Douglas Conant Quotes

Good leaders make people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

There are good leaders who actively guide and bad leaders who actively misguide. Hence, leadership is about persuasion, presentation and people skills.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

Leadership involves persuasion, and conciliation, and education and patience. It's long, slow, tough work. That is the only kind of leadership I know or will believe in, or will practice.

Part of being a successful leader is listening and looking for opportunities to bring people together.

A lot of people relate leadership to formalities. They believe that leadership is about being professional and strong and always right and being a booming voice. I just don't buy that. I think that leadership is a soft skill; it's a people skill.

When I look at a leader, I look at someone who is able to get exceptional performance out of others.

Leadership must be likeable, affable, cordial, and above all emotional. The fashion of authoritarian leadership is gone. Football is about life. You can't be angry all day.

Being a manager is about getting into the minds of the people you represent.

The topic of leadership is a touchy one. A lot of leaders fail because they don't have the bravery to touch that nerve or strike that chord. Throughout my years, I haven't had that fear.

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

Any good director, and I've worked with a few that I would call very good, they know how to disarm any anxieties very quickly.

I don't put together cars, I put together people.

I think management is about just that - managing people via man-to-man skills.

To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak - you have to figure out the people working for you and give each tasks that will take advantage of his strength.

When I'm hiring leaders, I pay a lot of attention to what their peers and what people who report to them say about them. We want people who relate well with their peers and cooperate in an exchange of information rather than being overly competitive.

There are leaders vocally, and there are leaders by example. I think I'm starting to become better at being a leader vocally, just talking on the court.

In running Wilson Sonsini, it's all people-to-people skills. Those people-to-people skills translate into diplomatic skills.

The way you build trust with your team is around super-clear communication in that instant when they say, 'I will be sad if you don't do X.' You have to say, 'We're not going to do X, and here's why, and believe me, you'll be much sadder later if I let you go do it and you spend a bunch of time on it and nothing ever happens.'

You can't manage by memo. You can't stand up there and just send out edicts. I think you just gotta really personalize your relationships.

All leaders, male or female, innately possess feminine qualities like empathy, candor and vulnerability - the difference lies in which leaders choose to suppress those qualities, and which choose to leverage them as strengths.

Leadership is simply the ability of an individual to coalesce the efforts of other individuals toward achieving common goals. It boils down to looking after your people and ensuring that, from top to bottom, everyone feels part of the team.

I was raised not to be rude, but I also try to get the best work out of people.

I've been involved with great scripts and so-so leadership, and it's clear to me that leadership is the most compelling factor.

Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.