I spend a lot of time pondering the question: “What is leadership?” It’s really not that complicated, until we spend time to really think about it. A friend of mine Steve Cockram of GiANT Worldwide talks about how a leader’s responsibility is to take the simple, understand and acknowledge this “simple” in all it’s complexity, and distill the complexity back down to the simple so everyone can comprehend.
The quotes below do a great job of just that, or as Leonardo da Vinci said “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Leadership Is …
- “Leadership is action, not position.” — Donald H. McGannon
- “Leadership is based on a spiritual quality; the power to inspire, the power to inspire others to follow.” — Vince Lombardi
- “Leadership is getting people to help you when they are not obligated to do so.” — John C. Maxwell
- “Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.” — Tom Landry
- “Leadership is influence.” — John C. Maxwell
- “Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice.” — Max Depree
- “Leadership is no longer about your position. It’s now more about your passion for excellence and making a difference. You can lead without a title.” — Robin Sharma
- “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
- “Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.” — Harold S. Geneen
- “Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the mastery of long term constructive goals, in a participatory environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal values.” — Mike Vance
- “Leadership is the ability to get extraordinary achievement from ordinary people.” — Brian Tracy
- “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” — Warren G. Bennis
- “Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.” — Jim Rohn
What quotes have we left out… please add to the list…
Mastermind Century Group 
“A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.” – John Updike
“Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.” – Robert Jarvik
and one of my (slightly unrelated) personal favorites:
“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
Perfect Todd!
One that is perhaps tangential… but: “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.” —John Kenneth Galbraith