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Leadership Quotes

Talk Like TED [Book]

    Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo

    By: Carmine Gallo

    From this Book: 12 Quotes

    Book Overview: Ideas are the currency of the twenty-first century. In order to succeed, you need to be able to sell your ideas persuasively. This ability is the single greatest skill that will help you accomplish your dreams. TED Talks have redefined the elements of a successful presentation and become the gold standard for public speaking. TED―which stands for technology, entertainment, and design―brings together the world’s leading thinkers. These are the presentations that set the world on fire, and the techniques that top TED speakers use will make any presentation more dynamic, fire up any team, and give anyone the confidence to overcome their fear of public speaking.

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    Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

      “When you deliver a presentation, your goal should not be to ‘deliver a presentation.’ It should be to inspire your audience, to move them, and to encourage them to dream bigger.  You cannot move people if they don’t think you’re real.  You’ll never convince your audience of anything if they don’t trust, admire, and genuinely like you.” ~ Carmine Gallo, Talk Like TED

        “If you can’t inspire anyone else with your ideas, it won’t matter how great those ideas are.  Ideas are only as good as the actions that follow the communication of those ideas.” ~ Carmine Gallo, Talk Like TED

        Do Nothing! [Book]

          Do Nothing by J Keith Murnighan

          By: J. Keith Murnighan

          From this Book:  9 Quotes

          Book Overview:  According to J. Keith Murnighan, Great leaders don’t do any­thing—except think, make key decisions, help people do their jobs better, and add a touch of organizational control to make sure the final recipes come out okay. In sharp contrast, most leaders are too busy actually working to do these things—and their teams suffer as a result.  Do Nothing!’s practical strategies and true stories will show you how to set high expec­tations for your team and watch it rise to the challenge. It will help you establish a healthier culture by trusting people more than they expect to be trusted. And it will help you overcome your natural tendencies toward micromanagement so you can let people do their jobs—even when you know you could do their jobs better.

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          Not enough time to read entire books? Check out Blinkist and get the key insights from popular nonfiction books in a fraction of the time.  ‘Busy’ isn’t an excuse.

          Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

          1. 11 Important J. Keith Murnighan Quotes from Do Nothing! on Leadership and Management
          2. Family First, Work Second. The Power of Family Values in Business.

            “‘People don’t know how much you know until they know how much you care about them.’  You could be the world’s greatest expert on something but if the people you work with don’t know that you care about them, they won’t listen to you much.”

            J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!

              “It is up to you as the leader to make sure that your team members feel safe.  You must bend over backwards to make this happen, because team members know that their leaders are always evaluating them and they have perfectly natural fears about the outcome of those evaluations.  You must work doubly hard to help them feel safe: you must treat your team members’ questions and observations as if you love hearing each and every one of them and you must entertain their ideas and even invite them to disagree with you.  You must make it eminently clear that you want them to participate, to question, to comment, and to disagree – and you need to reinforce them when they do.”

              J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!

                “Stated succinctly, partial trust sucks.  When we know we have been trusted only partially, we naturally wonder, ‘Why didn’t he trust me more?’  This natural question reduces our motivation to reciprocate and leads to less long-term commitment to a leader, to a team, and to an organization.  Partial trust sucks in many ways: it is the reverse of flattery and respect and it stimulates lousy outcomes, for everyone.”

                J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!

                  “Leaders need to keep a singular focus, each and every day, on their ultimate goals; they need to keep them at the front of their minds as they choose their actions and strategies.  This seems so obvious but, at the same time, incredibly busy days when people are constantly asking for your attention make it easy to lose a central, goal-oriented focus.  Thus, even something as simple as putting a Post-it note that describes your ultimate goals on the corner of your computer screen can help you keep focused and slow you down so that you can facilitate and orchestrate your team’s actions directly toward your ultimate goal.”

                  J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!

                    “Leadership Law:  Think of the reaction that you want first, then determine the actions you can take to maximize the chances that those reactions will actually happen.”

                    J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!

                      “Doing too much is far worse than doing too little.  When leaders do too much, they cannot be as effective or as thoughtful or as strategic as they might otherwise be.  Even worse, their team members are underutilized and underchallenged.  Better team members are also likely to be increasingly angry – because their leader is doing what they could and should and want to be doing.  By not letting good performers do their jobs, on their own, leaders don’t allow their team members to feel proud of what they can do.  The end result is the development of dislike or even hate for a leader who butts in, as well as earning him a reputation for being a control freak and a micromanager.”

                      J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!

                      Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck? [Book]

                        Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck by Seth Godin

                        By: Seth Godin

                        From this Book: 28 Quotes

                        Book Overview:  Made for dipping into again and again, Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck? brings together the very best of Seth Godin’s acclaimed blog and is a classic for fans both old and new. ‘Getting your ducks in a row is a fine thing to do. But deciding what you are going to do with that duck is a far more important issue.’ Since he started blogging in the early 1990s, he has written more than two million words and shaped the way we think about marketing, leadership, careers, inno­vation, creativity, and more. Much of his writing is inspirational and some is incendiary. Collected here are six years of his best, most entertaining, and most poignant blog posts, plus a few bonus ebooks.

                        Buy from Amazon!  Not on Audible…

                        Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.

                        Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

                        1. Top 15 Quotes from Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck by Seth Godin
                        2. Seth Godin Quote on Quitting—Quitting More So You Can Focus More On What Matters [Plus 30 Things to Consider Quitting] (Beyond the Quote 71/365)

                          “If there’s information that can be written down, widespread digital access now means that just about anyone can look it up.  We don’t need a human being standing next to us to lecture us on how to find the square root of a number or sharpen an ax.  (Worth stopping for a second and reconsidering the revolutionary nature of that last sentence.)  What we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, and someone to push us or encourage us or create a space where we want to learn to do them better.  If all the teacher is going to do is read her pre-written notes from a PowerPoint slide to a lecture hall of thirty or three hundred, perhaps she should stay home.  Not only is this a horrible disrespect to the student, it’s a complete waste of the heart and soul of the talented teacher.  Teaching is no longer about delivering facts that are unavailable in any other format.”

                          Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?

                            “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.” ~ Billy Graham

                              “We love status. We want pins and medallions on our jackets. We want power and prestige in our titles. We want to be acknowledge, recognized, and praised. It’s too bad all of those make for hollow leaders. Great teams require great teammates. Nowhere is that more true that at the top. No leader ever became worse by thinking about their teammates more.” ~ James Clear, Blog

                                “Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well.  It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing.  It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting.  It is leadership.  The word ‘judicious’ means requiring judgment, and judgment requires more than instinct; it requires thoughtful and often painful decision making.” ~ Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

                                  “We are incapable of loving another unless we love ourselves, just as we are incapable of teaching our children self-discipline unless we ourselves are self-disciplined.  It is actually impossible to forsake our own spiritual development in favor of someone else’s.  We cannot forsake self-discipline and at the same time be disciplined in our care for another.  We cannot be a source of strength unless we nurture our own strength.  I believe that not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but that ultimately they are indistinguishable.” ~ Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled