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Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

I tell my clients that it is absolutely imperative that they spend a few weeks each year outside their own business and actively working in the marketplace, or in a university lab, in the case of technical people. The best way for the chief executive officer to take the place of a salesman twice a year for two weeks.

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The road to success is always under construction.

For the self-renewing person the development of his or her own potentialities and the process of self-discovery never end. It is a sad, but unarguable fact that most human beings go through their lives only partially aware of the full range of their abilities.

Be thankful for challenges and adversity because they present the greatest opportunities for significant personal growth.

My experience...taught me the three critical drivers of professional success, the three elemental particles of love in business. They are knowledge, networks, and compassion. To be an impact player in business, you simply have to know more than most other people know. That means taking the power of ideas seriously, reading books voraciously, and developing a system of organizing what you've learned. But all of your knowledge won't amount to much if you don't have a network of people to share it with -- and enough compassion for the people in that network to understand that your success is a direct result of their success.

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, throu canst not then be false to any man.

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.

The failure to listen and ask questions could be easily solved by posing three extraordinarily simple questions, yet these frequently go unasked. They are: What do you think? How do you feel? What can I/we do? These must be the three easiest questions in the world, yet only too often managers turn themselves inside out trying to 'second-guess' their staff, either 'telling' them without consultation or wondering what they want, yet failing to ask them or to explore what they think and feel. Those of us who are interested in emotional intelligence would argue that feeling is just as important as thinking.

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Managers must be aware of their strengths, limitations, motives, and values in order to make the appropriate trade-offs between fit and learning opportunity when selecting a position.

You are searching for the magic key that will unlock the door to the source of power; and yet you have the key in your own hands, and you may use it the moment you learn to control your thoughts.

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I've learned that good performance and true job satisfaction come from exceeding what I expect of myself, not just what others expect of me. The key to job performance is first to realize that as an employee, I have many customers who expect me to deliver a quality service. And just as every great company works day and night to serve its customers, I must do the same for mine. Good performance shouldn't be judged simply in the results you achieve. It's also determined by how you achieve those results.

Great performances come from asking ourselves some basic questions. Why are we doing it this way? How can we do it better? Or faster? Or more reliably? What haven't we thought of yet? What's best for our customers? Ultimately, the final judgment on performance comes down to one simple question: Is this the best we can do?

Which questions guide our lives? Which questions do we make our own? Which questions deserve our undivided and full personal commitment? Finding the right questions is crucial to finding the right answers.

The key to great leadership is to recognize the particular motivations within yourself and develop the skills that are compatible with them. It is equally important to acknowledge that there are skills you are not likely to master.

The real work of critical inquiry is to examine what we think we know in order to learn about what we do not know. We must question our givens and opinions. For it is far easier to label than to understand, and intellectual laziness undermines our studies with the deadly inversion of the scientific method: "I'll believe it when I see it!" becomes "I'll see it when I believe it!"

What distinguishes the men and women who succeed from those who fail is the efficacy of their actions, not the spaciousness of their hopes. If they believe their lives are out of alignment with their capabilities, goals, and needs, they make choices and take actions to correct the situation.

Honest feedback is a valuable-albeit often painful-gift. Seeking it out is not a natural act. We all want to protect ourselves, to solicit only those perspectives that reinforce our positive self-image.To hear what we agree with and discard the rest. We rationalize this behavior in a million different ways, from discrediting the source of a disagreeable perspective ("What do they really know?") to "accidentally" forgetting the feedback a few days later. That is why it takes conscious effort to see ourselves as others truly see us, rather than as we'd like to think they do.

Ironically, it is often much easier to get clarity professionally than personally. Outstanding firms find ways to make constructive feedback an ongoing part of their professionals' lives. But performance reviews about your personal life are anything but routine and a lot tougher to facilitate.

Until you've explicitly defined your life's goals and aspirations, you can't really know what tradeoffs you're willing to make to reach them.

