Leadership Quote
Leadership Quote / January 2007
Category Archives: Leadership Quote
Leadership Quote
Leadership Quote / October 2006
At one time I got interested in trying to understand how great leaders created enormous social change – take Christ, take Muhammad, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Jr. When you look back at their history, almost without exception they were nobodies. Nobody! Gandhi was just a mediocre attorney who got thrown off a train into the dust by the British because he was Indian. Mother Teresa – just an ordinary nun. And so I studied –
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Leadership Quote / August 2006
“The interaction between leaders and followers does not take place in a vacuum. It is embedded in a historical or cultural context. It has an institutional setting. And these surrounding circumstances substantially affect not only the nature of the interaction but also the leadership attributes that are effective.” ~James W. Gardner (1990). On Leadership. New York: Free Press.
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Leadership Quote / March 2006
Leadership in a postmodern world can come from outside one’s immediate group, bottom-up or outside the organization altogether. There are no enduring authorities; hence anyone with a better idea and the courage to promote it can show leadership. Such leadership is an occasional act, not a role to be monopolized. It is also more democratic if only because no one has a monopoly on good ideas. ~Mitch McCrimmon
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Leadership Quote / June 2006
…“Whenever we think in terms of ‘leadership,’ we create a dichotomy: (1) leaders, a select and privileged few, and (2) followers, the vast majority. There follows the implicit judgment that leaders are some how superior to followers. So you get secrecy, distrust, overindulgence, and the inevitable sacrifice of those below for the benefit of those above. The word leadership, in fact, immediately creates a ranked division of people in ways that do not serve healthy organizational relationships. It also produces
Leadership Quote
Leadership Quote / December 2005
“It is not leadership from any one person that is required, it is an aspect of leadership each of us summons from within. In this respect, the same qualities we have sought in one person can be found distributed among many people who learn, in community, to exercise their “leadership” at appropriate moments. This occurs when people are vitally concerned about issues or when executing their responsibilities. Leadership thus becomes a rather fluid concept focusing on those behaviors which propel
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Leadership Quote / September 2005
“Leadership is a practice not a position. It is a practice of building influence relationships to create a movement for transforming change. My issue with most of the leadership stuff is that the followers—more appropriate in the idea economy or society to say collaborators or partners—are not considered in the leadership dynamic. This is counter-intuitive to the notion that the level of complexity we deal with on a daily basis requires the abilities and talents of people fully committed to
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Leadership Quote / July 2005
“CEOs need to focus first on changing themselves before they try to change the rest of the company. The process resembles an archaeological dig, or at least it did for me. As I uncovered and solved one problem, I almost invariably exposed another, deeper problem. As I gained one insight and mastered one situation, another situation arose that required new insight and more learning. As I approached one goal, a new, more important, but more distant goals always began to
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Leadership Quote / April 2005
“It is an assumption that leadership starts with a capital ‘L’ and that when you’re on top you’re automatically a leader. It’s part of a larger hero myth that inhibits us from seizing the initiative. ‘It’s not my job,’ we say, and we wait for someone to ride in and save us.” ~Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge
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Leadership Quote / February 2005
- “There is a tendency to be dependent on individual leaders. To me, it is important to develop collective leadership. I don’t like to get credit for all that we achieved. Millions of people contributed to the results that we achieved…I like more egalitarian relationships. I especially like to orient people to learn.” ~Anatakas Mockus, Mayor of Bogata, Columbia
- “Worshiping in the cult of the hero-leader who drives change is a surefire way to maintain change-averse institutions. In fact one can