Great leaders know that inspirational leadership quotes can help them stay focused, lift team members and transform their group. Good leaders understand that inspirational leadership quotes are a must-have to inspire a team and drive performance to the next level. Great leaders use inspirational leadership quotes as a way of life.
Leadership is not about position or privilege; it’s about your willingness to take responsibility for others and for the success of your team, organization or family. If you’re ready to become a great leader instead of just a good one, keep reading for some inspiring leadership quotes.
27 Inspirational Leadership Quotes
1. Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple. – Edward de Bono
2. Superior leaders are willing to admit a mistake and cut their losses. Be willing to admit that you’ve changed your mind. Don’t persist when the original decision turns out to be a poor one.-Brian Tracy
3. Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. –Colin Powell
4. Power isn’t control at all ~ power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others so that they may have the strength to stand on their own. – Beth Revis
5. Don’t be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse.-Resist it. Donald Rumsfeld.
6. The really expert riders of horses let the horse know immediately who is in control, but then guide the horse with loose reins and seldom use the spurs. –Sandra Day O’Connor
7. If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.- John C. Maxwell
8. Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.- Ronald Reagan
9. Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.-Sam Walton
10. The challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly. – Jim Rohn.
11. If leadership serves only the leader, it will fail. Ego satisfaction, financial gain, and status can all be valuable tools for a leader, but if they become the only motivations, they will eventually destroy a leader. Only when service for a common good is the primary purpose are you truly leading.- Sheila Murray Bethel
12. My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. –General Montgomery
13. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. –Peter Drucker
14. True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well. –Bill Owens
15. The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. –Theodore Roosevelt
16. Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand. –General Colin Powell
17. Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration — of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine. –Lance Secretan
18. If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing. –Benjamin Franklin
19. If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. –John Quincy Adams
20. In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. –Thomas Jefferson
21. It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. –Latin Proverb
22. It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership. –Nelson Mandela
23. The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders, and continually develops them.- John Maxwell
24. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.-Peter Drucker
25. If you always put a limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. –Bruce Lee
26. I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. –Nelson Mandela
27. Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it political? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Conclusion
These are the best inspirational leadership quotes to help you lead with passion and determination. These leadership quotes will help you inspire your team and drive performance to the next level. Great leaders use inspirational leadership quotes as a way of life.
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