Leader Quotes

When you experience a failure as a leader, don't hide it - talk about it. Your missed opportunity will encourage others to take risks.

~ Naveen Jain

Trump's biggest failure as a political leader is that he sees the worst in people, and he encourages the worst in people.

~ J. D. Vance

Nothing helps make a leader more approachable than admitting your struggles, screw-ups and behind-the-scenes thinking on hard calls. If the leader makes this a priority, the whole company will be more open and methodical learning from failure.

~ Scott Weiss

I want to speak up and tell you that mascara and clothes don't make you cool, neither do name-brand handbags, but being a leader can.

~ Renee Olstead

As a leader, you must consistently drive effective communication. Meetings must be deliberate and intentional - your organizational rhythm should value purpose over habit and effectiveness over efficiency.

~ Chris Fussell

In many companies, the person who talks the best usually gets the job. I got snowed by a few of those people over the years. I still think communication is important, but I don't think there's always a correlation between being a great communicator and other virtues that make for a great leader.

~ John Mackey

I work on OpenBSD fulltime, as the project leader. I set some directions, increase communication between the developers, and try to be involved in nearly every aspect of the base system.

~ Theo De Raadt

I got put into leadership roles very early in life from fifth grade, sixth grade. I always ended up being the quarterback or the leader of the sports teams, and it's kind of benefiting me now.

~ Tony Dungy

Today, we are on a path of decay. We are seeing the book close on five decades of accomplishment as the leader in human space exploration.

~ Eugene Cernan

There's no doubt who was a leader in space after the Apollo Program. Nobody came close to us. And our education system, in science, technology, engineering and math, was at the top of the world. It's no longer there. We're descending rather rapidly.

~ Buzz Aldrin

When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'

~ Lao Tzu

Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.

~ John C. Maxwell

A leader's job is not to do the work for others, it's to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.

~ Simon Sinek

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

~ Lao Tzu

As a leader, these attributes - confidence, perseverance, work ethic and good sense - are all things I look for in people. I also try to lead by example and create an environment where good questions and good ideas can come from anyone.

~ Heather Bresch

Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today.

~ Gary Hamel

It's easy to forget, as a leader, that when employees don't get the wide view, not only does the point of their work escape them, but it can also lead to real frustration. It's hard to feel pride and ownership when you don't understand where things are going.

~ Jason Fried

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it - young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous - is changed by it.

~ John C. Maxwell

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

~ Desmond Tutu

Disobedience is essentially a prideful power struggle against someone in authority over us. It can be a parent, a priesthood leader, a teacher, or ultimately God. A proud person hates the fact that someone is above him. He thinks this lowers his position.

~ Ezra Taft Benson

I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: 'Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.

~ Neale Donald Walsch

They should regard me as what I am. I am a spiritual leader and teacher.

~ Louis Farrakhan

There is almost nothing more painful for a leader than seeing good people leave a growing organization, whether it's a priest watching a Sunday school teacher walk out the door or a CEO saying goodbye to a co-founder.

~ Patrick Lencioni

In a sinful world, no community can exist for long where nobody is ever held accountable: no teacher would grade a student's performance; no citizen would sit on a jury or call a failed leader to account.

~ Lewis B. Smedes

If we are to negotiate the coming years safely, we may need a new kind of leadership. To put it more precisely, we need the rediscovery of an ancient kind of leadership that has rarely been given the prominence it deserves. I mean the leader as teacher.

~ Jonathan Sacks

Throughout my career as a lawyer, teacher and labor leader, books have remained my constant companion - stuffed into a briefcase, overflowing on my bedside table, stacked on my desk at work. Books have carried me to distant worlds, opened new doors and made me feel empathy, compassion, anger, fear, joy, acceptance - and everything in between.

~ Randi Weingarten

Jesse Jackson is a leader and a teacher who can open our hearts and open our minds and stir our very souls.

~ Ann Richards

To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak - you have to figure out the people working for you and give each tasks that will take advantage of his strength.

~ Norman Schwarzkopf

My father not only has the strength and ability necessary to be our next president, but also the kindness and compassion that will enable him to be the leader that this country needs.

~ Ivanka Trump

No force can conquer the service personnel and people who, in support of their great leader, have turned out in the struggle to defend their country with confidence in the validity of their cause and their own strength - this is a law and a truth taught by history.

~ Kim Jong-Un

There are three lessons in philanthropy - one, involve the family, especially the spouse. She can be a remarkable driver of your initiative. Two, you need to build an institution, and you need to scale it up. Choose a leader for philanthropy whom you trust. Three, philanthropy needs patience, tenacity and time.

~ Azim Premji

Martin Luther King was a misguided leader. He worked to be recognized as the leader of black America, when what black America needs isn't a leader - it is education. Giving speeches and marching - that's not the concept that brings about real freedom, equality and justice.

~ Don Yaeger

In Islamic societies, politicians can manipulate almost everything. But thus far, no fundamentalist leader has been able to convince his supporters to renounce Islam's central virtue - the principle of strict equality between human beings, regardless of sex, race, or creed.

~ Fatema Mernissi

If you can get a teen leader in each sector of a student population, you can pull people in. Everybody wants to get involved, but most are too afraid. When they see a person they think is cool leading it, they're first to join.

~ Andrew Shue

To be successful in coaching you have to treat your team like a family. The leader needs backing from everyone.

~ Morgan Wootten

I come from a political family. My father was a freedom fighter. He was a prominent leader of the locality and member of the Congress party. He spent 10 years in British prisons. In the evening, in our living room, the only subject we used to discuss was politics. So politics was not unfamiliar to me.

~ Pranab Mukherjee

My mom always said I was the peacemaker in the family. My older brother, Eric, was the leader, the creative one. I was just his puppet.

~ Gwen Stefani

Simon Bolivar, when history led him - and as Karl Marx said, men can make history, but only as far as history allows us to do so - when history took Bolivar and made him the leader of the independence process in Venezuela, he made that process revolutionary.

~ Hugo Chavez

Being a rock star is like being a cult leader - you really have to be in your own religion.

~ Courtney Love

I am not the first Buddha who came upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha will arise in the world - a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals.

~ Buddha