable solution to the challenge posed by Iran's nuclear program. As President and Commander in Chief, I will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. However, I have a profound responsibility to try to resolve our differences peacefully, rather than rush towards conflict. Today, we have a real opportunity to achieve a comprehensive, peaceful settlement, and I believe we must test it. — Barack Obama

As a leader, you have to take responsibility for your own failures as well as successes. That's the only way you'll learn.
If you keep learning, you'll improve.
If you improve, your leadership will get better.
And in time, you will earn the right to lead on the level you deserve. — John C. Maxwell

My favourite mentor brother told me that there were three kinds of people: followers, leaders and scouts. Scouts are capeable of leadership, but they could not tolerate the responsibility of it. Disinclined to take orders either, they invariably flouted authority and fomented strife. This is why scouts, he said wryly, were the first to be sent into danger, It was half hoped they would be killed. 'I fear you are destined to trouble us as a scout, little sister' he said — Isobelle Carmody

Leadership, pure and simple, is the assumption of responsibility for the pursuit of excellence in group life. — Philip Selznick

In 1992, Bill Clinton ran on a platform of 'ending welfare as we know it.' His political worldview, drawn from like-minded thinkers at the Democratic Leadership Council, was based in private sector growth and personal responsibility. — Nina Easton

More than a billion women around the world want to emulate western women's lifestyles and are rapidly acquiring the material ability to do so. It is therefore vital that in our leadership we display some reserve and responsibility in our spending so that the world's finite resources will be available for our children, their children and their children's children — Louise Burfitt-Dons

A controlling God, who is usually represented by a controlling church leadership, is just not good news. How can church leadership create freedom and not more rules? How can we bring out the best in human beings and keep it at the surface even as we deal with their problems and shortcomings? Can we empower others and release them to live from their best natures and from the truest reasons they are alive? Will we as Christian leaders, parents, and employers take on the responsibility to learn how to draw out the dreams and destiny in the people we lead? — Danny Silk

These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness and with love for the goodness of the act. — Plutarch

Hitler's unusually improvisational and personal style of leadership, which created constant responsibility conflicts and an anarchic tangle of offices and portfolios, was anything but an expression of political incompetence. On the contrary, it served to make Hitler's own supremacy essentially unassailable. — Volker Ullrich

When it comes to the arc of your life, leadership is a sacred responsibility. — Paul Gibbons

The irony was that despite having modernized Canada's divorce laws in the 1960s, his personal faith held that "what God has joined, let no man tear asunder." He even apologized to me once, years later, for not ever being able to provide his teenage sons with a maternal presence in our lives in Montreal: he simply felt that he could never remarry. I of course reassured him that it was of no matter to us, but the lesson he taught me about the distinction between private faith and public responsibility was one that would later guide my own thinking about leadership.) — Justin Trudeau

If you believe the world will be a better place because you have both the desire and the means to take charge, that's the time for you to jump in. It doesn't matter if you rise up to take the lead only once or twice in your entire working life or if you do it daily. There are so many moments when you can make a difference--by enriching an outcome, saving a great idea, defending the beleaguered or downtrodden, and not least, expressing your own gifts and wisdom. — Charlotte Beers

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it. — Henry A. Kissinger

In all, Nigeria belongs to us all and we have a personal responsibility to see that it succeeds — Fela Durotoye

Politics is about power. It is about the power of the state. It is about the power of the state as applied to individuals, the society in which they live and the economy in which they work. Most critically, our responsibility in this parliament is how that power is used: whether it is used for the benefit of the few or the many. — Kevin Rudd

And how does one lead? We lead by doing; we lead by being. — Bryant McGill

For, in a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, 'holds office'; every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve. — John F. Kennedy

Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power. — Seth Berkley

The true key, if you want to live an unstoppable life, then you need to take 100% control of your life. Stop blaming others for your failures and faults and start accepting responsibility for your life. — Thomas Narofsky

The leader builds dispersed and diverse leadership - distributing leadership to the outermost edges of the circle to unleash the power of shared responsibility. — Frances Hesselbein

You stay alive in the practice of leadership by reducing the extent to which you become the target of people's frustrations. The best way to stay out of range is to think constantly about giving the work back to the people who need to take responsibility. Place the work within and between the factions who are faced with the challenge, and tailor your interventions so they are unambiguous and have a context. — Ronald A. Heifetz

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership. — Chinua Achebe

I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership in the world, to explore, to seek knowledge. — Eugene Cernan

