Success Quotes Can Really Help Motivate

You
By: soofi-29

People like hearing about success and successful people. There is

something in the aura of a successful person that makes them attractive.
Successful people are a constant source of inspiration to us, and we often try
to take a leaf out of their books to learn something from them, to absorb
some tips that will make your life a success.

Sometimes, this motivation can come from success quotes, which can ignite
a spark within you and fuel the passion that will help you achieve the goal
that you've been wanting to for so long. Let's look at some of these success
quotes in this article and try to analyze what inspiring message is being
conveyed them.

"I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be

a success at something you hate". - George Burns

This quote pits two values against each other – doing what you love and
doing what you hate. How many among us do not know the agony of being
stuck in a job that we hate because it pays our bills? However, George Burns,
the comedian, actor, and writer believes that it is a higher virtue to pursue
what you really love doing, even if you do fail at it in the beginning. He talks
about never sacrificing your passion for anything in the world, and if you
stick to it, you are bound to achieve what you aspire for.

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm".

-Winston Churchill

The road to success is never smooth, and is fraught with all kinds of
difficulties and even failure. However, what separates the men from the boys
is the attitude of getting up and starting all over again without losing sight of
the vision and without losing courage. Those who lose their eagerness and
motivation will never achieve success in life.

"It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives
meaning to our lives". - Anthony Robbins

Success is not about having loads of money or a line of cars parked in front
of your house. Being rich should not be confused with being successful. The
true measure of success is how valuable you were to the people or society
around you and what impression you have left behind.

For more on inspirational quotesClick on our Walt Disney quotes page Victor
is the operator and editor of settinggoals101.com, a comprehensive website
that provides tools to help you set and successfully achieve your objectives.
Settinggoals101 is your guide to more effective goal achievement.

Money is Not the Paramount Motivator

By: Edward Hill

Discovering the textbook employee who fits your criteria can be

exhausting and costly. Guidance takes weeks or even months, followed by a
learning curve for the practical application of what was taught. Finally, after
an exhaustive search you did it. You hired an “Ace”! Now what? How do you
keep your “Winner” around for a long time to come? Every company, little,
medium and large has at one point or another lost an exceptionally dear
employee. Obviously additional money is a awesome motivator to maintain
crucial employees. On the other hand, in a recent poll, money is the
subsequent best motivation, the first being authentic acknowledged
achievment for a job well done. Let’s talk about the latter and how you can
be extra successful at recognizing your employees.
Awards and recognition has been around since Adam named the stars above.
It’s no secret people are motivated by achievement and naturally endeavor
to gain positive recognition. Each industry is different and there are many
different ways to motivate and recognize employees. I would like to focus on
the top form of motivation, awards.
1.) Awards and Recognition. An award is defined as a souvenir that is given
to a person or a group of people to identify excellence. Awards can be a
plethora of diverse things including trophies, certificates, commemorative
plaques, medals, badges, pins, or ribbons and personalized gifts to only
name a few. An award may carry a monetary value or it can simply carry an
emotional worth, like a new title or induction in an elite club or it could be a
public recognition of excellence, without some physical token or prize.
Awards can be very effective motivators, nevertheless they can also be very
costly. You ought to exploit the success of the awards by following these
steps.
a.) Make a huge deal out of the presentation of the award. Hold an all
personnel meeting, lease a banquet hall or at least have the event catered.
The more sophisticated the better the effect of giving out an award.
b.) Always give a detailed description of why the recipient won the award,
how they went above and beyond what is expected. Give details how other
employees can obtain an award. You are setting the bar to be achieved so
make sure you set it high.
c.) The award itself must always be personalized. The significance is
astronomically superior if the award has the recipients name on it. Keep in
mind Dale Carnegie says a persons name is the sweetest utterance in any
language.
d.) Stick with it. Generally employee recognition programs fizzle out after a
few months. Continue with the program, keep setting the bar higher and
higher.
In summery, key employees are hard to obtain, let alone keep them around
for a long period of time. Never underestimate the influence of recognition…
cash never hurts either.

Coach Eddie Hill Award Masters Inc. 1-800-800-4808

www.awardmastersinc.com Awards, trophies, plaques, corporate gifts and
engraving

Article Source: http://www.leadershiparticles.net

Steve Jobs Biography

Steve Jobs has revolutionized the computer, hardware, software, animation and
music industries. Steve Jobs’ insistence of innovating always has cost him
millions of dollars but has created a cult like following for his products.

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." -Steve

Jobs
Steve Jobs regularly makes most rosters of the rich and powerful. It is
surprising for a guy who takes home an annual salary of U.S. $1. The
reasons why he is on all power lists are; Apple, Next, iPod and Pixar.
Jobs is also known as the one man who could have upstaged Bill
Gates. But Jobs was as excited about innovation as Bill Gates was
interested in making money.

Steve Jobs was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin to Joanne Simpson

and an Egyptian Arab father. Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View,
Santa Clara County, California then adopted him. The writer Mona
Simpson is Jobs’ biological sister. In 1972, Jobs graduated from
Homestead High School in Cupertino, California and enrolled in Reed
College in Portland, Oregon. One semester later he had dropped out.
But instead of going back home he hung around college and took up
the study of philosophy and foreign cultures.
Steve Jobs had a deep-seated interest in technology so he took up a
job at Atari Inc. which was a leading manufacturer of video games.
He struck a friendship with fellow designer Steve Wozniak and
attended meetings of the "Homebrew Computer Club" with him.
Wozniak and Jobs developed a system with a toy whistle available in
the Cap'n Crunch cereal box to make it possible to make free long
distance telephone calls. They called off the amateur venture after
someone told them of the possible legal consequences.

After saving up some money Steve Jobs took of for India in the
search of enlightenment with his friend Dan Kottke. Once he returned
he convinced Wozniak to quit his job at Hewlett Packard and join him
in his venture that concerned personal computers. They sold items
like a scientific calculator to raise the seed capital. There is
controversy as to where did the name Apple originate. According to
one belief Apple originates from a pleasant summer Jobs had spent
as an orchard worker in Oregon. There is another school of thought
that says that the symbol of rainbow colored apple that has been
bitten into is a tribute to Alan Turing who was a homosexual and had
died after biting a cyanide laced apple.

In 1976, Jobs, then 21, and Wozniak, 26, founded Apple Computer
Co. in the Jobs family garage. The first personal computer was sold
for $666.66. By 1980, Apple had already released three improved
versions of the personal computer. It had a wildly successful IPO,
which made both founders millionaires many times over. Steve Jobs
had managed to rope in John Scully of Pepsi to head the marketing
function in Apple.

A tiff with the Apple board and John Scully led to the resignation of
Steve Jobs. As soon as he resigned he immersed himself in his
brand new venture. Steve Jobs decided that he wanted to change the
hardware industry. The company was called NeXTStep and the new
machine was called NeXT Computer. He ploughed in more than U.S.
$250 million into the company. The machine was a commercial
washout but it did help in object-oriented programming, PostScript,
and magneto-optical devices. Tim Berners-Lee developed the original
World Wide Web system at CERN on a NeXT machine. Bitterly
disappointed with NeXTStep, Jobs accepted the offer that Apple
made him.

Steve Jobs also started Pixar Inc., which has gone on to produce
animated movies such as Toy Story (1995); A Bug's Life (1998); Toy
Story 2 (1999); Monsters, Inc. (2001); Finding Nemo (2003); and The
Incredibles (2004). This venture has made him one of the most
sought after men in Hollywood.

Post Pixar, Steve Jobs wanted another round of revolutionizing to do.

This time it was the music industry. He introduced the iPod in 2003.
Later he came up with iTunes, which was a digital jukebox. A million
and a half iPods later, the music industry still does not know whether
this invention will save it or destroy it. Apple has a great advertising
track record and its ‘Rip, Mix, Burn’ campaign was another feather in
its cap. Now the industry uses a Mac to make the music and an iPod
to store it.

Steve Jobs lives with his wife, Laurene Powell and their three children
in Silicon Valley. He also has a daughter, Lisa Jobs from a previous
relationship. In 2004, there was a cancerous tumor in his pancreas,
which was successfully operated upon.

'You've got to find what you

love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of
Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12,
2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one

of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college.
Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college
graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's
it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed
around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.
So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed

college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.
She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates,
so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and
his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last
minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a
waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an
unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My
biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated
from college and that my father had never graduated from high
school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only
relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would
someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college

that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class
parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six
months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to
do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it
out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved
their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all
work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was
one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I
could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and
begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the

floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to
buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday
night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved
it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and
intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one
example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy

instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every
label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I
had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided
to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif
and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between
different letter combinations, about what makes great typography
great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that
science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.

But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh
computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.
It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never
dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never
had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since
Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer
would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never
dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not
have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was
impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.
But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only
connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots
will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something —
your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let
me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I

started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard,
and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage
into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just
released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I
had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a
company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I
thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the
first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future
began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did,
our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very
publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone,
and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let
the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped
the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and
Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a
very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the
valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what
I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had
been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was
the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of
being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner
again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most
creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another
company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who
would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first
computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most
successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of
events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology
we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance.
And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired
from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient
needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose
faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I
loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true
for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large
part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what
you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love
what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As
with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like
any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll
on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live
each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."
It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I
have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today
were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do
today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in
a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've
ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because
almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of
embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of
death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are
going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you
have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not
to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in
the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't
even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost
certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to
live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go
home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to
die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd
have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to
make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as
possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy,
where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach
and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few
cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told
me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors
started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of
pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and
I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the
closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can
now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a
useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't

want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share.
No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death
is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent.
It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is
you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become
the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite
true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't
be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other
people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out
your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly
want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole
Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was
created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo
Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the
late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it
was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was
sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came
along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great
notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth
Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final
issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of
their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road,
the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so
adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay
Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you
graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 4:18:09 AM by

Swordmaker

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from
one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated
from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just
three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed
around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit.
So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was
a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for
adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college
graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a
lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last
minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting
list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected
baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother
found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that
my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the
final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents
promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college,
but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and
all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college
tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I
wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me
figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved
their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out
OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best
decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the
required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones
that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in
friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food
with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to
get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much
of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to
be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in
the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every
drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and
didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class
to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about
varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about
what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically
subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten
years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came
back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer
with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in
college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally
spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no
personal computer would have them.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that
calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful
typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was
in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect
them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow
connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny,
life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the
road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you
off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to
do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was
twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two
of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd
just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just
turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company
you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very
talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things
went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually
we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and
so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my
entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what
to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of
entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to
me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for
screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about
running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I
still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one
bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the
best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure
about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my
life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another
company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would
become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated
feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in
the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple

and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current
renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from
Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it.
Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.
I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I
did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for
your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only
way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only
way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep
looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when
you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as
the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went
something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll
most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for
the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked
myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am
about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many
days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be
dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me
make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external
expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just
fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the
trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is
no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the
morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know
what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of
cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three
to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order,
which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids
everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a
few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it
will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where
they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my
intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.
I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed
the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out
to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had
the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I
get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to
you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely
intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to
Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we
all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because
death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it
clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But
someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be
cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is
limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by
dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let
the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and
intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth
Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a
fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it
to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal
computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters,
scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form
thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with
neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of
the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they
put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the
back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country
road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so
adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was
their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I
have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin
anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe

that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path.
Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front
of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
Steve Jobs

Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or

Porsche's in the automotive market. What's wrong with
being BMW or Mercedes?
Steve Jobs

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an

environment where excellence is expected.
Steve Jobs

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is
how it works.
Steve Jobs

I think we're having fun. I think our customers really like our
products. And we're always trying to do better.
Steve Jobs

I want to put a ding in the universe.

Steve Jobs

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Steve Jobs

It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main

competitor.
Steve Jobs

It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd

given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have
built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after
we spoke to them - not something they'd want now.
Steve Jobs

Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this
industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart.
We make it by innovation.
Steve Jobs

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is

best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your
other innovations.
Steve Jobs

The people who are doing the work are the moving force
behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them,
to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
Steve Jobs

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies

into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it
requires a lot of disciplines.
Steve Jobs

Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?

Steve Jobs

You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to
give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want
something new.
Steve Jobs

Quotes on Leadership
Quotes on leadership can be a great motivating factor. They inspire and light a
fire within you, making you aspire for greatness.
There is nothing like a good leadership quote to ignite us and make a
positive impact on our life. These quotes on leadership may just be
one or two lines long but they seem to contain an endless ocean of
knowledge within themselves.

Each quote is self contained and can lend itself beautifully to

discussion and debate. You can learn more from a single quote than
you could if you spent several hours in a classroom, pouring over text
books. It may sound strange to you but these quotes have the
potential of changing your life. If not that they will at least set you
moving in a new direction.

"Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them
surprise you with their results." – George S. Patton

That’s the mark of a true leader. He has no wish to forever stand in

front of a line and lead his team to a goal. A leader wants his team to
be self-sufficient and confident in their own capabilities.

He goes beyond instructing; he guides, instills confidence, trusts his

team implicitly to get the job done well; and then, he takes a step
back and observes. This kind of trust and independence will
challenge the team to exceed the expectations of their leader. And in
many cases, they do!

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right

things." Peter F. Drucker

Quotes on leadership like these do more than just inspire you. They
give you a new perspective on things. They set you thinking about
different angles of a problem or situation that you may, by yourself,
have never considered.

