Quotes & Sayings About Successful Leaders

Government is really successful when it's willing to make big, bold objectives, like, 'We're going to get to the moon.' But without leaders with big ideas, we get stuck. — Bill Maris

The most successful endeavors in the digital age were those run by leaders who fostered collaboration while also providing a clear vision. Too often these are seen as conflicting traits: a leader is either very inclusive or a passionate visionary. But the best leaders could be both. Robert — Walter Isaacson

The end product of the successful preacher's input is transformation. — Christian Michael

Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity — Reed Markham

Leaders have to give time for relationships. But more demands will be placed on their time as they become more successful. So if a person's success is based on developing relationships, then they have to continually find new ways of getting it done — Mike Krzyzewski

The point is this: the successful person in any field takes time out to confer with himself or herself. Leaders use solitude to put the pieces of a problem together, to work out solutions, to plan, and, in one phrase, to do their superthinking. — David J. Schwartz

When problems confront successful leaders, they get excited about the opportunity. — John C. Maxwell

When a new company is formed, its founders must have a startup mentality - a beginner's mind, open to everything because, well, what do they have to lose? (This is often something they later look back upon wistfully.) But when that company becomes successful, its leaders often cast off that startup mentality because, they tell themselves, they have figured out what to do. They don't want to be beginners anymore. That may be human nature, but I believe it is a part of our nature that should be resisted. By resisting the beginner's mind, you make yourself more prone to repeat yourself than to create something new. The attempt to avoid failure, in other words, makes failure more likely. — Ed Catmull

If you really want to be a successful leader, you must develop other leaders around you. You must establish a team. — John C. Maxwell

Successful leaders are great askers — Warren G. Bennis

Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, FDR, looked south and said I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill clad, ill nourished. Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, I see one third of a nation and it can go to hell. — Zell Miller

The power of a successful salesman is not putting his hand in the customer's pocket to pull his money out. but rather manipulate the customer's mind to let him put his hand and happily pull the money and give it to you — Hisham Fawzi

Here, dear reader, you must summon patient compassion. Try to imagine the hardships of a military officer triply burdened by close relationships with political leaders and the national news media, an Ivy League PhD, and wartime triumphs leading an elite airborne division. Our hero somehow survived in spite of it all. He rose against his handicaps, triumphing over the awful mark of Princeton University, that great gathering place for outcasts, rebels, and the socially obscure. He secured higher military rank even though he had been successful in combat. He adroitly worked CBS News, the Washington Post, and the United States Senate, yet still rose to prominence. — Chris Bray

I am aware of how often over the past year I have listened to sermons and religious leaders turn the biblical narratives into a useful handbook for making one's life work more successful. I'm aware of how this Oprahization of the Christian narrative has turned us ever more quickly into anxiety-laden, functional atheists needing ways to use God to make our lives work. — Alan J. Roxburgh

Our most successful leaders are people who put other people first ... in the long run, that's exactly what makes them successful. — Blake Roney

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be. — Randy Alcorn

I do think stories are one of the best tools for communicating across any number of cultures. But I also think there are wildly successful leaders who are introverted, disciplined, lead via spreadsheets and goals, and might not "appear" to be a great leader ... but in retrospect, made a massive impact. — David Livermore

Successful leaders know how to line up support for their initiatives and create the right environment for change and innovation. — Bonnie Marcus

Intellectuals are rarely successful as leaders. They are so trapped in their ideals that they cannot venture out in the real world to win and lead. — Awdhesh Singh

Leaders approach conflict with an eye for resolution. When handled effectively, successful confrontations raise team performance. To manage conflict effectively, you must begin by recognizing there are three sides to every story:
Yours / Theirs / The Truth — Angie Morgan

Management guru Jim Collins has some good words here. He and Morten T. Hansen studied leadership in turbulent times. They looked at more than twenty thousand companies, sifting through data in search of an answer to this question: Why in uncertain times do some companies thrive while others do not? They concluded, "[Successful leaders] are not more creative. They're not more visionary. They're not more charismatic. They're not more ambitious. They're not more blessed by luck. They're not more risk-seeking. They're not more heroic. And they're not more prone to making big, bold moves." Then what sets them apart? "They all led their teams with a surprising method of self-control in an out-of-control world."2 — Max Lucado

One of the first steps to successful leadership is to forget your age and remember your dream. — Israelmore Ayivor

Successful leaders have learned that no failure is final, whether his own failure or someone else's. No one is perfect, and we cannot be right all the time. Failures and even feelings of inadequacy can provoke humility and serve to remind a leader who is really in charge. — J. Oswald Sanders

Because the vast majority of leaders are men, it is not possible to generalize from any one example. But the dearth of female leaders causes one woman to be viewed as representative of her entire gender. And because people often discount and dislike female leaders, these generalizations are often critical. This is not just unfair to the individuals but reinforces the stigma that successful women are unlikeable. — Sheryl Sandberg

