Fearless Fridays
Each week, we share an inspirational leadership quote with our community. We’ve compiled them here, for easy access. If you would like to be added to our email list, just sign up, below!
I really do love these Friday messages. Thanks!
We are at our best when creating enduring relationships and personal connections. When we are fully engaged, we connect with, laugh with, and uplift the lives of our customers, even if it is just for a few moments. It is about the human connection.
– John DiJulius
Business, after all, is nothing more than a bunch of human relationships.
– Lee Iacocca
100% of customers are people. 100% of employees are people. If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.
– Simon Sinek
The words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out, communication is getting through.
– Sydney Harris
The art of communication is the language of leadership.
– James Humes
If you don’t understand yourself, you don’t understand anybody else.”
– Nikki Giovanni
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In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.
– Warren Buffet
As a business owner or manager, you know that hiring the wrong person is the most costly mistake you can make.
– Brian Tracy
Culture is the net effect of shared behaviors and therefore, adopting innovative behaviors must come first. You change the culture by becoming more innovative — not the other way around.
– Rob Shelton
Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?
– Adam M. Grant
People are not your most important asset. The right people are.
– Jim Collins
Compassion is essential to exceptional leadership, extraordinary results, powerful impact, and richness of life.
– Dan Rockwell
Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges. So relax.
– Bryant McGill
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People don’t get promoted for doing their jobs really well. They get promoted by demonstrating their potential to do more.
– Tara Jaye Frank
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Great vision without great people is irrelevant.
– Jim Collins
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I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people not on strategies.
– Lawrence Bossidy
Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
– Cavett Robert
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
– Ernest Hemingway
Just as core values help define ‘why’ your team members work, a thoughtfully established and clearly communicated work culture defines ‘how’ the team works.
– Laura Huckabee Jennings
The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.
– Lee Iacocca
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.
– Paulo Coelho
We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.
– John F. Kennedy
Leadership is a lifestyle, and it is all about working to improve yourself rather than trying to fix other people. The more you improve yourself and your leadership, the more successful you will be.
– Mark Younger
The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson.
– Indra Nooyi
It’s the culture that attracts and retains the caliber of people who move companies from surviving to thriving.
– Andrew Jennings
Culture is the primary drive of economic development in the ‘Connected Age’ and innovation thrives in dense networks.
– Andy Stoll
To develop professionally: Adopt a beginner’s mindset, stay teachable, seek feedback, teach others, embrace teamwork.
– Dan McCabe
Take time to invest in yourself as much as others. By doing so, I have seen that the impact I can have on others is greater when I am in a better place and space.
– Jimmy Casas
Connect the dots between individual roles and the goals of the organization. When people see that connection, they get a lot of energy out of work. They feel the importance, dignity, and meaning in their job.
– Ken Blanchard
The most powerful leadership tool you have is your own personal example.
– John Wooden
On good teams, coaches hold players accountable. On great teams, players hold players accountable.
– Joe Dumars
A team is a small number of people with complementary skills committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
– Katzenbach and Smith
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
– Dr. Wayne Dyer
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
– Peter Drucker
Organizations can never be truly agile unless the people who work within them are agile – and more specifically, emotionally agile.
– Susan David
Leadership is influence. If people can increase their influence with others, they an lead more effectively.
– John Maxwell
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
– Peter Drucker
The new leader is a facilitator not an order giver.
– John Naisbitt
It is quickly becoming crucial for organizations to learn to engage and cultivate their Millennial employees now so their organizations are properly prepared for the not-so-distant future.
– Chip Espinoza and Mick Ukleja
Millennials are driving a fundamental change in the way we think about corporate culture and what we see as the potential for impact in the social sector by both companies and employees.
– Jean Case
The quality of a leader cannot be judged by the answers he gives, but by the questions he asks.
– Simon Sinek
If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer.
–Edward Hodnett
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.
–Peter Drucker
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
– Winston Churchill
A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow.
– George Patton
Communication leads to buy-in, which fosters ownership and accountability. Accountability gives you return on your investment.
– Edith Hunter
Don’t hide your strategy under a bushel. Communicate it throughout your company. It’s better today to disclose too much than too little.
–Joel E. Ross
If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause.
–Abraham Lincoln
When an organization is ‘Fear Proof’, the individuals and teams support one another in managing the emotional content of interaction and reaction. They become more intentional in creating relationships that deliver powerful business results.
