Leadership Is Confusing as Hell

“Think of pre-1990 as the Age of Sucking Up to the Hierarchy. The Age of the Promise ‘Em Everything Pitch lasted from 1995 to 2000. The next five years will be the Age of No-Bull Performance. Which means that we’re going to see leadership emerge as the most important element of business — the attribute that is highest in demand and shortest in supply. And … [ Read more ]

The Perfect Vision Dr. V.

Inspiring article about Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, who runs several eye hospitals that restore eyesite to about 180,000 Indians each year, 70% of whome receive the service for free.

Thorton Bradshaw

I’m a great believer that leadership, in a large part, is moral leadership. And people want to follow moral leadership. They respect it. And they expect it, too.

The Two Faces of Leadership: Considering the Dark Side of Leader-Follower Dynamics

Leaders are not always benevolent; their intents not always benign. Followers are not necessarily passive and devoid of responsibility. History has taught us these lessons enough times – why then is popular management literature so full of inspirational transformational models of leadership?

James MacGregor Burns

…(T)he genius of leadership lies in the manner in which leaders see and act on their own and their follower’s values and motivations.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Generals are expendable just as is any other item in an army.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you will help them to become what they are capable of being.

Albert Einstein

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

You must not retain for one instant any man in a responsible position where you have become doubtful of his ability to do his job. This matter call for more courage than any other thing you will have to do, but I expect you to be perfectly cold-blooded about it.

John W. Gardner

In the conventional mode, people want to know whether the followers believe in the leader; a more searching question is whether the leader believes in the followers.

Lachlan McLean

You can only lead others where you yourself are prepared to go.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

You do not lead by hitting people over the head-that’s assault, not leadership.

Mary Parker Follett

Let us look further at the essentials of leadership. Of the greatest importance is the ability to grasp a total situation… Out of a welter of facts, experience, desires, aims, the leader must find the unifying thread. He must see the whole, not a mere kaleidoscope of pieces. He must see the relation between all the different factors in a situation.

John Kotter

Leadership… is about coping with change.

James MacGregor Burns

Moral leadership is not mere preaching, or the uttering of pieties, or the insistence on social conformity. Moral leadership emerges from, and always returns to, the fundamental wants and needs, aspirations, and values of the followers.