When you're at the lower levels in the organization, you need to win and be right. But as you move up, you need to let other people win and be right, and become a manager and delegate responsibility.
Interpretation
Leadership evolves from personal achievement to enabling others.
This quote emphasizes the transition from individual success to collective success in leadership roles. As one ascends in an organization, the focus should shift from winning and being right oneself to empowering and supporting others in their accomplishments, highlighting the importance of delegation and collaboration in effective management.
In practice
In a team meeting, to encourage senior managers to support their team's ideas.
Active questions are the alternative to passive questions. There is a huge difference between, 'Do you have clear goals?' and 'Did you do your best to set clear goals for yourself?' The former is trying to determine the employee's state of mind; the latter challenges the employee to describe or defend a course of action.
Treat every piece of advice as a gift or a compliment and simply say, “Thank you.
The only thing I don't think people don't understand about good leaders is that they're both good and lucky. A lot of it is timing.
Life is short. Do whatever you can to help people - not for status, but because the 95-year-old you will be proud if you did help people and disappointed if you didn't.
If we become aware of what's happening before we act, behaviour becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.
A leader who is self-aware enough to know that he or she is not adept at everything is one who has taken the first step toward being a great leader.
Since the shock of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's death, I have been reflecting on what made him so special. To my mind, it is simply this: Kofi Annan was both one of a kind and one of us.
Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise - bureaucrats.
The one thing I was always told is you absolutely have to tell truth to power. Whether you're a second lieutenant working with a captain and a lieutenant colonel, or a four-star general working with the Office Secretary of Defense and the White House, the decision makers have got to have ground truth.
We believe that creating an inclusive and diverse environment is not only the right thing to do, but it also makes our company stronger, smarter, and more innovative - which helps us better serve the needs of our clients, our people, and our communities.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a quarterback who thinks playing quarterback is just about passing.
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