MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP QUOTES
I am not management or leadership guru. My knowledge and skills pale in comparison to the icons of management and leadership-experts like John C. Maxwell, Peter F. Drucker, Dale Carnegie, Jim Rohn, and others at those levels.
However, I have learned and tested many management and leadership techniques throughout my career as a CPA and business professional. That experience, coupled with my never-ending desire to help others grow and succeed on professional levels, compelled me to share my favorite management and leadership quotes. And so that is what I have attempted to do here.
My goal is to continuously improve this page, and so your ideas and feedback are strongly encouraged. Feel free to email me at gparsons66@hotmail.com.
BRAINSTORMING & IDEAS
"Few organizations ever get going on the good ideas. Everybody is much too busy on the tasks of yesterday." - Peter Drucker
"Always be on the lookout for ideas. Be completely indiscriminate as to the source. Get ideas from customers, children, competitors, other industries, or cab drivers. It doesn’t matter who thought of an idea. Many managers do not understand this." - Jeffrey Fox
"Don’t let ideas escape. Write them down. Nail them to paper." - David J. Schwartz
"Encourage foolish or impractical ideas. These can often be built on and can lead to new innovations." - Cy Charney
"Every time you think “wouldn’t it be great if" or “if only they offered", write that thought down!" - Lee Cockerell
** Visit my full list of Brainstorming Quotes
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COMMUNICATION
"Good communicators take something complicated and make it simple." - John Maxwell
"Don’t just assume your employee team members know what’s expected of them. Tell them. And tell them again. Tell them in every way you can dream up, from memos, to posters on the bulletin board, to emails, to tweets, to one-on-one conversations. Leave no room for misunderstanding or contradiction. Consistency is vital." - Lee Cockerell
"Simplify your sentences. Ask yourself after each sentence and paragraph, “is there an easier way of expressing what I have written?" - Cy Charney
"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” - Peter Drucker
"Make sure to communicate your idea quickly and keep it straight to the point." - Paul Bailey
** Visit my full list of Communication Quotes
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COMPENSATION
"When you give a guy a raise, that’s the time to increase his responsibilities." - Lee Iacocca
"Four meaningful factors determine a wage: # of people willing and able; specialized skills; required unpleasantness of a job; and demand for services that the job fulfills" - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
"I recommend to young people to seek work for what they will learn, more than what they will make." - Robert T Kiyosaki
"The purpose of an incentives system should not be to get the right behaviors from the wrong people, but to get the right people on the bus in the first place, and keep them there." - Jim Collins
"Workers work hard enough to not be fired, and owners pay just enough so that workers won’t quit." - Robert T Kiyosaki
** Visit my full list of Compensation Quotes
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CONFLICT RESOLUTION
"When you meet to discuss conflict, make it known that you are determined to resolve the conflict for the sake of everyone involved." - Cy Charney
"The aim of argument and of discussion, should not be victory, but progress" - Joseph Joubert
"There are some people who always seem angry and continuously look for conflict. Walk away from these people. The battle they're fighting isn't with you, it's with themselves." - Rashida Rowe
"10% of conflicts are due to difference in opinion. 90% are due to wrong tone of voice." - unknown
"If your associates are angry, ask them for ideas on how to solve the problem." - Cy Charney
** Visit my full list of Conflict Resolution Quotes
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CUSTOMER SERVICE
"Treat customers and employees like guests in your home." - David J. Schwartz
"When you win an argument with a customer, in reality you’ve both lost." - Lee Cockerell
"If you don’t do something special for your guests (or customers), they won’t remember you." - Fred Lee
"The only difference between merely satisfactory delivery and great delivery is attention to detail" - Richard Branson
"Your best guarantee of good customer service is happy employees." - Cy Charney
** Visit my full list of Customer Service Quotes
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DECISION-MAKING
"There are two kinds of decisions: revocable and irrevocable. Knowing the difference is a hallmark of the good manager." - Jeffrey Fox
"Making a leadership decision after gathering only 40-60% of the information that can be obtained, and then use your experience to make up the difference." - John Maxwell
"Strive to follow a fair decision-making process. Even if people do not agree with the final decision, they often will support it if they feel that their views and interests have been heard and taken seriously and that you have given them a plausible rationale for why you made the call that you did." - Michael Watkins
