Frances Hesselbein

Businessman

57 Quotes

We cannot ensure equal access or build upon our diverse strengths by sitting at our desks.

Listening is an art.

A single person doesn't change an organization, but culture and good people do.

Management is the set of skills that can help get things done. Unfortunately, its practice is too often a bag of manipulative tricks to advance someone's own interests, which creates cynicism.

If you are building a corporate culture of greatness, you have to define culture on your own terms and with the people you work with.

When people are speaking, they require our undivided attention. We focus on them; we listen very carefully. We listen to the spoken words and the unspoken messages. This means looking directly at the person, eyes connected; we forget we have a watch, just focusing for that moment on that person.

Move beyond the old assumptions, practices, and language that can be barriers to equal access.

I believe that tears should be very private, and no matter what issue or what situation, we should have a very dignified demeanor.

We see change as a challenge, not as a threat.

At a young age, I learned from my grandmother that I should respect all people. Her lessons were defining moments in my life and determined the type of leader that I would become.

In my life, I don't have roadblocks and obstacles. I might have something you would call a 'challenge.' I throw that out the window, and I call that a wonderful opportunity.

We are increasingly becoming a pluralistic nation.

When it comes to communicating change at any time, the mission must be clear, and it must inspire.

Not long after I was married, World War II began. My husband John volunteered for the Navy and was sent to Pensacola for training as a Naval Combat Air Crew photographer. It seemed a strange assignment for a young newspaper editor and writer, already exempt, but off he went, saying goodbye to our 18-month-old Johnny and me.

Simple questions can be profound, and answering them requires us to make stark and honest - and sometimes painful - self-assessments.

In the future, it will not be the one big message, the one big voice, but millions of us, in our own way, healing, unifying, and experiencing that one defining moment when we recognize that sustaining the democracy is the common bottom line - whoever we are, whatever we do, wherever we are, the call is to sustain the democracy.

Leadership flows from inner character and integrity of ambition, which inspires others to lend themselves to your organization's mission.

Leadership is a matter of how to be - not how to do it.

There's something exhilarating about being in the mountains and talking about management and the future with Peter Drucker.

When I choose what I do, I ask, 'Does it make a difference?'

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