The leaders in business and
industry all have at least one thing
in common - they are mentally
strong. Mental strength is an
absolute prerequisite for a
successful, commercial career in
our fast moving world. Although
there are relatively few people
who develop mental strength,
anyone can. — Bob Proctor

Highly successful leaders ignore conventional wisdom and take chances. Their stories inevitably include a defining moment or key decision when they
took a significant risk and thereby experienced a breakthrough. — Larry Osborne

Successful leaders are bigger than any individual outcome; their sense of self-worth doesn't depend on its having to work. Their whole self-image is not at stake. They are separate from the deal. — Henry Cloud

The heroic "hands-on" leader whose personal competence and force of will dominated battlefields and boardrooms for generations has been overwhelmed by accelerating speed, swelling complexity, and interdependence. Even the most successful of today's heroic leaders appear uneasy in the saddle, all too aware that their ability to understand and control is a chimera. — Stanley McChrystal

We have found that the most successful teachers in low-income communities operate like successful leaders. They establish a vision of where their students will be performing at the end of the year that many believe to be unrealistic. — Wendy Kopp

The reasons why executives are scared of social selling are well documented. That being said, there are some hugely successful global business leaders using social selling tactics incredibly well - some of which even admit they could not operate without it! — Bruce Rasmussen

Leaders cannot work in a vacuum. They may take on larger, seemingly more important roles in an organization, but this does not exclude them from asking for and using feedback. In fact, a leader arguably needs feedback more so than anyone else. It's what helps a leader respond appropriately to events in pursuit of successful outcomes. — Jack Canfield

I have seen humility in many of the finest leaders I have met the world over. And indeed, it is embodied in the warm, engaging and quintessentially successful spirit of Sir Richard Branson. — Naveen Jain

It takes a lot of people to create a success. That's why I say that few leaders are successful unless a lot of people want them to be. — John C. Maxwell

COURAGE isn't an absence of fear. It is doing what you are afraid to do, letting go of the familiar and forging ahead into new territory. What I have discovered is that the best leaders have the courage to act - are willing to take the risk, make the statement, point the way, lead the way - when others hesitate out of fear. Effective leadership requires the ability to stand up, stand out, and the conviction to do it. I have never known a successful leader that was not courageous. — John C. Maxwell

Individuals and companies that want to be successful in the 21st century will need to be leaders in using the Internet and related technology. — William Clay Ford Jr.

Descartes's declaration that reality divides neatly into two realms reassured the Church that the province of science would never overlap, and therefore never challenge , the world of theology and the spiritual. Science ceded the soul and the conscious mind to religion and kept the material world for itself. In return for this neat dividing up of turf, Descartes hoped, religious leaders would lay off scientists who were studying natural laws operating in the physical, nonmental realm. The ploy was only partly successful for Church science relations. Descartes himself was forced to flee Paris for Holland in search of greater tolerance. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

The most successful teachers in low-income communities operate like successful leaders. They establish a vision of where their students will be performing at the end of the year that many believe to be unrealistic. They invest their students in working harder than they ever have to reach that vision, maximise their classroom time in a goal-oriented manner through purposeful planning and effective execution, reflect constantly on their progress to improve their performance over time, and do whatever it takes to overcome the many challenges they face. — Wendy Kopp

He saw something more in those eyes. The emotion wasn't nakedly apparent, but Mr. Cawley was a professional at reading the subtleties of people. The elderly and wildly successful credit card magnate believed that certain human frailties could actually help fuel success. Insecurity drove billionaire entrepreneurs. Emotional instability made for superb art. The need for attention built great political leaders. But anger, in his experience, led only to inertia. — Jeff Hobbs

Add to this the pride of achievement; the desire to rank among the successful souls on earth, and we have the factors which have brought some of the ablest of human beings into the limelight that revealed them to an admiring world, as leaders and examples. — Lewis Howard Latimer

Peter the Great was probably the equal, in dedication, power and ruthlessness, of many of the most successful revolutionary or nationalist leaders. Yet he failed in his chief purpose, which was to turn Russia into a Western nation. And the reason he failed was that he did not infuse the Russian masses with some soul-stirring enthusiasm. He either did not think it necessary or did not know how to make of his purpose a holy cause. It is not strange that the Bolshevik revolutionaries who wiped out the last of the Czars and Romanovs should have a sense of kinship with Peter - a Czar and a Romanov. For his purpose is now theirs, and they hope to succeed where he failed. The Bolshevik revolution may figure in history as much an attempt to modernize a sixth of the world's surface as an attempt to build a Communist economy. The — Eric Hoffer

People who boast about age are actually forgetting something special. Age is not barrier to or elevator to success; that's the job of vision. — Israelmore Ayivor

Most churches make the mistake of selecting as leaders the confident, the competent, and the successful. But what you most need in a leader is someone who has been broken by the knowledge of his or her sin, and even greater knowledge of Jesus' costly grace — Timothy Keller

All leaders make mistakes. They are a part of life. Successful leaders recognize their errors, learn from them, and work to correct their faults. — John C. Maxwell

