175 Posts found for Source: Leader to Leader

Change compelled by crisis is usually seen as a threat, not an opportunity.

Content: Quotation | Author: Rosabeth Moss Kanter | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Hope combines the determination to achieve one’s goals with the ability to generate the means to do so.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Bennis | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Personal Development

For executive leaders, character is framed by drive, competence, and integrity. Most senior executives have the drive and competence necessary to lead. But too often organizations elevate people who lack the moral compass. I call them “destructive achievers.” They are seldom evil people, but by using resources for no higher purpose than achievement of their own goals, they often diminish the enterprise. Such leaders seldom … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Bennis | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Character, Integrity, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Quiet managers strengthen the cultural bonds between people, not by treating them as detachable “human resources” (probably the most offensive term ever coined in management, at least until “human capital” came along), but as respected members of a cohesive social system. When people are trusted, they do not have to be empowered.

Content: Quotation | Author: Henry Mintzberg | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Management

If you want the imagination to see the future, then you better have the wisdom to appreciate the past. An obsession with the present—with what’s “hot”, and what’s “in”—may be dazzling, but all that does is blind everyone to the reality. Show me a chief executive who ignores yesterday, who favors the new outsider over the experienced insider, the quick fix over steady progress, and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Henry Mintzberg | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Decision Making, Experience, Future, History, Management

Nothing challenges leadership as much as managing the balance between the yeses—which everyone is happy to add to the balance sheet—and the nos, which no one ever volunteers for.

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew S. Grove | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Leadership

While many executives acknowledge the need for leaders at every level of the organization, they rarely manage the enterprise as if those leaders existed. They fall into a trap that has become embedded in our language; they confuse rank with leadership. The belief that the leaders are only those with executive titles and corner offices serves to reinforce the lack of initiative, enterprise, and entrepreneurship … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter Senge | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

It’s easy to bash corporate hierarchy. Hierarchical authority as it has traditionally functioned is the authority of compliance—and compliance won’t get you far in today’s fluid, fickle marketplace. But hierarchy still has important functions, especially if we can learn to recognize its limitations and to adapt it to the changing nature of leadership.

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter Senge | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

From both a practical and theoretical standpoint, senior executives are expected to provide insight and vision about how the world is evolving over the next 10 to 30 years. But Americans probably have less sense of history than almost any culture on the planet and we seem to be, if anything, hell-bent on having even less sense of history. Understanding the past is yet another … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter Senge | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Future, History

People tend to internalize an organization’s culture, which for senior managers can mean internalizing a hierarchical culture of compliance rather than an inclusive culture of shared learning. So the people who will have the most difficulty in changing may be the most senior people, for two reasons: they’ve been around the longest, and they have been selected by the system as exemplars of what the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter Senge | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

I often say that life is like an apple—it falls into your hands. But it won’t fall into your hands unless you stand under the tree. You have to find the orchard, find the tree, and then something may happen.

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Handy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Personal Development, Wisdom

What do you see as the key attributes that make leaders successful? Passion. They really have to believe in what they do. Ironically, this means they can occasionally believe in very bad things. Most effective leaders, therefore, also have a moral compass. They’ve also got to be quite tough in order to deliver their passion. The effective leaders that I’ve met are a strange combination … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Handy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Leadership

The leader’s first job is to be a missionary, to remind people what is special about them and their institutions. Second it is to set up the infrastructure for that to happen—not the superstructure, not to take the actual decisions, but to set the support systems, the people in place. The two go together; it’s no good having a brilliant strategy and structure and great … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Handy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

The interesting thing about organizations is that they can make the assumption that they’re never going to die. And the reason that you stay immortal is you have discovered what’s unique about you. The job of the leader is to work that out. To express it. Very few leaders succeed in doing this. I ask a lot of leaders of organizations what it’s all about. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Handy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Mission, Organizational Behavior

In new businesses, the start-up group—which may be 10, 20, 50 people—has a psychological stake and often a financial stake in the business. These people use what I describe as the twin hierarchy approach. That is, there is the hierarchy of status—though not more than three or four levels. You find this in professional organizations, with senior partners, ordinary partners, and associates who would like … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Handy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

The reason that the stock market is so important is not because it raises money; it’s because it is putting a price on your property. Somebody else can buy you. When your stock price goes down, you’re worried, not because you can’t raise more money—you weren’t doing that anyway. But suddenly, it’s as if your house is valued at half the price of the house … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Handy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Economics, Finance, Market/Investment

I learned from Peter J. Gomes that people burn out less from a lack of energy than from a lack of a sense of purpose.

Content: Quotation | Author: Taylor Bodman | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

It is possible to honor the past and at the same time to make real the failings that lead us to want a better tomorrow.

Content: Quotation | Author: Taylor Bodman | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Change Management, Future

Every great leader begins with a great dream. Ambitious visions not only require a capacity for meaningful change, but also provide the energy and inspiration to engage others. These tasks — articulating a dream and rallying others around it — are the essence of leadership. The study of leaders in every field tells us that leadership is the residue of ambition… Great leaders have an … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James A. Champy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Achievement, Ambition, Leadership, Success / Failure

In the end it is the quality and character, a leader’s understanding of how to be, not how to do, that determines the performance, the results.

Content: Quotation | Author: Frances Hesselbein | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Achievement, Leadership, Success / Failure