Category: Leadership Quote

Leadership Quote: Be Like Water..

February 23, 2014 by Elisa Spain2 Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

“Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.”

-Bruce Lee

When I read this quote at my Vistage Key Executive meeting this month, we had a lively conversation about “what does it mean to be like water?” Here is what we came up with.

Water is infinitely adaptable, when it encounters a boulder, a rock or a dam, it moves around it. Water takes different forms, sometimes, hard and solid, like ice, sometimes fluid, sometimes cold, sometimes warm, sometimes boiling.

If we as humans can be like water, we will know when to simply move around the boulder and find another path; when to be fluid and when to hold firm; when to accept and when to respond; when to boil and when to be warm. In short, be like water and adapt to what life presents us with.

Leadership Quote: We can't solve problems…

January 26, 2014 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

-Albert Einstein

Typically when we discover a problem, we bring together the same team that was involved when we first launched the new product, new division, new whatever, that led to the problem we are now facing.

What if instead, we asked people who weren’t involved at the beginning to look at the situation and give us questions to consider and offer possible solutions?

Perhaps you can gather a new team to look at the problem with fresh eyes.

Or, consider asking people outside your business.

Each month Vistage members have the opportunity to ask their private advisory board to bring that different kind of thinking to the challenges they face.

Wherever you choose to go when problems arise, it’s that fresh view that leads to better results.

Leadership Quote: Leadership: The Art Of Getting Someone Else To Do Something…

December 22, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

“Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

As human beings, we tend to choose to lead or follow. The role we choose is function of both our style and our circumstance. Even those of us who are leaders are often in a position where we choose to be followers.

As I stop and reflect on who I have chosen to follow in the past and why, this quote resonates, I did it because I wanted to. Here are my reflections on circumstances where I have chosen to follow, please share yours:

Something the person said inspired me
I observed what they were doing and wanted to learn
The person encouraged me, made me feel that I could do it
By doing it, I would benefit my business or career
I felt there was a “greater good” to be achieved by doing it

I look forward to hearing your stories.

Enjoy the holiday season! See you here on January 5th, 2014.

Leadership Quote: If I Had Only One Hour To Save The World…

November 24, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

“If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.”

-Albert Einstein

How often do we jump in and start solving things before we know what the problem is? When we process issues in Vistage, the set goal is question, question, question until the person whose issue it is finds their own way to the solution. And yet, it is so tempting to jump in with answers. Socrates, like Einstein, tells us that wisdom comes from asking the better questions, defining the problem.

Perhaps us lesser mortals, have the opportunity to be just as wise…by pausing, asking questions, defining the problem, and letting the solution emerge rather than be told.

Leadership Quote: Becoming A Leader, Becoming Yourself….

October 27, 2013 by Elisa Spain2 Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.”

-Warren Bennis

The challenge of course is gaining this self-awareness.

Identifying our genius
Learning how we show up to others and the impact we have
Learning when to lead from the front of the room and when to lead from the back

Whether we have been in a leadership role for a long time, or the experience is more recent, each day is an opportunity to move toward this simple, yet difficult goal.

One of the great benefits of Vistage private advisory boards is the opportunity to learn all these things from our peers. We can then take what we learn back into our organizations and become the best version of ourselves.

Leadership Quote: Create Goals, Not For What You'll Achieve…

September 29, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

“Create goals, not for what you’ll achieve, but for who you get to be in the process.”

Occasionally, I hear from people who say, “I don’t have goals and frankly, I don’t see the point”. While setting achievement goals is somewhat personality driven, the value is there for all of us when we create goals for the purpose of….well, creating a purpose.

Goals, be they personal or business, give us a direction to go in. They help with that ball-dropping prioritization, I talked about a few weeks ago, Drop Some Balls, and they give us clarity each day.

When we begin to think about goal setting as defining who we want to be, suddenly it is less about achieving and more about “who we get to be in the process”.

Leadership Quote: Vision Without Execution…

August 25, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

Vision without execution is hallucination.

— Thomas A. Edison

When leaders focus solely on vision and strategy and not on execution, put simply, nothing gets done. Successful leaders know that a vision is a destination that their team can rally around. They also know that while the vision is their job, it is a team effort to develop a strategy for getting there.

At the same time, once the vision and strategy are defined, results only happen with implementation. And only succeed with the monitoring and evaluation that follows.

In my experience, leaders who see their only job as generating the big ideas and abdicate their leadership role when it comes to execution are suffering from the hallucinations Thomas Edison describes. By avoiding learning about the people they lead, the technologies their companies use, the customers they serve, and numerous other crucial little things, they miss the key elements of execution.

This is why Vistage members share their vision, strategy and execution plans, are accountable to each other for all three and outperform their industry peers.

Leadership Quote: The Art Of Being Wise….

July 28, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

— William Jones

How many times do we notice something, point it out and then regret it later, wishing we had kept quiet. In our quest for excellence, sometimes we forget that perfection and excellence are not the same. Excellence sometimes is simply knowing what to accept as good enough and what to overlook.

Here’s an idea…

Today, instead of looking around your office, your plant, or the long to-do list and noticing what is missing:

What if you, instead, noticed a critical item that is working and gave someone specific positive feedback?
And, decided to overlook something less important, that may not be exactly what you wanted, but is really good enough?

Leadership Quote: Leadership Is Not Magnetic Personality…

June 30, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Once again, I am taking a brief pause from the Leadership View series for the monthly quote. The series will return next week with Leadership View #12.

This month’s leadership quote:

Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations — Peter F. Drucker

What a relief, this means EVERY leader has the potential to succeed…That is, if he or she wants to. For me, this quote means that to accomplish successful leadership, we must step outside of ourselves and focus on the people we are leading. We must identify what drives each individual on our team, identify their unique genius and coach them toward success. It is our job as leaders to inspire the people we lead to take the next step, to take the risk to achieve growth and as Drucker says, achieve beyond their limitations.

Perhaps the place to start is with identifying these same factors within ourselves…