We expected, that good-to-great leaders would start with the vision and the strategy. Instead, they attended to people first, strategy second. They got the right people on the bus, moved the wrong people off, ushered the right people to the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

Jim Collins

Both convictions – either that leaders are more important as managers or that managers outrank leaders – inhere a fundamental missconception. In an organization whose context is notably both dynamic and complex both competencies are important. Many management experts seem to be unable to perceive or understand that there is a possibility of an as-well-as.

Aurun Gairola

The only real training for leadership is leadership.

Anthony Joy

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because as has been said, ›it ist the quality which guarantees all others‹.

Winston Churchill

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Peter F. Drucker

The job is ... not to reform or reeducate the boss, not to make him conform to what business schools or the management book say bosses should be like. It's to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual.

Peter F. Drucker

The more we talked about our geeks and geezers, the more apparent it became, that this was a story not just about leadership development but about human development. At some point, we realized that the two are inexplicably intertwined, that the very factors that make a person a great leader are the ones that make him or her a successful, healthy human being.

Warren. G. Bennis, Robert J. Thomas

We discovered that every one of our geezers who continues to play a leadership role has one quality of overriding importance: neoteny. … Neoteny is more than retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neoteny is the retention of all those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy. Unlike those defeated by time and age, our geezers have remained much like our geeks – open, willing to take risks, hungry for knowledge and experience, courageous, eager to see what the new day brings. Time and lost steal the zest from the unlucky, and leave them looking longingly at the past. Neoteny is a metaphor for the quality – and the gift – that keeps the fortunate of whatever age focused on all marvelous undiscovered things to come.

Warren G. Bennis, Robert J. Thomas

Leaders who succeed again and again are geniuses at grasping context … the ability to weigh a welter of facts, some as subtle as how very different groups of people interpret a gesture, is one of the hallmarks of a true leader.

Warren G. Bennis, Robert J. Thomas

Integrity is knowing what you stand for – possessing a strong moral compass – and having the courage of your convictions; it is a process of self knowledge that provides a core identity and a spine that remains strong even when circumstances demand that you adapt. Integrity is what keeps the leader from becoming a hollow dissembler or a leaf in the wind.

Robert J. Thomas

We were surprised, shocked really, to discover the type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great one. Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great-leaders seem to have come from mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders paradoxically blend of personal humility and professional will.

Jim Collins

I would hope that ... managers worldwide continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than “making deals.” Management affects people and their lives.

Peter F. Drucker

Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.

Henry Louis Mencken