A critical element in nearly all effective social movements is leadership. For it is through smart, persistent, and authoritative leaders that a movement generates the appropriate concepts and language that captures the frustration, anger, or fear of the group's members and places responsibility where it is warranted. — David E. Wilkins

No one can become successful for you. It takes personal definitions, personal decisions, personal convictions, personal actions and personal responsibility to succeed in life. — Archibald Marwizi

Thanks to the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have a government for the Information Age, once again a government that is a progressive instrument of the common good, rooted in our oldest values of opportunity, responsibility and community, devoted to fiscal responsibility, determined to give our people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives in the 21st century, a 21st century government for 21st century America. — William J. Clinton

We have been led to believe that we have come a long way toward world nuclear disarmament. But that is not the case. Our government is not doing all that it could. We must urge our leaders to fulfill the obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United States must assume world leadership to end once and for all the threat of nuclear war. It is our moral responsibility. — Harrison Ford

If you want to be positive, upbeat, and passionate, you need to take responsibility for being that way. — John C. Maxwell

Comrades," he said, "I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills - Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal? — Anonymous

Consciousness precedes being: consciousness, yours and mine, can form, deform, or reform our world. Our complicity in world making is a source of awesome and sometimes painful responsibility-and a source of profound hope for change. It is the ground of our common call to leadership, the truth that makes leaders of its all. — Parker J. Palmer

Leading women, if they are to offer variations from the present companies of leading men, need to be drawn from a wide spectrum of household and family arrangements. If women with children and family responsibilities are almost always seriously limited by these, then those currently in power will not have the personal experience necessary to represent these overlooked areas. — Eva Cox

I think that's just one type of leadership, which is the type I have: the need to find a new way and take responsibility for other people. — Harry West

Helping others see the future clearly and feel it deeply, is the most important responsibility of a leader. — Jim Louwsma

It's been hard for me at times ... the responsibility and expectation that comes with being a leader. I'm not always the one I wish I could be, that I should be, but nonetheless, it is my place. If I were to ever show a commitment to something other than my leadership, which could jeopardize the function I have, I would be risking too many lives. I couldn't live with that. — Jessica Shirvington

Leadership responsibility: If you own a biz, you're the head of the org. Good or bad, your company will LOOK and ACT like you do. — Dave Ramsey

The lessons I learned in Vietnam and in the NFL reinforced one another:
teamwork, sacrifice, responsibility, accountability, and leadership. — Rocky Bleier

If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community to challenge the status quo into making responsible changes, it will take the subversive leadership of academics and practitioners who keep reminding students of the profession's responsibilities. — Samuel Mockbee

You're bored, aren't you.' 'I need constant distraction. Shall we go?' 'Uh, aren't you supposed to delegate responsibility or something? If you're not here, who's in charge?' Skulduggery looked around and pointed to a sorcerer at the far side of the cemetery. 'He is.' 'Who is he?' 'Don't know. He looks like leadership material, though, doesn't he?' 'Does he?' 'He's wearing a hat.' 'And that means he's a leader?' 'Leaders wear hats. It's to keep the rain off while we make important decisions. He'll do fine.' 'Shouldn't you tell him that he's in charge?' 'And spoil the surprise? — Derek Landy

A councilor ought not to sleep the whole night through, a man to whom the populace is entrusted, and who has many responsibilities. — Homer

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank. — Peter Drucker

Added pressure and responsibility should not change one's leadership style, it should merely expose that which already exists. — Mark W. Boyer

To my mind, you cannot speak about the need for leadership within our communities without being prepared to take on responsibility yourself. It's not enough to point the finger at those who have let us down and to expect others to come forward and fix our problems. Nor can anyone afford to call themselves a leader unless they truly have the interests of our community at heart. Too many people like to think they are leaders and too many are identified by the media as leaders who are not really leaders at all. — Jackie Huggins

Research has shown the challenge caused by Climate change is mainly man-made due to abdication of leadership and personal responsibility in taking care of the environment. Will you be part of the army replenishing the earth and promoting proper stewardship of its resources? — Archibald Marwizi

I can't explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities. This is something I rarely encountered during 38 years in uniform. And so I will not defend it because it is indefensible. But I can take responsibility for it and I do. — Eric Shinseki

Parishes that have learned to develop a culture of continual invitation to leadership, training, and growth in responsibility for their members are predisposed to ongoing health and growth when pastor transitions occur — William E. Simon Jr.

