75 Quotes on Effective Leadership | Inspiring Workspaces by BOS (2024)

“What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”

Stephen Covey, author & educator

“Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.”

Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator

“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Warren Buffett, investor

“You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.”

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company

“Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.”

Walt Disney, founder of Disney

“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, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Peter F. Drucker, author and educator

“It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.”

Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

“A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.”

Joe DiMaggio, former New York Yankees outfielder & Hall of Fame Baseball Player

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”

- Theodore M. Hesburgh

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”

John F. Kennedy

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

Jack Welch

“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

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”

Henry Kissinger, former U.S. National Security Advisor & Secretary of State

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.”

Gen. Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State

“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, former first lady of the United States

“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, former New York Jets quarterback

“If you don’t believe in yourself, why is anyone else going to believe in you.”

Tom Brady, New England Patriots quarterback

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

John C. Maxwell

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

“There is no investment you can make which will pay you so well as the effort to scatter sunshine and good cheer through your establishment.”

Orison Swett Marden

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Peter Drucker

“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”

Dale Carnegie, author & motivational speaker

“Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers.”

Robin S. Sharma

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”

Michael Jordan, Hall of Fame basketball superstar

“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”

Mother Teresa, Catholic nun & saint

“Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.”

Sam Walton, founder of Walmart & Sam’s Club

“One of the most important things for any leader is to never let anyone else define who you are. And you define who you are. I never think of myself as being a woman CEO of this company. I think of myself as a steward of a great institution.”

Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady of the United States

“Knowing what must be done does away with fear.”

Rosa Parks, civil rights activist

“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”

Theodore Roosevelt, former U.S. President

“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, former Dallas Cowboys coach

“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

“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Leaders instill in their people a hope for success and a belief in themselves. Positive leaders empower people to accomplish their goals.”

Unknown

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

President John Quincy Adams, former U.S. President

“The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action – an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign – even as the rest of the world wonders why you’re not marching in step with the status quo.”

Bill Taylor

“A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.”

Simon Sinek

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder

“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”

Woodrow Wilson, former U.S. President

“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”

Alexander the Great, former king of Macedonia

“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, former U.S. President

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

President Abraham Lincoln, former U.S. President

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister

“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”

Mahatma Gandhi, Indian independence movement leader

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights activist

“A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.”

Arnold H. Glasow

“The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.”

Ray Kroc

“A leader is a dealer in hope.”

Napoleon Bonaparte, French military leader & emperor

“If ‘leadership’ has come to be known as something much bigger than us, aligned to changing the world, then we are spending way too much time celebrating things that hardly anyone can do and not celebrating things we can do every day.”

Drew Dudley, founder of Day One Leadership

“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, economist & diplomat

“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, former President of South Africa

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Barack Obama, former U.S. President

“There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.”

Indira Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India

“The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.”

Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, former U.S. President

“Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?”

Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“There is a troublesome humor some men have, that if they may not lead, they will not follow; but had rather a thing were never done, than not done their own way, tho’ other ways very desirable.”

William Penn, early Quaker & founder of Pennsylvania

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Mark Twain, writer

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet and essayist

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Aristotle, Greek philosopher

“To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’”

Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher

“I learned that things are never as complicated as we imagine them to be. It is only our arrogance which seeks to find complicated answers to simple problems.”

Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Winner

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy.”

Henry Ford

“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.”

Edward R. Murrow, American broadcast journalist