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50 Great Quotes on Leadership from John Wooden

Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. McGraw-Hill Education. 321 pages. 2005.
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I’ve long respected John Wooden for the values he brought to leadership as one of the greatest coaches of all time. For example, over a twelve-year period at UCLA, Wooden won an incredible ten NCAA national basketball championships, including a record seven in a row.  I’ve rarely highlighted as many passages in a book as I did with this one.

The book is divided into three main sections:
Part 1: The Foundation for My Leadership. In this section he covers the 15 fundamental values that were the blocks for his Pyramid of Success. He writes that he believed that they are prerequisites for a leader and an organization whose goal is to perform at the highest level of which they are capable.

Part 2: Lessons in Leadership. This is the section that I most appreciated and where I highlighted a large number of leadership quotes. After each teaching by Wooden there would be a helpful “Suggestions to Lead By” and an “On Wooden” section by some of Wooden’s former players and coaches.

Part 3: Lessons from My Notebook. This section was my least favorite of the book, having the least application for general (non-basketball) leadership. What was most interesting to me was that this section included pages or excerpts of pages from notebooks he used through the years in his teaching—notes, observations, reminders, suggestions, and lists of relevant goals and how to achieve them.

As I mentioned, I highlighted a large number of passages as I read the book. I’ve eliminated many of them to get down to 50 of my favorite quotes from the book:

  • I believe that’s what leadership is all about: helping others to achieve their own greatness by helping the organization to succeed.
  • I believe leadership itself is largely learned.
  • Whatever coaching and leadership skills I possess were learned through listening, observation, study, and then trial and error along the way.
  • It’s the quality of your effort that counts most and offers the greatest and most long-lasting satisfaction.
  • The joy is in the journey of pushing yourself to the outward limits of your ability and teaching your organization to do the same.
  • Effort is the ultimate measure of your success.
  • I do not judge success based on championships; rather, I judge it on how close we came to realizing our potential.
  • Reputation is what others perceive you as being, and their opinion may be right or wrong. Character, however, is what you really are, and nobody truly knows that but you. But you are what matters most.
  • A strong leader accepts blame and gives the credit. A weak leader gives blame and accepts the credit.
  • Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to stay there.
  • Practice moderation and balance in all that you do.
  • The best leaders understand that to successfully compete at any level requires continuous learning and improvement.
  • The best leaders are lifelong learners; they take measures to create organizations that foster and inspire learning throughout.
  • The most effective leaders are those who realize it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts most.
  • Character—doing the right thing—is fundamental to successful leadership
  • For me, a good explanation of character is simple: respect for yourself, respect for others, respect for the game, whether it’s basketball, business, or anything else.
  • A leader with character attracts talent with the same.
  • Who you are inside—what you believe—is important, but what you do means more, much more. Actions trump words, and your values must be visible if they are to have an impact on those you lead or hope to attract as part of your team.
  • Character counts and values matter. And you, the leader, set the standard for both in your organization.
  • For me, leadership is a sacred trust.
  • I believe you must have love in your heart for the people under your leadership. I did.
  • For a good leader, the team is nothing less than extended family.
  • Team members wouldn’t be treated the same or alike; rather, each one would receive the treatment they earned and deserved.
  • I believe effective leaders are, first and foremost, good teachers.
  • Your own personal example is one of the most powerful leadership tools you possess. Put it to good use: Be what you want your team to become.
  • A leader who is through learning is through.
  • A leader who is ruled by emotions, whose temperament is mercurial, produces a team whose trademark is the roller coaster—ups and downs in performance; unpredictability and un-dependability in effort and concentration; one day good, the next day bad.
  • Sharing credit is a surefire way of improving the performance results for any organization.
  • Little things, done well, make big things happen for you and your organization.
  • A casual approach to executing the details of a job ensures that the job will be done poorly.
  • I fully understood that the success of my leadership was directly linked to using time wisely.
  • I came to the conclusion that when choosing between the carrot and the stick as a motivational tool, the well-chosen carrot was almost always more powerful and longer lasting than the stick.
  • Each member of your team has a potential for personal greatness; the leader’s job is to help them achieve it.
  • I believe that personal greatness is measured against one’s own potential, not against that of someone else on the team or elsewhere.
  • Personal greatness for any leader is measured by effectiveness in bringing out the greatness of those you lead.
  • Don’t worry about being better than someone else, but never cease trying to be the best you can become.
  • Are you holding your team back with misconceived notions and false limitations? Identify and then eliminate them. Seek solutions rather than excuses.
  • I believe one of the requirements of good leadership is the ability to listen—really listen—to those in your organization.
  • I believe that you must have people around you willing to ask questions and express opinions, people who seek improvement for the organization rather than merely gaining favor with the boss.
  • Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
  • The most productive leaders are usually those who are consistently willing to listen and learn.
  • Success is more often attained by asking “how?” than by saying “no.”
  • Contentment with past accomplishments or acceptance of the status quo can derail an organization quickly.
  • Assume improvement is always possible and force yourself—and others—to find out how.
  • New ideas and perspective from those under your leadership are essential for achieving and maintaining a competitive edge.
  • If your word is nothing, you’re not much better.
  • A leader whose promise means something is trusted. Trust counts for everything in leadership.
  • Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.
  • A good leader never stops learning. A great leader never stops teaching.
  • Past achievements for any leader or organization will occur again in the future only with equal, or greater, effort.