The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails. For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not. — Jocko Willink

One of the primary tenets of the course was that highly successful leaders kept journals, morning and night, in order to stay tightly focused on their goals. — Karen Marie Moning

Perseverance is the steady pathway toward prevailing. — Tom Althouse

Successful leaders are like icebergs. When you look at an iceberg, you see only about 10 percent of it, and the rest of it is hidden under the water. When you look at successful leaders, you see only a fraction of their lives. You see the part that looks really good, but there's usually a lot that remains hidden that's neither exciting nor glamorous. Tennis star Arthur Ashe said, "True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever the cost." True leadership is the same. — John C. Maxwell

No successful political transition can take place without leaders and movements that demand and press for freedom. — Fareed Zakaria

What happens is that the people who are leaders in any field are copied. I mean, there's a reason why every wine newsletter tends to look like mine. They see someone who's been successful, so they sort of copy these same ideas. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know - not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear. Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don't know can we ever hope to learn it. — Ed Catmull

Successful leaders have the courage to take action while others hesitate. — John C. Maxwell

The formula for successful leadership has changed little, if at all over the centuries. It isn't leadership that changes over time, rather where the leaders need to take their people that changes. — Scott Hammerle

Enlightened leaders get more out of their people because they know that each person already has everything it takes to be successful. They — Steve Chandler

The most successful businesses have leaders that see the correlation between customer service and sales ... not as separate departments, but as complimentary components for growth. — Steve Maraboli

All long-term social change comes from the successful efforts of one or another struggling organizations to capture the minds of a hard core of future leaders. — Gary North

Instead of attacking successful American companies, Europe's leaders should ask themselves why their continent has not produced a Google or a Facebook. — Anonymous

If there is a trait which does characterize leaders it is opportunism. Successful people are very often those who steadfastly refuse to be daunted by disadvantage and have the ability to turn disadvantage to good effect. They are people who seize opportunity and take risks. Leadership then seems to be a matter of personality and character. — John Viney

Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others. — Marshall Goldsmith

Leaders are never measured by their success but rather by the success of those they've been entrusted to lead. Therefore, a leader can never be considered successful until those they lead are successful. — Greg Cagle

Breaking the rules and challenging convention is in the DNA of every successful entrepreneur. Doing things differently and solving problems with new, innovative and fresh approaches are the very reason many start-ups are able to compete and sometimes outpace the established market leaders. — Richard Branson

Successful leaders all share one common trait - they believe that they can do a better job than the alternatives. Humility is fine when considering your responsibility and duty, but when it comes time to make a decision, you must not question yourself. — Brandon Sanderson

Successful leaders leaders lead with passion and compassion. — Farshad Asl

Failing once doesn't make you a failure. One difference between a successful person and an average person is how much criticism they can take, the average person cannot take much criticism and that's why they fail to be leaders and they do remain average all their lives — Robert Kiyosaki

Successful leaders develop effective strategies for maintaining their boundaries ... Most time bandits don't know any better. And being a time bandit is a matter of context. One person's time bandit is another person's pleasant diversion ... Instead of gritting our teeth to be polite and resenting the time bandit for holding us up, the best choice is to be honest. We cannot expect another person to honor our needs unless we affirm them ourselves. — Diane Dreher

The most successful leaders in the Internet Century will be the ones who understand how to create and quickly grow platforms. — Eric Schmidt

It's immoral to parent irresponsibly ... And it doesn't help matters any when prime time tv, like "Murphy Brown", a character who is supposed to represent a successful career woman of today, mocks the importance of the father by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice." Marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program there is ... Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at [such values] I think most of us in this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong. — Dan Quayle

Beware of charisma ... Representative Men; was Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1850 phrase for the great men in a democracy ... Is there some common quality among these Representative Men who have been most successful as our leaders? I call it the need to be authentic-or, as our dictionaries tell us, conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance or belief. While the charismatic has an uncanny outside source of strength, the authentic is strong because he is what he seems to be. — Daniel J. Boorstin

We didn't put a single boot on the ground, and [Muammar] Gaddafi was deposed. The Libyans turned out for one of the most successful, fairest elections that any Arab country has had. They elected moderate leaders. — Hillary Clinton

Where do business leaders turn for advice to improve their leadership skills? Many successful leaders like Dan Cathy, President and COO of Chick-fil-A turn to the Bible. Speaking at Trinity College in Illinois, "Cathy discussed how scripture dictates Chick-fil-A's business plan. — R.J. Stepansky

BJP is doing "gathbandhan". Congress is doing "brashtbandhan" and the criminals are doing "lathbandhan". Our politics is about coalitions. Every coalition where the BJP is part of as leaders, has been successful. — Narendra Modi

Think about all the great leaders. Think about Obama. Think about Clinton. Think about Nelson Mandela. Think about all the people that we know who are very successful in business, in politics and religion. What are they? They tell purposeful stories. They move people to action by aiming at the heart. — Peter Guber