Andrew Strauss Quotes

I always want to have a personal relationship with everybody that works for me.

You have to let the team develop. You can't say, 'Oh, I got empty seats, I'm going to change the team.' It just doesn't work that way.

If you hire great people, and they're all self-motivated, then you can get by without a lot of structure.

The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven't made up their minds.

I always look at it that I work with my employees as opposed to them working for me.

The culture at Valve is pretty much crowdsourced. The handbook is a wiki. One of the first things we say to new hires is, 'You have to change something in the handbook.'

We have a training period; we have certain guidelines and structure. You can't hire talented people and stifle them. That's not the way it works anymore.

When leaders throughout an organization take an active, genuine interest in the people they manage, when they invest real time to understand employees at a fundamental level, they create a climate for greater morale, loyalty, and, yes, growth.

The best bosses understand the people working for them. That's the first component: what makes my people tick? What are they in it for?

I like to direct the same way that I like to be directed.

The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.

I meet regularly with my staff to ensure they are aware of what I want, but also to make sure they have the chance to influence the process and use all of their knowledge to help prepare the group.

If you want your people to be responsible, be responsive to their needs.

Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people.

And here's what management is: motivating people and putting them in places where they can succeed.

I very purposely have an open communication culture, where I encourage employees to approach me with their ideas without dominating them.

You have to tell each other the truth, you cannot be nice and happy when we want to achieve so much as a team and a club.

Every team has leadership. The leadership is the best players. But there's positive leadership, and there's negative leadership.

I always get saddled as a player's coach, and I'm happy about that.

I want my people to work hard. But if they see me earning a lot more than they do, they would lose their sense of being owners of the factory, and what I say as factory manager wouldn't stick.

Have very frequent talks with employees because they are your best allies.

Imagine going into an office and telling the staff that they have to follow your philosophy. Imagine the reaction you would get if you said that in any other walk of life. Why would I offer that to my players?

For me dialogue is as essential in football as in life. I like to talk to my players and I never impose anything, I always give them the chance to make their own choices.

I think it's a requirement that the general manager and the coach are communicating with each other on a regular basis, and it's unacceptable if they're not.

It's the same for any team... you have to keep your best players.