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!
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
Rather than spend so much time worrying about making the right decision, I think we should spend more time making the decision right.
– Ellen Langer
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
– Thomas Jefferson
Celebrate what you’ve accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed.
– Mia Hamm
Change has a bad reputation in our society. But it isn’t all bad – not by any means. In fact, change is necessary in life – to keep us moving…to keep us interested…to keep us growing.
– Dr. Dennis O’Grady
Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.
– Peter F. Drucker
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
You are who you are and what you are because of what has gone into your mind. You can change who you are and what you are by changing what goes into your mind.
– Zig Ziglar
To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.
– Brene Brown
People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete – the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
– Peter F. Drucker
Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.
– Patrick Lencioni
Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.
– Patrick Lencioni
Exploring failure is the most useful result of failure.
– Dan Rockwell
No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven. It’s learned, not inherited.
– Tom Northup
“People can and do change when the stakes are high enough, when the benefit is valuable enough, and when there is an obvious first step.”
— Laura Huckabee-Jennings
“Purpose may point you in the right direction, but it’s passion that propels you.”
— Travis McAshan
“Ultimately, fear will cloud your creative thought process, so whenever you find yourself in a place where you feel reluctant to move forward, take a moment, recognize what it is that you are fearful of, then bring your team together and create a plan.”
— Andrew Jennings
“In the past a leader was a boss. Today’s leaders must be partners with their people…they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.”
— Ken Blanchard
The market is shifting away from training and “hero” leaders and toward development and collaborative teams of leaders.
– Laura Huckabee-Jennings
“There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.”
— Tom Peters
“No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.”
— W. Clement Stone
Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success.
– David Joseph Schwartz
Celebrate what you want to see more of.
– Tom Peters
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.
– Mahatma Gandhi
When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.
– Roy E. Disney
Everything you want is on the other side of fear.
– Jack Canfield
No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.
– Alfred North Whitehead
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
– President Dwight Eisenhower
A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of this actions and the integrity of his intent.
– General Douglas MacArthur
True leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.
– Tom Peters