Tom Rath Quotes

The most challenging part of being CEO is communicating to 200,000 people what you want done.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

I used to think my job as a CEO meant managing metrics and meeting goals, but I've realised now that's it's about managing my board and employees.

I think in any organization you want your manager to have a strong opinion. You don't want them to just say, 'Yes, sir' to things they don't believe in.

You have to be able to communicate the vision to the people in your organization so that they know where and how they should direct themselves on a day-to-day basis.

The most important role of a leader is to set a clear direction, be transparent about how to get there and to stay the course.

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.

To be a good leader, you have to be a good communicator. As a leader, you have to communicate your intent every chance you get, and if you fail to do that, you will pay the consequences.

I think that the CEO is responsible for setting the vision, for articulating the mission, and for building a team of powerful evangelists that share that mission and that passion, because no one person can do anything by themselves.

Of course every manager has a different mentality, different philosophy.

The basic skills of leaders are always the same: be driven by a deeper purpose, be a human being, have a passion for what you do, and it's also about hard work and ethics.

As CEO, I believe my most important job is to both define reality and inspire hope for the PayPal team. Defining reality includes being realistic about all the things that could go wrong so that we are prepared to navigate those challenges.

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.

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

The one thing I have learned as a CEO is that leadership at various levels is vastly different. When I was leading a function or a business, there were certain demands and requirements to be a leader. As you move up the organization, the requirements for leading that organization don't grow vertically; they grow exponentially.

Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset.

Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.

As leader of the effort of the Iraqi Survey Group, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections. It's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies.

I describe management as arts, crafts and science. It is a practice that draws on arts, craft and science and there is a lot of craft - meaning experience - there is a certain amount of craft meaning insight, creativity and vision, and there is the use of science, technique or analysis.

Managers are important: they are leading the company and guiding and have to provide vision and manage the daily business.

A CEO needs to build their own team.

Early in my career, I sometimes found it difficult to make the tough people decisions - I had to learn that. In business, you want to listen. You want to learn. You want to make sure you're not proceeding without information. But if you wait too long, you can actually hurt an organization even more.

Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power.

I think that if you run a big company, you've got to, four or five times a year, just say, 'Hey team, look, here's where we're going.' If you do it 10 times, nobody wants to work for you. If you do it zero times, you have anarchy.

I want to deploy the leadership to meet the challenges that face us and to restore America's greatness.