Best Leadership Quotes
These leadership quotes employ Optimal Thinking, the language of our best self. Optimal Thinking enables us to use best practices to achieve the best solutions for leaders.
“Optimal Thinking leaders point the best way forward. They rise above mediocre and even extraordinary thinking and performance.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
“Every situation – even a disaster – is an opportunity to be your best.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
“Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.”
Peter F. Drucker
“Leaders conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.”
John Gardner
“It turns out that doing the right thing, treating people right, is also the right thing for the company.”
Jim Goodnight, Founder and CEO, SAS
“Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on.”
Walter Lippman
“People who matter are most aware that everyone else does, too.”
Malcolm Forbes, Forbes Magazine Publisher
“We’re going to do the right thing for the company and our customers, all things considered.”
Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase
“Leader in its most important sense means being the agent of your own life, influencing the things you care about most in the world to make it a richer life.”
Stewart Friedman
“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”
Harvey Firestone
“Leader in its most important sense means being the agent of your own life, influencing the things you care about most in the world to make it a richer life.”
Stewart Friedman
“The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.”
Zig Ziglar
“Your main goal in this world is to be your best self. Every situation is an opportunity to be your best.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
“The future belongs to those who bring their best to the present.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
“An optimal leader does what is right, especially when it is inconvenient or when no-one is watching.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
“Speaking for and acting in the best interests of others requires cohesiveness and is most effectively done when leaders see themselves as members of their group.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
“Things get in the way of letting people be human. Particularly quarterly reports and business schools. I think what we try to do is make it very clear that what’s important is doing the right thing. And if we do the right thing, all the other things take care of themselves.”
Danny Wegman, CEO, Wegmans Food Markets
“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It’s the only thing.”
Albert Schweitzer
“Firms that draw commitment from customers and staff give them a way to sign up for something that can allow them to be their best self.”
John Jantsch
“Ideas are any man’s greatest asset.”
Harvey Firestone
“To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!”
Lao Tsu
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Do the best job and you’ll never have any competition.”
Christopher Casey
“Let him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself.”
Thomas Carlyle
“To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!”
Lao Tsu
“Victory belongs to the most persevering.”
Napoleon
“The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted.”
Elizabeth Dole
“The most beloved leaders encourage their people to express themselves fully.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
“Optimal Thinking leaders discover what motivates each person to do his or her best, and work with these motivations to achieve the highest standards and objectives.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
“It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth–and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up–that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“The best is he who calls men to the best. And those who heed the call are also blessed. But worthless who call not, heed not, but rest.”
Hesiod, 8th Century B.C.
“The wisest mind has something yet to learn.”
George Santayana
“He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.”
Stephen R. Covey
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Peter Drucker
“I strongly believe that the responsibility of leadership is to shape the debate — to practice and project the right attributes — whether in a business enterprise, in our society, and even in our religions.”
Farooq Kathwari, CEO, Ethan Allen
“When you have choices, choose the best. When you have no choice, do your best.”
Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D., Optimal Thinking Executive Coach
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