To me, leadership is about encouraging people. It's about stimulating them. It's about enabling them to achieve what they can achieve - and to do that with a purpose.
Interpretation
Leadership involves motivating and empowering others to reach their full potential with a clear purpose.
This quote by Christine Lagarde emphasizes that true leadership is not just about directing others, but rather about inspiring, stimulating, and empowering individuals to realize their capabilities. It highlights the importance of purpose in leadership, suggesting that guiding others towards meaningful goals is a key function of a great leader.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire a team to achieve their goals.
In the 2013 Economists Program, we hired 51 percent women, 49 percent men. And the reason for that is that we have a draft from all over the world, and we've hired, for instance, in that group, a good number of Chinese economists - highly qualified, all Ph.D.s from the best universities of the world. And guess what? They're all women.
Tackling climate change is a collective endeavour, it means collective accountability and it's not too late
I have lived with extraordinary women, whether it was my grandmother, my mother. My father passed away when I was 16... I was witness to a woman who single handedly brought up the entire family and managed to do everything... She was an extraordinary role model for me.
I'm of those who believe that excesses in all matters are not a good idea, whether it's formation of bubbles, whether it's excess in the financial market, whether it's excess of inequality, it has to be watched, it has to be measured, and it has to be anticipated in terms of consequences.
You know, when I sit in meetings and things are very tense and people take things extremely seriously and they invest a lot of their ego, I sometimes think to myself, 'Come on, you know, there's life and there's death and there is love.' And all of that ego business is nonsense compared to that.
Very often as a little girl, then as a young woman, I have suffered my lot of discrimination. I was brought up with brothers; I grew up in a boys' world. You have to elbow your way in. When you come with that sentiment of having been in a minority for a long period of time, then you are much more attentive to minorities.
No one intends to make serious mistakes. They come when you compromise your standards to be more accepted by others. You be the strong one. You be the leader. Choose good friends and resist peer pressure together.
A man must first govern himself ere he is fit to govern a family; and his family ere he be fit to bear the government of the commonwealth.
Brevity is the soul of command. Too much talking suggests desperation on the part of the leader. Speak shortly, decisively and to the pointβand couch your desires in such natural logic that no one can raise objections. Then move on.
If all of you had voted the other way - there's about 5500 of you here tonight - I would not be the President of the United States.
And Joe Biden, thank you for being the best Vice President I could ever hope for.
I would hope that American managers-indeed, managers worldwide-continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than "making deals." Management affects people and their lives.
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