Herb Kelleher Quotes

It never worked having a management style where someone would try to tell us what to do. It's never been the sort of group that we are.

People need to understand that the technology is for them. It's not to them. It's not over them. People still sometimes want to be led a little too much.

People don't need to be managed, they need to be unleashed.

The key to management is to get rid of the managers.

I've stepped more into my business and really... taken control for how I want that to be.

We want everybody to be bossed up.

There's nothing better than being your own boss, especially after when you play soccer, you're just controlled by so many different forces. So owning your own company and being your own bosses, it's so liberating and freeing and you get to finally make decisions for yourself, which I think is really powerful.

I don't really want followers, to be honest; that's what Twitter is for. I want people who can make their own decisions and look after their own departments.

When there is genuine vision(as opposed to the all-too-familiar vision statement), people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to.

Your goal as a leader isn't to be indispensable to the people you lead; it is to leave your people something that is indispensable to them.

One of the things we know is that you cannot motivate other people, but you can remove the obstacles that stop them from motivating themselves. All motivation is self-motivation.

We need to create a new revolution, and to do that, don’t waste your life: stop pleasing people, and become who you always wanted to be.

Wise guidance never violates people's Free Will. A superior who demands obedience of his subordinates should show respect for their capacity to understand, and also for their Innate Right to their own Free Will.

If leadership is about anything, it's about leading. Not leading people back to where they already are, because they don't need that. They're already there.

The American people have worn out their patience being told by their so-called bettors that you don't know how to live your lives the right way. We need to arrange things for you so you can do things better than you would do yourself.

If you have the choice, it's far better to say, "That person has the job, and they really don't need that much of my oversight." Maybe they don't need any of it.

The world doesn't need more great leaders, it needs more great people who lead.

People want guidance, not rhetoric. They need to know what the plan of action is, and how it will be implemented. They want to be given responsibility to help solve the problem and authority to act on it.

A good leader remains focused. Controlling your destination is better than being controlled by it

You dont need to convince everyone. All you need to do is motivate people who choose to follow you.

There's a lot of power in the word 'no,' and a lot of people, like myself, need to know that.

When we tell people to do their jobs, we get workers. When we trust people to get the job done, we get leaders.

Transformation al leaders pick the right people, match them to the right jobs, achieve mutual clarity on the desired results, and then they get out of the way and leave the individual with maximum freedom to perform.

The role of a leader is not to rule over other people, but to hold a space for their own genius.

Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.