"People often go along with things they are not completely happy about if they perceive the process as fair." - Michael Watkins
"Most reasonable people don’t have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to." - Patrick Lencioni
** Visit my full list of Decision-Making Quotes
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DELEGATING & EMPOWERING
"Empowerment often means you have to develop people, which is initially much more time consuming than solving the problem on your own." - Steven R. Covey
"You’ll garner much greater results in you spend your time and energy on building people’s strengths rather than managing their weaknesses." - Paul Falcone
"There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being-to help someone succeed." - John Maxwell
"Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others." - Tim Ferriss
"Good managers never put off till tomorrow what they can delegate today. A major cause of stress and poor time management is an unwillingness, or inability, to delegate responsibility to people who work for us. Delegating responsibility to others allows you to concentrate on your duties as manager; planning, problem solving and other pro-active matters. Failure to delegate forces you to spend too much time on trivial issues and to neglect critical opportunities." - Cy Charney
** Visit my full list of Delegating & Empowering Quotes
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FEEDBACK & PERFORMANCE
"The strongest leaders provide a formal feedback four times per year to catch up on progress, re-defined goals in light of new information, and provide timely information and guidance to their team members" - Paul Falcone
"Instead of saying ‘go figure it out’, suggest to them that they are going to feel great when they figure it out" - Dale Carnegie
"An important leadership lesson: when a mishap arises, instead of immediately looking for someone to blame, first see if a flawed policy or procedure is causing the problem." - Lee Cockerell
"The people who get nothing done often work a great deal harder." - Peter Drucker
"If some people on your team are not performing, their peers know it and your peers know it." - Michael Watkins
** Visit my full list of Feedback & Performance Quotes
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GOAL-SETTING
"Write down your goals. If they’re not written I can almost guarantee that they’re not focused enough." - John Maxwell
"Goal setting is the first step in getting control over time." - Jeffrey Fox
"Tell everybody what your goals are. The more people you tell, the more you will be reminded of them." - Cy Charney
"Without goals, managers and the people around them are doomed to operate aimlessly, adding little value to the organization." - Cy Charney
"Conduct a daily interview with yourself. Ask what can I do to make myself more valuable today." - David J. Schwartz
** Visit my full list of Goal-Setting Quotes
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HIRING & RECRUITING
"You are only as good as the people you hire." - Paul Falcone
"Ask interviewees what the best idea they had to improve the business in their last position." - Lee Cockerell
"Hire five people, work them like 10, and pay them like 8." - Jim Collins
"Hire for attitude and you can usually teach the skills." - Simon Sinek
"When hiring, look for passion, attention to detail, a drive to do things beyond what you need to do. And quirky is totally OK." - Timothy Ferriss
** Visit my full list of Hiring & Recruiting Quotes
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LEADERSHIP
"Fall in love with the idea of helping others build their careers and realize their ambitions." - Paul Falcone
"Being a leader means doing what has to be done, when it has to be done, in the way it should be done, whether you like it or not, and whether they like it or not." - Lee Cockerell
"People join companies, but generally leave because of their managers."- unknown
"The team must understand that their leader cares about them and their well-being." - Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
"Spend one hard hour every day planning, dreaming, scheming, thinking, calculating. Consider options. Ponder problems. Write down ideas." - Jeffrey Fox
** Visit my full list of Leadership Quotes
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CHANGE MANAGEMENT
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something." - Woodrow Wilson
"Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end." - Robin Sharma
"Change always meets with resistance." - Lee Cockerell
"Get used to being uncomfortable." - John Maxwell
"Being good is the enemy of being great." - Fred Lee
** Visit my full list of Change Management Quotes
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LISTENING SKILLS
"Leaders who do not listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say." – Andy Stanley
"Good leaders know that when they value the thoughts and ideas of others, they receive the compounding results of shared thinking and accomplish more than they ever could on their own." - John Maxwell
"It’s funny how much more effort we put into developing our speaking skills than we do our listening skills." - Lee Cockerell
"If your associates are angry, listen to them without interruption. Allowing them to let off steam will solve half the problem." - Cy Charney
