empowering employees Quotes

One of the things I preach to all my staff is never be frightened to make a decision.

I must have assistants who will solve their own problems and tell me later what they've done.

A boss who micromanages is like a coach who wants to get in the game. Leaders guide and support and then sit back to cheer from the sidelines.

Am I a great manager? Huh. I was blessed to have a front office that found great talent, and then I was smart enough to stay the hell out of their way.

I hired top-notch people, trusted them to do their jobs, and then came to grips with the fact that I wouldn't be coaching as much.

Frank W. Woolworth once told me that the turning-point in his career did not come until he was thrown flat on his back by illness. He was sure that his business would go to pieces during his long, enforced absence. Instead, he discovered that he had in his employ men who could overcome difficulties when given power to exercise initiative. After that Woolworth left many problems and difficulties to be solved by subordinates and turned his attention to big things.

In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.

Everyone is against micro managing but macro managing means you're working at the big picture but don't know the details.

You have to look at leadership through the eyes of the followers and you have to live the message. What I have learned is that people become motivated when you guide them to the source of their own power and when you make heroes out of employees who personify what you want to see in the organization.

If you're a leader at any level and your people aren't challenging you, you've got to change that or you can't be a leader here because you're not going to be using ideas, you're not going to have innovation, you're not going to fully develop your people. And if you're working in a group and you don't challenge, then you're not really doing your job.

I don't micromanage the interiors. People ask me to and I say no. I don't want to control everything.

We have to create that strength, and sometimes we have to reduce bureaucracy. It just gets in our way.

I learned that as a director, you're around all these talented people, so you have this window that all these really good ideas can come in to help your movie, so you're crazy to close them. You need to be inspiring people, engaging people. There are lots of people who are really good at their jobs but might not know or feel like they want to come up to people and get them to participate and want to do their best.

Once you have a staff of prepared, intelligent, and energetic people, the next step is to motivate them to be creative.