Tough Leadership Quotes & Sayings

I've made tough calls and tough times and been held accountability. I think that is the kind of leadership that the American people need now to produce results. — Carly Fiorina

Thank God for the tough times. They are the reason you are there - to be the leader. If everything was going well, the people wouldn't need you! — John C. Maxwell

Personally, I like it much better when someone else does the decision making. That way you have legitimate grounds to whine and complain. I tend to find both whining and complaining quite interesting and amusing, though sometimes
unfortunately
it's hard to choose which one of the two I want to do.
Sigh. LIfe can be so tough sometimes. — Brandon Sanderson

That GOP leadership, that establishment, they've got to get their stuff together I love what they believe in, I believe in it too. But they've got to get tough, man. You know what? It's not just the New England Patriots who are dealing with deflated balls right now. — Sarah Palin

The tough choice facing CIOs is not about only picking one identity as either being strategic or tactical, but about - when acting as a strategic leader, when playing as a tactical manager. — Pearl Zhu

Presidential leadership is a really tough job, does come not easily. — Dinesh Sharma

The moral was, in time of anarchy, tough leadership is the only solution - even though the collateral damage may be heartbreaking. Mrs. Thatcher's strident, take-no prisoners approach was in some ways repugnant, but it was surely necessary. — Nigel Hamilton

That is our larger destiny: to allow the Earth to organize in a new way, in a manner impossible all the billions of years prior to humanity — Brian Swimme

Here is what the end of the world looks like:
It looks like a child running out into the road, eyes focused only on some destination ahead - the future, which is on the other side - and the child fails to notice the speeding truck that is there, on that same road, in the present.
This is what the end of the world looks like.
All roads cross here. — Andrew Smith

Successful leadership is not about being tough or soft, sensitive or assertive, but about a set of attributes. First and foremost is character — Warren G. Bennis

To make your Opinion Count,
you have to do something more
than just making Money. — Vineet Raj Kapoor

It's a sad day when the leaders of the free world engage in such deception and trickery. I voted against this unnecessary war and will continue to argue that the best way to support our troops is to bring them home. — Major Owens

Leadership is tested not by one's capacity to survive politically but by the ability to make tough decisions in trying times. — Ehud Olmert

Leadership demands that we make tough choices. — Alan Autry

Investing intelligently in those of us who are marginalised means fewer people in jail, fewer homeless, fewer unemployed, fewer of us who are forlorn and depressed, fewer people addicted to things that drag us down ... Because as we invest in those that do it tough, we will see more Australians taking pride in themselves, having realisable dreams and aspirations and making their own positive contribution to the world's greatest nation. — Simon McKeon

No matter how revolutionary something is, if you keep doing it over and over and over then it does loses it's excitement and it's high dynamics and people get used to ... get used to it like anything else you know um and then it just becomes a normal deal and then it becomes not very interesting at all. — Sonny Bono

We suffer from a terrible poverty of civic discourse in this country. Surely, it is outside of America's best traditions to send the signal that patriotism is mindless emotion, that leadership is avoiding saying tough things, that citizenship is toeing the line. But such is the result of a lack of openness, our nervousness with debate. — Geneva Overholser

A tough manager will have realistic quotas for his employees that he keeps to himself and aggressively stretch quotas, anywhere from ten percent higher to a lot more, which he imposes on his staff. If his people miss the stretch numbers but exceed the realistic goals, he's happy. If he's a superb manager, he knows how far they can stretch without breaking. — Twyla Tharp

Who is in your life asking you the tough questions? — Jeff Henderson

It was as though most managers in the world were primarily interested either in results or in people. The managers who were interested in results often seemed to be labeled "autocratic," while the managers interested in people were often labeled "democratic." The young man thought each of these managers - the "tough" autocrat and the "nice" democrat - were only partially effective. "It's like being half a manager," he thought. — Kenneth H. Blanchard

Core values serve as a lighthouse when the fog of life seems to leave you wandering in circles; when you encounter that moment where every decision is a tough one and no choice seems to clearly be the better choice. — J. Loren Norris

WITH THREE WEEKS to go in the Florida governor's race, the Tallahassee morning newspaper ran the following headline: 2 HEADS EXPLODE IN SEPARATE INCIDENTS — Tim Dorsey

I used Coldplay's mixer, Michael H. Brauer, on 'Roadsinger'; he's brilliant. He won a Grammy for their record. — Cat Stevens

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you're ready to play as tough as you're able to, you'd better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you're not giving it all you've got. — Larry Bird

O would, beloved, that you lay
Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
While lights were paling one by one. — William Butler Yeats

A tough hide with a tender heart is a goal that all leaders must have. — Wayde Goodall

Workers who can consistently decide with clarity and ease which tasks are most important when under pressure are the most prized in every organization. Highly focused in pressure-cooker situations, they rise to meet the challenges of an opportunity-saturated workplace that demands tough calls at every step. — Julie Morgenstern

If you can 'hire tough,' you can 'manage easy. — Sue Tetzlaff

The yearning for strong leadership is more about strength of purpose - clarity of vision - than about merely 'getting tough'. — Hugh Mackay

(We need) leadership that is tough enough to demand a great deal from everyone, and leadership that is tender enough to encourage the heart. — Thomas J. Sergiovanni

Real leadership means tackling tough problems ourselves and not leaving them to our children. — Jon Kyl

Only by pursuing the extremes in one's nature, with all its contradictions, appetites, aversions, rages, can one hope to understand a little ... oh, I admit only a very little ... of what life is about. — Francoise Sagan

There are proven ways to win the loyalty of tough, strong, ferocious men: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering. — Frank Herbert

Leadership grows like tall trees. It needs both toughness and flexibility - toughness for accountability - flexibility to adapt changes with a compassionate & caring heart for self and others. — Amit Ray

No matter how fast weapons and technology evolve in the 21st century, one thing remains constant is that war is a human endeavor, a grueling contest between two learning and adaptive forces. Victory, therefore rests on how smart, how tough, and how dedicated our boots on the ground. — Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono

Corrupt fantasy points us, or forms us, in a consciousness that can lead to thinking that evil is good and good is evil. In the worst case, this may have long range effects, prompting the reader intuitively, subconsciously, to do evil while thinking they're doing good. — Michael O'Brien

In the military, I learned that 'leadership' means raising your hand and volunteering for the tough, important assignments. — Tulsi Gabbard