At Deliberate Directions, our mission is to create abundance in our business community by helping leaders build strong, thriving businesses.
We recognize that leaders and team members may need some extra motivation at times. That is why we have compiled a list of 101 motivational business leadership and teamwork quotes.
- “A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.” ~ M.D. Arnold
- “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” ~ Lao Tzu
- “Doing what is right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what is right.” ~ Lyndon B. Johnson
- “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” ~ Harry Truman
- “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” ~ Warren Bennis
- “You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.” ~ Henry Ford
- “To build a strong team, you must see someone else’s strength as a complement to your weakness and not a threat to your position or authority.” ~ Christine Caine
- “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” ~ Harold R. McAlindon
- “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” ~ Sam Walton
- “There are no office hours for leaders.” ~ Cardinal James Gibbons
- “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” ~ President John Quincy Adams
- “Synergy – the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously.” ~ Mark Twain
- “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” ~ John Maxwell
- “The ratio of we’s to I’s is the best indicator of the development of a team.” ~ Lewis B. Ergen
- “What you do has far greater impact than what you say.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “The price of greatness is responsibility.” ~ Winston Churchill
- “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~ Maya Angelou
- “In teamwork, silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly.” ~ Mark Sanborn
- “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” ~ African Proverb
- “The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.” ~ Eric Hoffer
- “You manage things; you lead people.” ~ Grace Murray Hopper
- “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead
- “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” ~ H.E. Luccock
- “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
- “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” ~ Bill Gates
- “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.” ~ Andrew Carnegie
- “It takes two flints to make a fire.” ~ Louisa May Alcott
- “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position.” ~ Brian Tracy
- “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” ~ Henry Ford
- “Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” ~ Sam Walton
- “Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.” ~ Donald Rumsfeld
- “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” ~ John C. Maxwell
- “The best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison.” ~ James Cash Penney
- “Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life forever.” ~ Amy Poehler
- “Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar.” ~ Orrin Woodward
- “Education is the mother of leadership.” ~ Wendell Willkie
- “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.” ~ John Buchan
- “Success isn’t about how much money you make; it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” ~ Michelle Obama
- “Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.” ~ James Cash Penney
- “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” ~ Steve Jobs
- “People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.” ~ John Maxwell
- “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” ~ Napolean Hill
- “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” ~ Ralph Nader
- “None of us is as smart as all of us.” ~ Ken Blanchard
- “A leader must inspire or his team will expire.” ~ Orrin Woodward
- “Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
- “If you can laugh together, you can work together.” ~ Robert Orben
- “True leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed… Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.” ~ Sheryl Sandberg
- “Leadership is an action, not a position.” ~ Donald McGannon
- “I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal.” ~ Ben Carson
- “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision, the ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. ” ~ Andrew Carnegie
- “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.” ~ Leroy Eimes
- “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
- “Every time you have to speak, you are auditioning for leadership.” ~ James Humes
- “When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.” ~ Joe Paterno
- “A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.” ~ M. D. Arnold
- “Many hands make light work.” ~ John Heywood
- “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” ~ Tony Blair
- “Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.” ~ Seth Godin
- “Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results.” ~ Ifeanyi Onuoha
- “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been.” ~ Henry Kissinger
- “A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of others.” ~ Norman Shidle
- “You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.” ~ Ken Kesey
- “The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.” ~ Ray Kroc
- “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.” ~ Henry Kissinger
- “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.” ~ Harvey S. Firestone
- “If you take out the team in teamwork, it’s just work. Now who wants that?” ~ Matthew Woodring Stover
- “It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.” ~ Madeleine Albright
- “A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself.” ~ Joel Barker
- “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” ~ Rosalynn Carter
- “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” ~ Helen Keller
- “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.” ~ Vince Lombardi
- “Efficiency is doing better that what is already being done.” ~ Peter Drucker
- “Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”~ Stephen Covey
- “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.” ~ Bill Bradley
- “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” ~ Booker T. Washington
- “Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people,’ that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” ~ Peter F. Drucker
- “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.” ~ David Star Jordan
- “Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
- “The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.” ~ Ken Blanchard
- “Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be led.” ~ Ross Perot
- “True leadership lies in guiding others to success–in ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well.” ~ Bill Owens
- “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” ~ George S. Patton, Jr.
- “To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’” ~ Lao Tzu
- “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” ~ Jack Welch
- “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.” ~ Herbert Swope
- “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” ~ George S. Patton, Jr.
- “If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.” ~ Dolly Parton
- “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” ~ Steve Jobs
- “Whatever you are, be a good one.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.” ~ Walt Disney
- “One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” ~ Arnold Glasow
- “There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity and courage.” ~ Fuchan Yuan
- “I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition.” ~ Jean-Francois Cope
- “Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” ~ Patrick Lencioni
- “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” ~ Edith Wharton
- “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.” ~ Leroy Eimes
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