Robert Lorenz Quotes

You have to lead by example. You have to be the calmest person in the room. You have to be very open. I think the qualities of a director are to enable and to find the best in everybody.

Leadership is influence.

Leadership consists of picking good men and helping them do their best.

Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position.

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

Leadership involves persuasion, and conciliation, and education and patience. It's long, slow, tough work. That is the only kind of leadership I know or will believe in, or will practice.

I've learned that when I'm directing, I hate when people are always questioning everything and trying to give me directions.

I think that the larger and more complex the business gets, I have to listen twice as much as I speak.

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

I can lead my team.

It's an interesting juxtaposition, being student body president and leading others and learning how to effectively help people on the team in a way that's not as direct.

Being president isn't a solo position. You surround yourself with highly qualified people that are smarter about issues than you are. But that's not enough. You then have to listen to them.

I always say, as a leader, you've got to know when to get out of the way.

Luckily, as a director I can just tell people what I need and I don't need to tell them how to get it.

I think that I've learned to relax, and trust in and hire very talented people, and trust in their abilities a little more.

Collaboration is just, really, a group of people getting in a room with their eye on a very similar prize and wanting to come out with the same show. The director, ultimately, is the guy in front of whom the buck stops. So, he has to have the courage to prevail. But, he has got to have a huge amount of respect for his collaborators.

Being a manager is about getting into the minds of the people you represent.

There is no better way to manage than by walking around. Autocracy doesn't work. Talk to people in their offices, find out what's on their minds.

I enjoy directing more when I don't have to direct myself. I like when I can just be the director.

There are two qualities that I've noticed in good directors: One is that they have their vision very strongly in place; and two is that they listen to everyone's opinion and still remember their vision.

Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

I have so much respect for directors. It's a tremendous amount of pressure; you have to keep steadfast and keep what you know is right.

There's no way a director can communicate with every single person on the set and yet they need to motivate and instill an ambition to want to do their best work.

That's why I never became a director. I never had patience with people.