Leadership Quotes
Leadership is about mapping out where you need to go to as a team or an organization; and it is dynamic, exciting, and inspiring. Leading is about striving to become better than we are, and helping everyone around us to become better too.
In this article, you will find leadership quotes that will motivate and inspire you to be a true leader.
60 Inspiring Quotes About Leadership
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” –Martin Luther King Jr.
“Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” –John C. Maxwell
“Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.”–Vince Lombardi
“Real leadership is leaders recognizing that they serve the people that they lead.” –Pete Hoekstra
“Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar.” –Orrin Woodward
“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.” –Harvey S. Firestone
“Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.” –Seth Godin
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” – John C. Maxwell
“Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.”–Dianne Feinstein
“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.” –John Kenneth Galbraith
“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” –Colin Powell
“Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.” –Harold Geneen
“Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.” –John Zenger
“Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.” –Brian Tracy
“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” –Warren G. Bennis
“A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.” –Douglas MacArthur
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch
“Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” –Peter F. Drucker
“Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.” –Stephen Covey
“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.” –John Buchan
“A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs.” –Robert Townsend
“Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people,’ that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” –Peter F. Drucker
“The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.” –Ken Blanchard
“Earn your leadership every day.” –Michael Jordan
“You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.” –Sam Rayburn
“A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” –Arnold Glasow
“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.” –Mahatma Gandhi
“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
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.” –Andrew Carnegie
“The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”–Abraham Lincoln
“Leadership is an action, not a position.” –Donald McGannon
“Leadership is something you earn, something you’re chosen for. You can’t come in yelling, ‘I’m your leader!’ If it happens, it’s because the other guys respect you.” – Ben Roethlisberger
“Each group and each youngster is different. As a leader or coach, you get to know what they need.” – Mike Krzyzewski
“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control.” – Tom Landry
“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” –Bill Gates
“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes.” –Peter F. Drucker
“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” –Arnold Glasow
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” –John F. Kennedy
“Leadership is an ever-evolving position.” –Mike Krzyzewski
“A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.” –Leroy Eimes
“True leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed… Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.” – Sheryl Sandberg
“A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.” – Joe DiMaggio
“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
“I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal.” – Ben Carson
“Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.” –Brian Tracy
“True leadership lies in guiding others to success–in ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well.” –Bill Owens
“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” – Rosalynn Carter
“The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.” –Carlos Ghosn
“To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn’t know where he is going.” – Joe Namath
“High sentiments always win in the end, The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.” – George Orwell
“Leadership is the ability to get extraordinary achievement from ordinary people”
“The best leaders have a high Consideration Factor. They really care about their people”
“The effective leader recognizes that they are more dependent on their people than they are on them. Walk softly.”
“Leaders set high standards. Refuse to tolerate mediocrity or poor performance”
“In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.” – Harry Truman
“The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” –Tony Blair
“Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50 percent of your time in leading yourself–your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20 percent leading those with authority over you and 15 percent leading your peers.” –Dee Hock
“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” – Warren Bennis