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25 Quotes from Making Vision Stick by Andy Stanley

Here are 25 quotes that I appreciated from the book Making Vision Stick by Andy Stanley:making vision stick

  • Vision doesn’t stick without constant care and attention.
  • The three primary obstacles to making vision stick are success, failure, and everything in between. There is no season in which a leader can push autopilot and expect the organization to remain vision-driven.
  • Vision is about what could be and should be, but life is about right this minute.
  • When it comes to making your vision stick, here is the most important thing to remember: You are responsible. It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure that people understand and embrace the vision of the organization.
  • If the people around us don’t know where we are going, it’s because we haven’t made it clear.
  • For your vision to stick, you may need to clarify or simplify it.
  • To make vision stick, it needs to be easy to communicate.
  • To cast a convincing vision, you have to define the problem that your vision addresses. Every vision is a solution to a problem.
  • Make your vision stick, your audience needs to understand what’s at stake. It’s the “what’s at stake” issue that grabs people’s hearts.
  • Buy-in by others hinges on your ability to convince them that you are offering a solution to a problem they are convinced needs to be solved.
  • To cast your vision in a convincing manner, you need to be able to answer these two questions: What is the need or problem my vision addresses? What will happen if those needs or problems continue to go unaddressed?
  • A leader points the way to a solution and gives a compelling reason why something must be done now.
  • If you haven’t defined the problem, determined a solution, and discovered a compelling reason why now is the time to act, you aren’t ready to go public with your vision. It won’t stick.
  • Vision needs to be repeated regularly. To make it stick, you need to find ways to build vision casting into the rhythm of your organization.
  • At some point you will need to determine the optimal times and contexts for vision casting in your organization. Look for ways to build it into your natural business or ministry cycle, into the rhythm of your organization.
  • To make vision stick, a leader needs to pause long enough to celebrate the wins along the way. Celebrating the wins does more to clarify the vision than anything else.
  • When you celebrate the right things, you are using the most effective form of vision casting.
  • What’s celebrated is repeated. The behaviors that are celebrated are repeated. The decisions that are celebrated are repeated. The values that are celebrated are repeated. If you intentionally or unintentionally celebrate something that is in conflict with your vision, the vision won’t stick.
  • Your willingness to embody the vision of your organization will have a direct impact on your credibility as a leader. Living out the vision establishes credibility and makes you a leader worth following.
  • Leaders must keep their antennae up for new things that have the potential to distract from the main thing. New projects, programs, or even products must be vision-centric.
  • As a leader, you need to do the due diligence necessary to keep distracting elements out of the organization.
  • Vision, not people’s random ideas, should determine programming. Vision, not a cool PowerPoint presentation, should determine which new initiatives are funded by your organization. Vision, not the promise of great returns, should determine which products are launched.
  • Every leader should identify gauges that measure the alignment between the organization’s activity and its vision.
  • Making your vision stick requires bold leadership. It will require you to develop a healthy intolerance for those things that have the potential to impede your progress.
  • Seeing a vision become a reality requires more than a single burst of energy or creativity. It requires daily attention. Daily commitment.


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FAITH AND WORK: Connecting Sunday to Monday

Links to Interesting Articles about Faith and Work:

sabbath_Wisdom and Sabbath Rest. Tim Keller writes “The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel—the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation. The Sabbath is a sign of the hope that we have in the world to come.”

  • Re-Creation or Wreck-reation…What’s Your Approach to Life and Work? In this “Tuesday Tip” Dr. Alan Zimmerman writes that he tells his clients “If you can’t find time for recreation, sooner or later your body will make time for illness.” He shares four tips for what you should do if you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, burned out, or off balance.
  • Escape Perfectionism Once and For All. Michael Hyatt states that “Perfectionism is the enemy of productivity and success. It costs us opportunities, even freedom. But anyone can beat perfectionism and finally launch with the three simple steps in this podcast.”
  • Avoid Vacation Meltdown. Malinda Fasol writes “Here are our five safe harbor suggestions to shield you from the storm of conflict, which often accompanies vacation.”
  • 15 Ways to Dig Out of Discouragement. Dan Rockwell writes “The only reason encouragement matters is discouragement is real. Positive thinking addresses the reality of negative. Dark feelings give relevance and power to positive.”
  • The Slowest Way to Build a Reputation. C. Patton uses an illustration about his daughter to show that a reputation is built over time.
  • 5 Ways to Bless Others with Our Words at Work. This post from the Theology of Work Project states “The words we use in our places of work have the power either to bless or curse, to build others up or to tear them down. Our choice of words often has more power than we realize.”
  • Communication. In this “Minute with Maxwell”, John Maxwell looks at the word “communication”.
  • The Future of Work – Part 2. Mark Miller continues to discuss his Free Address experiment, an approach to work in which a person does not have a designated, permanent workstation or office.
  • This Job Influences the Future of Culture. Bethany Jenkins “I’ve come to realize that being a college career counselor or coach might just be one of the most strategic jobs that any person, especially any Christian, can have. Here are four reasons why.”
  • A Testimony of Conscience and Conviction in the Workplace. Hands On Originals Christian Outfitters is a small printing company in Lexington, Kentucky, that, up until recently, had very few problems when they declined to print a certain message. The company is owned by Blaine Adamson. Watch Adamson’s testimony in this four-minute video.