"Displaying a genuine ability to listen often translates into increased credibility and influence." - Lee Cockerell
** Visit my full list of Listening Skills Quotes
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MANAGEMENT
"No matter where you work or what you do, you can be the best boss that your staffers have ever had." - Paul Falcone
"Make sure everyone matters…and that everyone knows it." - Lee Cockerell
"No one likes to be micromanaged so it should only be for a short period of time and it should feel like a chore to you." - Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
"A good boss trains you to take her place, and when she ultimately gets promoted (or leaves), you have a chance to progress." - Jeffrey Fox
"Try to give suggestions, not orders." - Dale Carnegie
** Visit my full list of Management Quotes
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NEGOTIATING
"Ask sellers “what kind of discount can you offer" to make them negotiate against themselves." - Tim Ferriss
"When a negotiating opponent knows your deadline, they’ll get to the real deal and concession-making more quickly." - Chris Voss
"You do not get what you want. You get what you negotiate." - Harvey Mackay
"The most difficult thing in any negotiation, almost, is making sure that you strip it of the emotion and deal with the facts." - Howard Baker
"Flattery is the infantry of negotiation." - Lord Chandos
** Visit my full list of Negotiating Quotes
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OPPORTUNITY & GROWTH
"Show me someone who has never made a mistake, and I will show you someone who is not doing anything to improve your organization." - Michael Abrashoff
"Which do you want, the pain of staying where you are or the pain of growth?" - Judith Hanson Lasater
"The person with technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power." - Dale Carnegie
"As we get better at anything, we love it more." - Fred Lee
"The goal of each day must be to get a little better, to build on the previous day’s progress." - John Maxwell
** Visit my full list of Opportunity & Growth Quotes
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PUBLIC SPEAKING
"Try to answer every question your group or committee will have about a proposal before they even have a chance to ask it." - John Maxwell
"With speeches, tell people what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them." - Cy Charney
"People require about 40% less time to grasp a concept with visual aids than with verbal instruction alone." - Cy Charney
"Good speakers usually have great knowledge of what they want to talk about and an intense desire to tell it to other people." - David J. Schwarz
"Speech is power; speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
** Visit my full list of Public Speaking Quotes
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TIME MANAGEMENT
"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" - Parkinson's Law
"The people who don’t have the time to learn time management are the ones who need it the most." - Lee Cockerell
"Do not let perfect be the enemy of better." - Jeffrey Fox
"I am constantly amazed by the number of people who can’t seem to control their own schedules." - Lee Iacocca
"Force people to define their requests before spending time with them." - Tim Ferriss
** Visit my full list of Time Management Quotes
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TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT
"I have found that the more I teach those who want to learn, the more I learn." - Robert T Kiyosaki
"When onboarding people, tell staff it will be a lot easier for them to do well in their role if we give them crystal clear feedback along the way." - Ken Blanchard & Spencer Johnson
"In my experience, companies with excellent service reputations are constantly training and developing every employee from day one until day of departure." - Lee Cockerell
"Spend at least 60% of your time developing people so that they can take care of business for you." - Cy Charney
"New experiences can be more important to a career in the long run than added compensation." - Lee Cockerell
** Visit my full list of Training & Development Quotes
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MISCELLANEOUS
"Dress right. Look important because it helps you think important." - David J. Schwartz
"If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head." - Mark Manson
"Great creative work needs large, uninterrupted blocks of time." - Tim Ferriss
"Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty." - Tim Ferriss
"Business is war without bullets." - Phil Knight
** Visit my full list of Miscellaneous Quotes
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MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP GURUS
Here is list of some of the icons of leadership and management. I recommend that you find and read as many of their books as possible (including the out-of-print books, which you can usually find for sale used on Amazon).
- Jim Collins
- Jim Rohn
- John C. Maxwell
- Lee Cockerell
- Paul Falcone
- Peter F. Drucker
- Stephen R. Covey
For a list of the top 50 leadership and management experts, visit Inc. Magazine.
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New sections hopefully coming soon...
- System conversions
- HR management
- Promotions
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