Daniel Kahneman Quotes

Leadership is about having the courage to go against the advice of the so-called experts and doing what your instinct tells you is right.

You always want to know you have somebody at the helm who knows what they're doing.

You need to be surrounded by good advisers, but you also need to trust your instinct.

I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director.

I don't think one can question MS' leadership.

At one point, people are going to have to realize that maybe I know what I'm doing.

You need to mesh the voices of people with expertise and meritocracy.

Send a wise man and don't advise him. He should know what to do.

Leadership is having the trust of the people are trying to lead.

The skills necessary to change nappies or negotiate Brexit are obviously very different, but both involve a great deal of trust in the competence of the people doing the job.

What is competent? Who is it that can adjudicate what is competent or not competent? If the guys that are running the most important banks in our country aren't competent enough, well then, who is competent enough?

I generally have confidence in my directors.

We are divided between those who think with their heads and those who know with their heart. Consider Harriet Miers. If you think about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination is absurd. But the President didn't say he thought about his selection. He said this: "I know her heart." Notice how he said nothing about her brain? He didn't have to. He feels the truth about Harriet Miers.

I have this amazing team that I trust. I completely go with their decisions on things. I don't have to go in and micromanage everything. And I think the other thing is, you start to sort of... I wouldn't say relax, because I've never relaxed. But I've tried to have more confidence in the things I like, or the things other people like. That's really the big thing in this job, to second-guess yourself all the time.

People look to me to do things for them, to have answers.

You must have the confidence to override people with more credentials than you whose cognition is impaired by incentive-caused bias or some similar psychological force that is obviously present. But there are also cases where you have to recognize that you have no wisdom to add - and that your best course is to trust some expert.

Just do what you want, I don't think you should ever... pointers and tips from people is great, and it's good and I don't think you should ever shun down advice, but if you feel something's wrong, then you don't do it. And that's what I'd say.

When people are feeling insecure, they'd rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.

But I don't think people take bad advice. They've got intuition too, you know. In fact I'd be surprised if they take any advice at all.

If a leader goes with their gut, it should be after listening first to people they trust.

Every decision he made, I think everybody bought into it. Whether you understood it or not, you bought into it. Because he's a champion. He's won five of these or something like that, so you've got to trust a guy that's been here before and his view for our team.

My instinct is probably one of the strongest assets I've got, workwise.

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.