John P. Kotter Quotes

To me, it's really important to drive change through a team because one person, while the buck has to stop with somebody, the company is just too big for one person.

I think we did a pretty good role, linking, being a sounding board really and a driving force, especially from the bottom up. I think that part of this is bottom up as well as top down.

You can't have an ego when you're a team. One person can't really rule the roost.

I think that when you are part of a football team, it is a group. That means the players and the staff, including the manager and all that administration.

I had Lana and she was the number one player on my team

I don't just try to score. The challenge is elevating my teammates to be able to win a championship.

Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.

During the season, your team should be led with exuberance and excitement. You should live the journey. You should live it right. You should live it together. You should live it shared. You should try to make one another better. You should get on one another if somebody's not doing their part. You should hug one another when they are. You should be disappointed in a loss and exhilarated in a win. It's all about the journey.

It's very exciting to be a part of a team of collaborators in general.

When your great players are team players, everybody else follows their lead. The best team doesn't always win - it's usually the team that gets along best.

Putting together a really strong unifying team was an absolute condition. When that fell away, I think that Michael [Gove] felt things had changed.

Without a terrific leader, you're not going to have a Great Group. But it is also true that you're not going to have a great leader without a Great Group.

You must learn how to hold a team together. You must lift some men up, calm others down, until finally they've got one heartbeat. Then you've got yourself a team.

Building a strong team is both possible and remarkably simple. But is painfully difficult.

Coaching is salesmanship. Coaching is winning players over and convincing them they have to play together. It takes a team conviction to play together to make things work.

The ability for a group of people to do remarkable things hinges on how well those people can pull together as a team.

He doesn't need advice on how to play his position, but he needs advice on how to play team ball... If it's going to be my team, I'll voice my opinion. If he don't like it, he can opt out.

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

If you really got the right people, and you've got them working together as a team, whether it's in business, whether it's in science, whether it's in politics, you can make a big difference.

Part of my job being a leader and captain of the team is not just to play well and lead well but find a way to make everybody around me better.

Teamwork remains a sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped because it is hard to measure (teamwork impacts the outcome of an organization in such comprehensive and invasive ways that it's virtually impossible to isolate it as a single variable) and because it is extremely hard to achieve (it requires levels of courage and discipline that few executives possess) - ironically, building a strong team is very simple (it doesn't require masterful insights or tactics).

If you work for a team, you have a different view, if you own a team you have a radically different view.

Good leadership isn't about advancing yourself. It's about advancing your team.

No one person leads alone - can't do it, it's impossible. It doesn't make any sense. You need a team.

Great groups give the lie to the remarkably persistent but incorrect notion that successful organizations are the lengthened shadow of a great woman or man. However, each great group has a strong leader. In fact, great groups and great leaders create each other.