As a veteran, I believe we have a responsibility to take care of all our men and women who have served - and I will fight to fix the crisis at the Veterans Administration caused by negligent leadership in Washington. — Joni Ernst

It is your life...OWN IT! Your life purpose empowers you and enables you to live life abundantly. Empowerment begins by taking responsibility for your life and being accountable for your actions. Empowerment is the courage to live passionately and purposefully each day — Thomas Narofsky

Leadership isn't something that people hand to you ... [i]t's a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority. And that's something we can teach. — Seth Godin

In leadership writ large, mutually agreed upon purposes help people achieve consensus, assume responsibility, work for the common good, and build community. — Joseph C. Rost

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. — Peter F. Drucker

On the security front, the United States must continue to play a leadership role. There simply is not another country in the world that commands the respect or has the capabilities that we do, and we must not shrink from our responsibilities. — Dan Quayle

You can't talk about leadership without talking about responsibility and accountability ... you can't separate the two. A leader must delegate responsibility and provide the freedom to make decisions, and then be held accountable for the results. — Buck Rodgers

The power to lead is the power to mislead, and the power to mislead is the power to destroy. — Thomas S. Monson

When we PEEL off LAYERS of SOCIAL CONDITIONING and the need to live upto that EXPECTATION..
The most beautiful 'creation' surfaces ...The REAL YOU !!!
To be real, it needs courage..Our biggest aim should be to build that COURAGE..
Being 'that' REAL is our biggest POSSIBILITY...also the biggest RESPONSIBILITY! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

Managers' responsibility is to ensure that people deliver the expected results, which are the company's strategy. The company's strategy, in turn, determines its competitive advantage. So, if a manager does a poor job of motivating employees' productivity, the enterprise is a weak competitor. — Anna Stevens

You have to be intelligent. You have to know what other guys are doing because you're in the back end and you see everything, so you have to alert others what to be ready for, and that makes it easier on everyone. It's just like playing offense, but now you're the quarterback of the defense, and you need to be vocal and take on that leadership responsibility. If you do, everything else becomes easier. — Calvin Pryor

Leadership is the behavior each of us exerts when we take responsibility for our actions and their consequences. — John Baldoni

Democracy and equality try to denythe mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority. — D.H. Lawrence

People want guidance, not rhetoric. They need to know what the plan of action is, and how it will be implemented. They want to be given responsibility to help solve the problem and authority to act on it. — Howard Schultz

Transmit your vision emotionally by gaining credibility, demonstrating passion, establishing relationships and communicating a felt need. Transmit it logically by confronting reality, formulating strategy, accepting responsibility, celebrating victory and learning from defeat. — John C. Maxwell

In abdicating responsibility throughout God's kingdom at large, Christians have created a cultural vacuum of labor, influence, and leadership which the ungodly have come in to fill. The fact of the matter is, someone is going to exercise rulership in the earth. If not the godly, then the ungodly. If the righteous retreat completely, they have no reason to be surprised when they wake up one day to find their inheritance usurped by those who do not know God. — Christian Overman

To instill the values for the culture was and is the responsibility of the leadership, and staff alignment was critical to its success. It started with both board and staff. They realized that they needed to share the same value system that says, "I am the equipper, not the doer." If not, there were going to be immense roadblocks to effectively mobilizing people for ministry. — Sue Mallory

The starting point of enlightenment, a goal that every person should strive for, is inner leadership. Leadership is far more than something businesspeople do at work. Leadership is all about personal responsibility, self-discovery, and creating value in the world by the people we become. Too many people spend their time blaming others for all that isn't working in their lives. We blame our spouses for our unhappy home lives; we blame our bosses for our distress at work; we blame strangers on the freeway for making us angry; we blame our parents for keeping us small. Blame, blame, blame, blame. But blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. Blaming others for the current quality of your life is a sad way to live. In doing so, all you're doing is playing the victim. — Robin S. Sharma

Leadership involves the heavy burden of responsibility, and the fear of getting it wrong can paralyze a leader. — John C. Maxwell

Each of us can be a leader. We need to remember that the mantle of leadership is not the cloak of comfort, but the robe of responsibility. Perhaps our service is to youth. If so, I caution: 'Youth needs fewer critics and more models.' One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of a car we drove, what kind of a house we lived in, how much we had in the bank account, nor what our clothes looked like. But the world may be a little better because we were important in the life of a boy or a girl. — Thomas S. Monson

Life is a choice. Your choices each day determine what outcomes happen in your life. It is by choice, not by chance, that will determine your life. An Unstoppable Life begins by taking responsibility for your choices. — Thomas Narofsky

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

All leadership begins from inside a person and must be developed and grown as they grow into emerging and enduring leaders — Thomas Narofsky

