Leon Trotsky Quotes

Consensus building doesn't necessarily fit with my experience.

I'm a great believer in our ability to come up with the ideas necessary to solve the big questions. I have less confidence that we'll be able to find a consensus about which ones are right without experiment.

At a school in Massachusetts where I once worked, we managed early on through consensus. Which sounds wonderful, but it was just a very, very difficult way to sort of manage anything, because convincing everybody to do one particular thing, especially if it was hard, was almost impossible.

I think that a president needs to have a variety of views presented. But also, there has to be a team effort, because otherwise, I think it creates a dissonance and difficulty.

I was a general business major, which meant that in any business school and particularly at Smith School, which is a very good school, you do a lot of team projects. Well I was the guy who gave the presentations for the team projects.

But Eddie does not make all the decisions. Eddie can listen to reason; Eddie can be swayed or talked in or out of certain things. Eddie allows other people to lead in this band and to have certain roles that are very fundamental to the decision-making process.

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.

If you really wish to be independent and make your own judgements about everything important, it is difficult to be a good team player —because a team has different criteria for making judgements about an issue.

Most decisions are not binary, and there are usually better answers waiting to be found if you do the analysis and involve the right people.

Some of my colleagues I have the most differences with in decisions are ones with whom I have a very friendly relationship. You have to be able to step back and look at the issues and your colleagues.

I believe in discussing very thoroughly what should be the goal. When discussing it, I allow others to give their views.

You have to have doubts. I have collaborators I work with. I listen, and then I decide. That's how it works.

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.

In management terms, directing opera certainly prepares you for a film set: the magnitude of it, the experts in other fields that you have to call on. Both are massive ensemble jobs in which there's incredible pressure to get things done on time and on budget - so much so that making the wrong decision may be better than making no decision at all.

When team members openly and passionately share their opinions about a decision, they don't wonder whether anyone is holding back. Then, when the leader has to step in and make a decision because there is no easy consensus, team members will accept that decision because they know that their ideas were heard and considered.

I'm playing for the Red Sox, and I don't think there's anybody out here who's going to intentionally hurt you. So you listen to information, and you kind of filter what you like and take out what you don't.

By reading, you learn through others' experiences, generally, a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

If you are trying to get people to work on a problem together, it's best if they don't know where you, as the supervisor/manager, stand on the question.

Students who learn to collaborate and negotiate - on Capitol Hill, in the board room, in everyday life - will outperform peers who have higher test scores.

Collaborative decision-making is very poor in crises.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

To be successful, we need everyone to think independently and work through disagreement to decide what's best.

Communication does not always occur naturally, even among a tight-knit group of individuals. Communication must be taught and practiced in order to bring everyone together as one

The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.

There is no more great men; there is only great committees.