12 Leadership Quotations from the First Half of the Decade: 2011-15

These author quotations exemplify how leadership is changing and illustrates how 21st Century Leadership is radically different from the traditional approach

#1 Leadership Is about Getting Everyone Thinking

Leadership is not about getting people to do stuff. It’s about getting people to think…I believe that what’s going to win in the 21st Century…and in the future is organizations that allow everyone in their organization to think. Get everybody thinking — not doing.

— L. David Marquet

#2 Anyone Can Practice Leadership But Not All Executives Do

Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank. I know many people at the senior-most levels of organizations who are absolutely not leaders...And I know many people who are at the bottom of organizations who have no authority and they are absolutely leaders, and this is because they have chosen to look after the person to the left of them, and they have chosen to look after the person to the right of them. This is what a leader is.

— Simon Sinek

#3 Leadership Is Tactical and Not Strategic

Sometimes leadership is imagined to be something majestic and awe inspiring. Grand visions, world-changing initiatives, transforming the lives of millions — all are noble possibilities, but real leadership is in the daily moments.

— James M. Kouzes

Barry Z. Posner

#4 Knowing About Leadership Is Different From Knowing Leadership

Only a very small percentage of people actually make sustainable changes after attend leadership seminars or reading books. There is a world of difference between knowing about something and knowing it. You can learn about leadership reading books and attending seminars, but you will never know leadership doing those things.

— James C. Hunter

#5 Command and Control should Be Shared

Traditional approaches to Command and Control aren’t up to the challenge. Simply stated, they lack the agility required in the 21st Century....

Command and Control applies to endeavors undertaken by collections of individuals and organizations of vastly different characteristics and sizes for many different purposes.

— David S. Alberts

Richard E. Hayes

#6 Importance Of Autonomy And Choice

When you swap coercive methods with personal choices, you open up the possibility of influencing even the most addictive and highly entrenched behaviors by gaining access to one of the most powerful human motivations, the power of the committed heart.

— Joseph GrennyKerry PattersonDavid MaxfieldRon McMillanAl Switzer

#7 Ego Discourages Creativity

If the people in charge are very egotistical, then they want to take credit for everything that happens, and they want to feel like they are in control of everything that happens. And that means, consciously or unconsciously, they will discourage creativity in other people.

— John Cleese

#8 Influencing Motivation Alone May Not Be Enough

Motivation and ability are linked at the hip. They aren’t separate entities. More often than not, they blend into one another.

— Kerry Patterson

Joseph GrennyDavid MaxfieldRon McMillanAl Switzer

#9 Selective Listening

We may even believe that we are good listeners, but what we are often doing is listening selectively, making judgments about what is being said, and thinking of ways to end the conversation or redirect the conversation in ways more pleasing to ourselves.

— James C. Hunter

#10 Sacrificing to Help Others

Leaders are the ones who are willing to give up something of their own for us. Their time, their energy, their money, maybe even the food off their plate. When it matters, leaders choose to eat last.

— Simon Sinek

#11 Delegating Decision Making

The result of increased technical competence is the ability to delegate increased decision making to the employees. Increased decision making among your employees will naturally result in greater engagement, motivation, and initiative. You will end up with significantly higher productivity, morale, and effectiveness.

— L. David Marquet

#12 Leadership Development and Discomfort

Just as a coach would view an athlete’s muscle pain as a proper response to training, leaders who are stretching themselves should also feel some discomfort as they struggle to reach new levels of leadership performance … Identifying some of the deepest, “below the surface” thoughts, feelings, assumptions, and beliefs is usually a precondition of behavioral change — one too often shirked in development programs.

— Pierre GurdjianThomas HalbeisenKevin Lane

About Gary A. DePaul, PhD, CPT

“I help organizations become more effective at leadership development”

Speaker, Author, Leadership Advisor

https://www.garyadepaul.comhttp://blog.garyadepaul.com

Gary DePaul  is the expert on leadership experts. He analyzes the best of what leadership books have to offer and writes about the critical leadership patterns discovered among the books. The process is called meta-analysis and is an effective technique to examine leadership holistically.

Dr. DePaul used this technique his highly praised book, Nine Practices of 21st Century Leadership: A Guide for Inspiring Creativity, Innovation, and Engagement.

References

1. Marquet, David. Live Event: Turn the Ship Around! How to Create Leadership at Every Level. Skillsoft Books24x7, 2014. http://sp8-1.skillport.com/skillportfe/main.action#summary/VIDEOS/RW$9227:_ss_video:65944. Accessed January 10, 2015.

2. TED, Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action. http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action. Accessed December 24, 2014.

3. Kouzes, James M., and Barry Z. Posner. The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, 5th edn. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2012. Pages 342-43.

4. Hunter, James C. The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership. New York: Crown Business, 2012. Page xxiv.

5. Alberts, David S., and Richard E. Hayes. Understanding Command And Control: The Future of Command and Control. Washington, DC: CCRP, 2011. Pages 2 & 8.

6. Grenny, Joseph, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzer. Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, 2nd edn. New York: McGraw Hill Education, 2013. Page 90.

7. AuthenticEductaion. John Cleese on Creativity (Video from a Training), 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMpdPrm6Ul4. Accessed October 5, 2014.

8. Patterson, Kerry, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzer. Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior, 2nd edn. New York: McGraw Hill Education, 2013. Page 138.

References

9. Hunter, James C. The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership. New York: Crown Business, 2012. Page 150.

10. Sinek, Simon. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Page 66.

11. Marquet, L. David, Captain, US Navy (Retired). Turn the Ship Around! A True Story Turning Followers into Leaders. New York: Penguin Group, 2012. Page 132.

12. Gurdjian, Pierre, Thomas Halbeisen, and Kevin Lane. Why leadership-development programs fail. McKinsey Quarterly, 2014. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/why_leadership-development_programs_fail. Accessed January 10, 2015.