John C. Maxwell Quotes

An organization cannot increase its productivity-but people can!

Just about anyone can make a good product, but it's the people that count. In the end, it's the employees who will take it from a kitchen-table idea to the next level. There are a lot of important things in business, but the people portion comes first.

Acquiring and keeping good people is a leader's most important task.

As with all catalysts, the manager's function is to speed up the reaction between two substances, thus creating the desired end product. Specifically, the manager creates performance in each employee by speeding up the reaction between the employee's talent and the company's goals, and between the employee's talent and the customer's needs.

We accomplish all that we do through delegation - either to time or to other people.

Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.

Give your employees a mission that matches their ambitions. When you challenge people, they surprise you.

I have great people working for me now. I surround myself with smart people.

The most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings

Here's what management is about: Pick good people and set the right priorities.

I do appreciate that the most important thing as manager is to get good results.

If you have great people around you, they will take you higher than your dream will. Leaders are never self-made. Those closest to you determine your level of success, so choosing the right companions as partners in pursuit of your vision is an important decision. My advice is to surround yourself with talented people who will challenge you, help you grow and inspire you to maximize your potential.

You build a better company by building better people.

Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases ... If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.

Give me the right people and I don’t much care what organization you give me. Good things will happen. Give me the wrong people and it doesn’t matter what you do with the organization. Bad things will happen.

Great leaders love to see people grow. The day you are afraid of them being better than you is the day you fail as a leader.

I think the mark of a good director is that they surround themselves with good people.

We should invest in people not ideas. A good idea is often destroyed by bad people and good people can always make a bad idea better.

Do pleasant things yourself, but unpleasant things through others.

Rosencrantz: Shouldn't we be doing something--constructive? Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? ... A short, blunt human pyramid...?

A group of amazingly high achievers can be brought together and play together, and all believe that they are competing for something bigger than themselves. Those players are so used to being patted on the back and told how good they are. Frankly, those are usually the hardest people to remind that they are aspiring to achieve something bigger than themselves.

I've read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, ‘I worked really, really hard in my 20s.’ And I know what he means, because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can't do it forever, and you don't want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more.

Doing deals doesn't yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.

Our days are like identical suitcases. Even though they are all the same size, some people are able to pack more into them then others. The reason? They know what to pack.