Look at the quote above. It may be one simple line, but you are
intrigued by it, and now you may be thinking of the differences
between a manager and a leader. In fact, you may even be
wondering what category you fall into. A simple play of words and
doors seemed to have opened up to a whole new world of thought
and ideas.

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You
can't blow an uncertain trumpet." - Theodore M. Hesburgh

A lot in leadership has to do with seeing a goal that may not be visible
to one and all. And once you have seen it, you need to have the
conviction that you will achieve it.

A true leader is successful when he is able to formulate goals and

objectives for himself and his team. If you are certain about the goal
you wish to achieve, you will also have the vision to plan
contingencies for the problems you may face on your quest.

"I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow." -
Woodrow Wilson

Successful leaders believe in augmenting their skills with that of the

others. By himself, he may not have the skills or knowledge to do
something. However, by working in tandem with other people, he not
only gets new work done, but also ends up supplementing his own
knowledge and information.
Quotes on leadership are the proverbial words of wisdom. They give
you new direction, provide a strategy, supply a new line of thought,
and positively motivate you to achieve something. If used at the right
time in the right way, you will be able to make great impact on your
audience or team.
If You Liked This Article We Also Recommend Reading Leadership Quotes
Victor Ghebre is the editor of Settinggoals101.com where you get
practical tips and information on goal setting, motivation, leadership
and more.

Management Gurus From The East

This article is designed to introduce relatively unknown management gurus, and
their ideas, to managers and professionals in all sectors, but is aimed particularly
at providing reading suggestions for those who are studying management
development courses or professional qualifications, by distance learning or in the
classroom, in order to develop their careers.
It highlights the sources of inspiration and guidance that are available
from management and leadership gurus born in the East, who have
individually and collectively made as great a contribution as the more
well-known, more commercially promoted, American gurus. Many of
the Western gurus have based their theories and models on the
original ideas of the leading thinkers from India, China, Eastern
Europe, and Central Asia. Also, as we shall see here, some of the so-
called Western gurus were in fact from Central or Eastern Asia or the
Pacific Basin. This article gives an insight into just a few of this
influential group of original thinkers.

Mistakenly considered by many to be one of the American gurus,

Ansoff was in fact born in Russia but moved to the USA with his
family when he was 18. There he studied and later obtained a PhD in
Mathematics, worked for the Rand Corporation and then the
Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, before moving into academia in the
USA and Europe. Ansoff is best known for establishing strategy as a
management discipline, and for laying the foundations of modern
strategic planning techniques. His approach was, in his time,
criticized for being too focused on analytical and planning techniques,
but is now highly regarded as appropriate for the fast-changing,
complex business world of today.
Hu-Chan is an international management consultant, executive
coach, speaker, and leadership development educator. Specializing
in coaching in cross-cultural leadership, she has become a leader
herself in the new discipline of executive coaching. Through her
individual and team coaching activities, Ms Hu-Chan has influenced
the strategies of major corporations and public sector bodies, in North
and South America, Australia, and Asia.

Born in India, Ghoshal forged a reputation as a brilliant thinker whilst

studying at MIT and Harvard, and then teaching at MIT, INSEAD, and
the London Business School. In partnership with Christopher Bartlett
of Harvard he first came to prominence as a leading thinker on
international strategy and then developed this further to stress the
importance of innovation and the empowerment of people as the key
to creating a moral and value-creating organisation. Ghoshal was
considered to be one of the leading thinkers in the field of how
business must focus on relationship building and innovation, rather
than operational efficiencies, to be successful. Revered in India,
Europe, and the United States, Ghoshal played a major role in
shaping the behavior of the first tranche of today’s global companies.

His own name would not be recognized by hardly any member of the
general public, his company IKEA is a name recognized by most.
Kamprad is also known in the world of academia and business as
having established a model for successful entrepreneurship. He took
his personal values, developed from the harsh upbringing in his
native Smaland in Sweden, and turned these into a set of concepts
that laid down how he wanted his company to be managed and how
he wanted his workers to behave. Called A Furniture Dealer’s
Testament, it is a list of simple but powerful statements that can be
applied to most entrepreneurial projects.

Kartajaya is the founder of Indonesia’s leading consulting firm, and

past president of the World Marketing Association. His thinking on
marketing management is now incorporated into most masters level
marketing courses. Kartajaya has worked in writing partnership with
Philip Kottler, one of the most respected marketing gurus, focusing on
the application of marketing concepts and principles in the Asian
markets. One of his major lines of thinking is that to stay as the
market leader, the organisation must act as if it is not the leader, and
must constantly challenge for the lead, even though they have
temporarily technically achieved that.

