Marshall Goldsmith Quotes

Well, the first quality of being a good leader is you have to be able to follow. See, a good leader can't just be the leader all the time, I have to be able to follow.

I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that's a big deal. And if you're going to be a leader - if you're a leader and you're the smartest guy in the world - in the room, you've got real problems.

I think that I've learned to relax, and trust in and hire very talented people, and trust in their abilities a little more.

The secret to success is good leadership, and good leadership is all about making the lives of your team members or workers better.

Leadership consists of picking good men and helping them do their best.

I'm not really a management-type person. It doesn't suit my personality to be bossing people around.

A good leader has to at some point trust those around him; otherwise, nothing constructive is going to get done.

Empowering, cultivating, and ultimately serving those who follow you will unlock massive potential within your organization, allowing you to solve for problems in real time.

I had to learn to trust people, and I realized that success was going to be born in hiring really bright people - very self-motivated, very able to make good judgment calls day in and day out.

It's an interesting juxtaposition, being student body president and leading others and learning how to effectively help people on the team in a way that's not as direct.

I always say, as a leader, you've got to know when to get out of the way.

I'm very much a leader in a lot of the work that I do or that I've done in my career.

Leadership is influence.

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

The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

You can lead a team in a lot of different ways. It can be talking to somebody who is down or, during the course of a game, looking to penetrate and then dropping the ball off to someone else for an easy bucket.

There is no better way to manage than by walking around. Autocracy doesn't work. Talk to people in their offices, find out what's on their minds.

People and organizations don't grow much without delegation and completed staff work because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses.

A good leader should focus on making sure everyone is being given the tools to do their job, not just expecting - poof! - that they're going to produce great work.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

The key to management is to get rid of the managers.

There's no way a director can communicate with every single person on the set and yet they need to motivate and instill an ambition to want to do their best work.

That's why I never became a director. I never had patience with people.

One of the most important things about leadership is that you have to have the kind of humility that will allow you to be coached.

The great irony of management is that the higher up you go, the less actual control you have. When you are but a humble coder, you make the computer do exactly what you want; when you're a manager, you only hope that people understand what you want, and then trust/pray that they do it both correctly and in a timely manner.