– Laura Huckabee-Jennings
The deeper your relationship with others, the more effective will be your leadership. People will not follow you if they do not trust you, and before someone will lend you a hand, you must first touch their heart.
–Robin Sharma
One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.
–Dennis A. Peer
I used to believe that culture was ‘soft’, and had little bearing on our bottom line. What I believe today is that our culture has everything to do with our bottom line, now and into the future.
–Vern Dosch
If you are open, vulnerable, disclosing, more likely than not it will be reciprocated and walls will come down.
–Susan Scott
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
–Dorothy Nevill
Once you achieve intimacy and connection, I predict that innovation, partnership, execution and success won’t be far behind.
–Susan Scott
Two heads are definitely better than one and by brainstorming as a team and sourcing ideas from each other, you have a better chance of coming up with a strategy that will allow your business to overcome a setback or challenge.
–Richard Branson
Remember that what gets talked about and how it gets talked about determines what will happen. Or won’t happen. And that we succeed or fail, gradually then suddenly, one conversation at a time.
–Susan Scott
The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
–Joseph Priestley
Far from hindering difficult decisions, great leaders use empathy and soft skills to make those decisions with an abundance of compassion.
–Laura Huckabee-Jennings
Leaders understand the ultimate power of relationships.
– Tom Peters
Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.
–Warren G. Bennis
Leadership is a way of thinking, a way of acting, and, most importantly, a way of communicating.
–Simon Sinek
In my 35 years in business, I have always trusted my emotions. I have always believed that by touching emotion you get the best people to work with you, the best clients to inspire you, the best partners and most devoted customers.
–Kevin Roberts
The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.
–Wayne Dyer
No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.
– Theodore Roosevelt
If we lack emotional intelligence, whenever stress rises the human brain switches to autopilot and has an inherent tendency to do more of the same, only harder. Which, more often than not, is precisely the wrong approach in today’s world.
– Robert K. Cooper
If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.
– Daniel Goleman
Authenticity and knowing who you are is fundamental to being an effective and longstanding leader.
– Ann Fudge
It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?
– Henry David Thoreau
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
– William Arthur Ward
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
– Japanese Proverb
Ineffective leaders often act on the advice and counsel of the last person they talked to.
–Warren G. Bennis
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
– Stephen Covey
Make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, has a meaningful impact and is contributing to the good of society.
– Larry Page
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
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
– Henry Ford
If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
– Anna Quindlen
Customers will never love a company unless the employees love it first.
– Simon Sinek
Corporate culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage that is completely within the control of the entrepreneur.
–David Cummings
We believe that it’s really important to come up with core values that you can commit to. And by commit, we mean that you’re willing to hire and fire based on them. If you’re willing to do that, then you’re well on your way to building a company culture that is in line with the brand you want to build.
–Tony Hsieh
You have to create a culture where everyone has an opportunity to be recognized.
– John Mackey
True leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed. Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.
– Sheryl Sandberg
Don’t be afraid to show your vulnerability. Be transparent with your team, even when the truth may be unpopular or inconvenient.
– Bill George
Trust starts with trustworthy leadership. It must be built into the corporate culture.
– Barbara Brooks Kimmel
The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.
– Gruenert & Whitaker
Determine what behaviors and beliefs you value as a company and have everyone live true to them. These behaviors and beliefs should be so essential to your core, that you don’t even think of it as culture.
– Brittany Forsyth
Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communications. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.
– Stephen Covey
Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo.
– Peter M. Senge
It’s not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions longer.
– Albert Einstein
Your words and deeds must match if you expect employees to trust in your leadership.
– Kevin Kruse
Crisis moments create opportunity. Problems and crises ignite our greatest creativity and thought leadership as it forces us to focus on things outside the norm.
– Sam Cawthorn
In a moment of crisis, reactions set the leaders apart from the followers.
– Peter B. Stark
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
– Lao Tzu
Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.
– Brian Tracy
Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.
– Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The relationships you have with people are extremely important to success on and off the job.
– Zig Ziglar
All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting. If we want different results, we must change the way we do things.
– Tom Northup
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
– Zig Ziglar
The only difference between fear and excitement is the story that you tell yourself. Tell yourself a story that will move you forward.
– Laura Huckabee-Jennings