Robert Fripp Quotes

Ultimately, running a band is about the relationships you have with people.

I think the job of leadership is to expand what can be talked about and to get consensus on the nature of the problem, and that is most of the job. Because once you do that, once you have diagnosis, treatment options are obvious.

You can't serve on every committee. But you can know what happened, what the debate was, who said what.

Anytime you get nine people together, whether it's at a party or it's in the conference room of the Supreme Court, you do have to maintain some order, or it does kind of degenerate into squabbling pretty quickly.

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.

When we come into the NSC, everybody has different opinions. At the end of the day, we present the president with all the facts. We let him make the decision. And we all, as a team, go out and support that decision.

Good executives, like all good leaders, must expect opposition when making decisions or when making or enforcing the law. But executives must engage those that disagree with them.

Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult.

Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.

In this work, you have to convince everyone all the time, at different levels, to support your dream. I learned you have to be confident in order to do that.

A boardroom is a collection of individuals, and individuals have varying motives, egos, agendas and qualifications. Sometimes the dynamics can go off track.

I think leadership is knowing what you want to achieve and then purposefully and sensibly taking steps to achieve it, remembering always that you have got to bring people with you if you are seeking to be a successful political leader.

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night - professors, officials, the Minister of Finance - but there were decisions that I had to make.

Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine.

So I told Robert from the start that if we couldn't get Charles and Max to take part, but especially Charles, that I didn't want to make the film. So would he call his mother and talk to Charles and see if Charles would at all be interested.

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

And I'd say one of the great lessons I've learned over the past couple of decades, from a management perspective, is that really when you come down to it, it really is all about people and all about leadership.

It's good to have a leader, otherwise we argue too much.

Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is - sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent.

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

I think that in any group activity - whether it be business, sports, or family - there has to be leadership or it won't be successful.

Majority rule is not the norm for solving issues or problems.

I don't twist arms. I shake hands.