Good leadership is often the difference between success and failure in teams.
Leaders come in many different forms, those who operate with compassion and empathy, those who are hands on, those who give autonomy and those who take a tough love approach.
All have their own merits, but it’s often our blind spots in our leadership skills where we fall down.
Here are my top 25 leadership quotes to help you think about new ways to approach guiding your team:
1) “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.”
— Ken Blanchard
2) “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
— John C. Maxwell
3) “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”
— Ronald Reagan
4) “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”
— Warren Bennis
5) “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
6) “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”
— Jack Welch
7) “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
8) “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
— Ralph Nader
9) “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
— Peter Drucker
10) “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”
— Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh
11) “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
— Steve Jobs
12) “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.”
— Tony Blair
13) “The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.”
— Eric Hoffer
14) “People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
— Apple Inc.
15) “Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.”
— Seth Godin
16) “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.”
— Arnold H. Glasow
17) “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position.”
— Brian Tracy
18) “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
— Margeret Mead
19) “Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.”
— Simon Sinek
20) “A leader is a dealer in hope.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
21) “To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!'”
— Lao Tzu
22) “In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”
— Max De Pree
23) “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
— Charles Darwin
24) “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”
— Peter Drucker
25) “A leader … is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
— Nelson Mandela
James Waite
Founder of Remoteopia, James has worked in remote roles for 6 years. After a stint in recruitment, he now works as a director of website strategy in tech.