You can play and try to get focused for that time, but still the reality of that whole situation is once that game is over you still have to be confronted with what's going on. I think that's where the senior leadership on your football team has to come. They have to understand that we have a responsibility to reach our goals and that's to win the championship. — Pete Richardson

Leadership responsibility is multidimensional and cannot be described in one or two words. It is personal, interpersonal, environmental and societal. — Linda Fisher Thornton

The most feared situation is to end up inadvertently in the wrong place at the wrong time and get blamed. Yet this is exactly what happens in a structure that systematically diffuses responsibility. It is because managers fear blame-time that they diffuse responsibility; however such a diffusion inevitably means that someone, somewhere is going to become a scapegoat when things go wrong. — Robert Jackall

Too few leaders have the emotional fortitude to take responsibility for failure. — Paul Gibbons

Empowerment without a platform is like responsibility without authority. In too many of our churches, we offer discipleship training and leadership training without providing any significant platform for people to do the things they've been trained to do. This is especially true in our larger churches. — Larry Osborne

I began at some point to understand the whole idea of accountability and responsibility and leadership, and I think that was something that really birthed something in me, where I knew I wanted to be part of a larger equation in our society. — Wes Moore

When those who are responsible for the leadership of State begin to move in villainous ways; when they begin to destroy the fabric of what it is that our nation is held together with; when they violate the Constitution of our nation and begin to do things that are false to our dreams and our hopes
it is incumbent upon every citizen by right, but also by responsibility, to challenge that administration, to raise their voice in vigorous dissent and to challenge the way in which the state is doing business. And those who fail to do that, should be charged with patriotic treason! — Teddy Roosevelt

Priesthood lessons are regularly devoted to topics of family leadership, and quorum leaders everywhere are feeling more and more their responsibility to teach and train their quorum members to be better husbands and fathers. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

Unfortunately for many Aboriginal people, of course, they've been in the situation of being herded on government reserves. Their own responsibility's been assumed by Protectors of Aborigines and by government officials and if you become part of that system, it's always difficult to break out of it. — Lowitja O'Donoghue

We have come to world leadership because our people have had the opportunity to develop this nation under a government and a Constitution that gave them political freedom and encouraged initiative, enterprise, responsibility, industry and thrift. Freedom and achievement are not unrelated. This nation has become one of history's finest illustrations of how a people can enrich life and raise their whole level of economic well-being when they are given justice, liberty and incentive. — Herbert V. Prochnow

In one of my recent books, 'The Success Principles,' I taught 64 lessons that help people achieve what they want out of life. From taking nothing less than 100 percent responsibility for your life to empowering others, these are the fundamentals to success - and to great leadership. — Jack Canfield

As a leader it is your job to protect the missional integrity of the Jesus gathering to which you have been called. It is your responsibility to see to it that the church under your care continues as a gathering of people in process; a place where the curious,the unconvinced, the sceptical, the used-to-believe and the broken, as well as the committed, informed and sold-out come together around Peter's declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. — Andy Stanley

It's a huge responsibility to have influence and to steward it in a way that leads to God-honoring leadership. — Bill Hybels

The leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege. — Peter Drucker

After Peter came to recognize his own inadequacy, his utter inability to fulfill his destiny apart from obedience to his only true responsibility, he became a rock-solid leader. As his story unfolds in the book of acts, we can clearly see that when Peter kept his eyes on Jesus and followed Him, others followed to. And they followed by the thousands. Needed today: more Peters. — Charles R. Swindoll

Leadership is about taking charge and influencing others to follow your vision. It's about going against the odds and accepting responsibility for the outcomes along the way — Robin Crow

Leaders strengthen credibility by demonstrating that they are not in it for themselves, instead they have the interests of the institution, department, or team and its constituents at heart. Being a servant may not be what many leaders had in mind when they chose to take responsibility for the vision and direction of their organization or team - but serving others is the most glorious and rewarding of all leadership tasks. — James M. Kouzes

Leadership isn't about power for the sake of power - not true leadership. Instead it deals with modeling behavior you want others to have, and with responsibility for being certain the people you lead are treated equitably, and with respect. Not an easy task. You can't make other people feel anything, or think anything; you can only try to teach them what you want them to feel and think and why you think they should act accordingly. — Laura Weakley

Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home. — John Piper

Remember you live in a community. You have a responsibility to be accountable to your family and your community as well as yourself. — Cherrie Moraga

What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago - isn't it about time he assumed responsibility? — Paul Ryan