Frank Luntz Quotes

Most people that derail as leaders in the corporate world, it's not because they couldn't do the math and calculate return on investment properly. The issues are communication and understanding. All of what typically would've been called the 'soft stuff.' You have to be authentic. You have to be dialed into the soft stuff.

I think the greatest CEOs in the United States, business, anyway, are the ones you don't hear too much about.

Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.

The best entrepreneurs I've ever met are all good communicators. It's perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

The genius of guys like Lincoln and Reagan and FDR - the great communicator leaders - is that they're actually educators, so they understand when they use a phrase that they have to explain it, because, by definition, you won't understand it or they wouldn't need to be using it.

If you look at the very best presidents, the most effective presidents, they were always decent salespeople. Ronald Reagan was an extremely effective salesman, very tuned to the people he was selling to, very clear in what he was selling, very resilient and buoyant.

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

The quality of business communications has become poorer in recent years as people avoid phone calls and face-to-face meetings, I can only assume, in some misguided quest for efficiency.

[On George H.W. Bush:] A man who wishes to lead the Western world should be able to find the right words, string them together in coherent sentences, and steer them to an intelligible conclusion. His sentences have the stuttering start of an old car on a cold morning. They never run smoothly. The only speech part that he has mastered completely is the non sequitur.

Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.

I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.

Only when people learn to converse will they begin to be equal.

If there is one general law of communication it is that we never communicate as effectively as we think we do.

The most important thing for a director is being able to communicate. When you communicate comfortably, regardless of what you're saying, it can always be processed.

I don't know how to speak to everybody, only to somebody.

Relational skills are the most important abilities in leadership.

Communication is my thing.

Communication in every which way is everything for the leader.

The talkers are rising above the thinkers.

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to.

I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions.

Effective communication is a key factor in the success of your product.

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory !!

Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.