LEADERSHIP:

  • Clarity. Mark Miller writes “How to help a team or organization stay laser focused on what matters most is a universal and eternal question for every leader. It doesn’t matter if you are leading a scout troop or a multi-national conglomerate. Clarity is a precursor to alignment and alignment multiplies impact. As leaders, we should always be in the pursuit or preservation of clarity. The list of strategies and tactics is virtually endless.”
  • How to be a Horrible Boss. Barnabas Piper writes “Do you want to be an epically bad boss? Do you want to grind employees into dust, crush their morale, and leave quaking dry husks of humanity in your wake? If so, then all you need to do is follow these 13 simple steps.”
  • Are You on the Leadership Fast Track. Mark Miller says that if you want to accelerate your career development, perhaps you need to be more of a Developer.
  • Act As If Then Is Now: Strategic Change Management. In this two-minute video from Leadercast, Andy Stanley shares his leadership principles for understanding why change management is important and the two key areas on which to focus as an investment in the future.
  • 5 Leadership Questions with Brad Lomenick. On this episode of the 5 Leadership Questions podcast Todd Adkins and Barnabas Piper talk with Brad Lomenick about his own experiences, his passion for authenticity in leadership, and even some of his thoughts about being a single leader.
  • Great Teams Have Great Depth. John Maxwell shares six dimensions of depth that every team leader needs to focus on to have a winning season
  • 15 Ways NOT to Lead Well. Brad Lomenick asks “How is your leadership dysfunctional? What stands out as areas to improve? Here are a few key indicators of the kind of leadership and ultimately a leader that needs to reimagine, re-engage, and recommit. Look for these, and if they exist, be committed to change.”
  • How to Make Meetings Less Painful. In this episode of the 5 Leadership Questions podcast, hosts Todd Adkins and Barnabas Piper and guest, Brad Lomenick, discuss 5 questions about how to make meetings less painful.
  • 7 Questions Leaders Should Use Often. Ron Edmondson shares 7 examples of questions leaders should memorize and use often.
  • 11 Ways to Earn Respect at Work. Peter Daisyme writes “We seek respect in our professional lives. Gaining the respect of others in the workplace is something many people want, but often have misguided ideas on how to achieve this goal. The following tips will provide valuable insight into the process of gaining and keeping respect in the workplace.”
  • When Should Leaders Change Their Minds? Jeff Iorg writes “Despite how firmly we (leaders) hold our convictions, we are also learners — meaning we are open to new ideas. When we discover new insights, we are humble enough to change our minds. When we are wrong, we admit it and move forward. But with new information generated daily and all the different biblical interpretations being proposed, how do you know when to change your mind?”

 Faith and Work

  • Calling means that everyone, everywhere, and in everything fulfills his or her (secondary) callings in response to God’s (primary) calling. Os Guinness
  • If there is no Caller, there are no callings – only work. Os Guinness
  • Start your day with good intentions and set yourself up for a good attitude. It’s not what happens to you that matters but how you respond. Ken Blanchard
  • It’s normal to enjoy praise and dislike criticism. True character is when you prevent either from affecting you in a negative manner. Coach K
  • The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision. Ken Blanchard
  • Dependence on God as a leader is a requirement, responsibility and obligation, not just a perk or program of the Christian life. Brad Lomenick

 The Conviction to Lead by Albert MohlerThe Conviction to Lead Book Club – Won’t you read along with us?

The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership That Matters by Albert Mohler

We’re reading this excellent book on leadership principles from a renowned agent of change, Albert Mohler. It is one of the best that I’ve read on leadership and is broken down into 25 relatively short chapters. Won’t you read along with us? This week we look at

Chapter 23: Leadership that Endures

  • The leaders who make the biggest difference are those with long tenure. Great impact requires a lengthy term of leadership, and the leader who wants to make a difference had better make a public commitment to stay.
  • The most effective leaders know to stay on the job, determined to see the task done.
  • Short terms for leaders are the rule rather than the exception.
  • The average tenure of corporate leaders is amazingly short, and their leadership impact is frighteningly temporary. If you want to make a lasting difference, you had better make the commitment to endure.
  • Leadership is an endurance test that will demand the best of anyone.
  • Endurance is what keeps the leader on the job, day in and day out.
  • Endurance not only makes demands of leaders, it also offers the blessing of a long memory and a longer period of evaluation.
  • Leadership requires maturing, learning, adapting, rethinking, and retooling. None of these things come fast or easily.
  • Convictional leaders prize endurance for one other fundamental reason—the endurance of truth. The truths we hold and the beliefs we cherish take the form of convictions that frame every aspect of reality. Our mission is to see these convictions known, believed, and translated into meaningful combined action.