Building an impressive resume is a lot easier than building a fulfilling life because life is a lot more complicated. It's not a ladder at all, but rather a continuum with confusing twists and turns. Being smart helps; being wise, thoughtful, and disciplined is an absolute necessity. We've seen stars succeed at life, and we've seen stars fail life miserably, despite professional success.Those that succeed build lives as well as resumes.

When people ask me how to set priorities, I ask them a question: At what level do you want to have this conversation? Each of us operates on many different levels at all times. We each have a runway that holds all of the little things that consume our time. At 10,000 feet are the projects. At 20,000 feet, people are deciding on their roles and goals. At 30,000 feet, people are thinking ahead, asking themselves where they want to be in their careers 12 to 18 months down the road. At 40,000 feet, they're thinking 3 to 5 years out and looking at their organizational aspirations. Then, at the top -- at 50,000 feet -- they're asking, "What's my job on this planet?"

A Wall Street executive once complained to me about having to attend too many meetings. I drew a chart and asked, "At what level do you want to have this conversation?" I explained that at 20,000 feet, maybe you need those meetings. But if you go up a level and think about the next 12 to 18 months, maybe you can pass on some of those meetings. And at 50,000 feet, where you think about your heart and your health, you might say, "I don't need to make partner. I've made enough money. From now on, I'm going to leave at 7 PM every day. And if you don't like it, then fire me."

If you focus on your values, then you'll improve the "balance" between your business and personal lives. Give me a break. Focusing on your values may provide you with meaning, but it won't simplify things. You'll just discover even more stuff that's important to you. You can do anything -- but not everything. The universe is full of creative projects that are waiting to be done. So, if you really care about quality of life, if you want to relax, then don't focus on values. Just control your aspirations. That will simplify things. Learning to set boundaries is incredibly difficult for most people.

Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they've started.

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Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

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I don't know that if you follow your dreams, the money will follow.
I do know that if you follow your dreams, the money won't matter as much.
I don't know that if you serve others, you'll be rewarded financially.
I do know that if you serve others, you'll be a happier, more fulfilled person.

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The problem with most people is that they do not know what they want, but they do know what it is that they don't want and they keep asking not to get it - and are constantly frustrated because that is exactly what they get.

If you want to change something in your life, it is important that you use a "moving towards" strategy and not a "moving away from" strategy. You have got to get your mind focussed on where you want to go. You have to superimpose the picture of what you want over the picture of what you do not want.

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The image of perfect freedom neglects the fact that many attractive and enjoyable human goods require some discipline and practice. Our enjoyment of cooking or poker or baseball is amplified when we are good at them. It is hard to live a happy life if we develop no talent whatsoever. Becoming good at one thing precludes doing other things. The perfectly free life, with no roles, would not be a very happy one.

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I think about fitting work in the same way we might think about other practices, often drawn from arts, games, or sports, like piano playing or baseball.

The first thing to ask is whether we have the right aptitudes. No aptitude, no fit. If you're tone deaf, music is probably not for you. This kind of fit is what society needs: from a social point of view, each person should do that job that his or her aptitude fits best. This way, tasks get done quickly and efficiently.

That's no small matter (how often do we wish to do what we are no good at!), but there is a second thing to ask about fit. There are lots of activities we might have an aptitude for, but cannot manage to identify with or enjoy. You might be very good at accounting.Yet you might not be able to think of yourself as an accountant, to take any enjoyment from the activity, to connect it in any deep way to who you are. Fitting work in the deepest sense means having an ability to realize and to enjoy the distinctive goods that your work offers. This kind of fit is what matters most on a personal level.

If you want to command respect, you need to do four things: Have the wisdom to know the right thing to do in any circumstance, the integrity to do the right thing, the character to stand up to people who don't do the right thing and the courage to stop people who won't do the right thing. If you can do that, you'll command respect and people will beat a path to your door.

We view everyone else in light of their results but view ourselves based on our good intentions. If you can find a few people in your personal and professional life who will be honest with you about your own performance, you are, indeed, fortunate.

If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less.