Peter Drucker Quotes

Leadership does matter.

We live in a world that is crying out for better leadership.

The practice of leadership is not the same as the exercise of power.

Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think.

Leadership is a choice. It's not a rank, it's a choice. I know many people who are at the top of their organization who have authority. We have to do what they say because they have authority over us. But they're not leaders. We wouldn't follow them. They may be at the top of the company but they're not leaders.

Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.

It's hard to give advice. There are so many people, how do you give major advice to a group of people, it's very presumptuous.

I am a director. I'm the one who can order men around.

The person who manages the state is me.

Where no counsel is, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.

That's a large part of the job as governor: to create and maintain the optimal balance.

Advocating war is easier when you and your family are not endangered by it.

I want to be the guy calling the shots.

Just as an athlete must exercise his body to be a winner, a leader must exercise his position of authority. If he doesn't, he loses that authority.

It's my job to build the people who are going to build the company.

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions. Not me. I don't want to be a manager or a dictator. I want to be a leader-and leadership is ongoing, adjustable, flexible, and dynamic. As such, leaders have to maintain a certain amount of discretion

Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.

Leaders are people who do the right thing: managers are people who do things right. Both roles are crucial, but they differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing wrong things well.

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

The ability to delegate begins with believing in the potential of people.

Leadership is about uncertainty. Deal with it

Every decision you make is an important one, whether there are twenty thousand people working for you or just one.