Best known for his innovative work in speech recognition technology

for Microsoft and establishing Google's document management and
research center in Beijing, Lee has been an influential figure in the
advancement of China's position in science and technology. He has
written on the benefits of combining the ancient wisdoms and culture
of the East with the established management and leadership
approaches of the West, and the advantages to organizations in
building a culture of learning, personal empowerment and
development of their people. He argues that both of these
approaches will create balance in the organisation, in line with the
Middle Way, one of the principles of the teachings of Confucius.
Interestingly, he also talks about the importance of viewing failure as
a positive learning experience, a concept that is still alien to many
elements of Western society including the business world.

Also known as William Ding, Lei is the founder and head of

Netease.com, the Chinese portal that focuses on on-line gaming and
pc to phone messaging. Lei, still in his 30s, is one of the new wave of
young Asian entrepreneurs who are leading the development of
internet based businesses. His ideas on how to manage in the
internet environment are fast becoming the template which most
organizations in this field are adopting.

Mayo spent his early academic life in his native Australia, where he
forged a reputation as a leading thinker in the areas of logic, ethics,
and psychology. In his forties he moved to America where he
eventually taught at Harvard as a professor of industrial research.
Mayo is now acclaimed as the father of the Human Relations school
of management, being the first major voice advocating a move away
from the scientific management approach towards a more humanistic
one. He is also credited with being the first to recognise that flexible,
responsive, learning organizations were likely to be more successful
in an increasingly fast-changing business world.

Morita left the security of his family’s sake business to start a small
electronics company so that he could continue what had been until
then his amateur enthusiast interest in electronics. He formed a
company called Tokyo Tshsushin Kyogu, later to be changed to
Sony. Pursuing a policy of risk, innovation, creativity, and intuition,
Morita built Sony into one of the modern world’s industrial giants. It
was Morita, through the success of Sony, who put Japanese
innovation into the world’s consciousness. At the same time, Morita
has contributed enormously to the world of management and
leadership, through the lessons learned from the success of Sony.

One of Japan’s most respected management gurus, Nonaka is the

Dean of the School of Knowledge Science at the Japan Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology. Developing earlier thinking by
Drucker and others, his ideas on knowledge-creation and innovation
generating processes in organizations has helped to consolidate the
establishment of Knowledge Management as our newest major
management discipline. Few organizations have embraced every
aspect of Nonaka’s vision, but those that have are reaping huge
benefits from building the active management of knowledge into their
strategies and structures.

Ohmae has pioneered modern approaches to strategic management,

focusing on the role of the strategist, the three key players of
organisation, customer, and competition, and how to gain strategic
advantage. His background is diverse, covering gaining a PhD in
Nuclear Engineering, leading the Tokyo branch of McKinsey
Consulting, acting as an advisor to the Japanese Prime Minister, and
being an accomplished clarinet player. Ohmae’s ideas have had a
major impact on the way in which leading managers think and behave
today. His emphasis on strategists needing to be intuitive, innovative,
and creative are now the norm, and are required reading for
managers and leaders in industry and in politics.

Taguchi’s importance is in his development of the Quality

Management approach introduced into Japan by Deming and Juran,
and pushing the quality control activity backwards into the supplier
and design stages, so establishing one of the foundation stones of
what we practice as Quality Assurance. He also proposed a more
holistic approach to quality improvement, and in doing so made a
major contribution to what eventually became known as Kaizen, or
Continuous Improvement.
Now recognized as the source of much of today’s leadership and
strategic management thinking, Sun Tzu was a military general in
China at the time of Confucius. His writings, known as The Art Of War
(Sun Tzu Ping Fa) are a compilation of his reflections on the
strategies and leadership behavior that underlie success in war.
Translated into to relate to today’s business world, Sun Tzu’s
thoughts on strategy, information and intelligence, tactics, competition
and competitiveness, communication, and leadership and
management, have enormous relevance and are followed by some of
our most successful leaders.

There are many worthy management and leadership figures. Some

are giants of business, some are academics, some come from the
world of battle and war. In the West we tend to turn towards the
European and North American gurus, perhaps because many of them
also become expert in the art of self-promotion, perhaps because our
natural tendency is to look to our own. However, there have been, are
now, and will be, equally valuable contributions from other parts of
the world. Here we have looked at some from the East. They are
great thinkers who we can learn much from. We should not ignore
them.

Leadership Stories

Becoming a Motivational Leader

Create a Big Vision

To become a motivational leader, you start with motivating yourself. You

motivate yourself with a big vision, and as you move progressively toward its
realization, you motivate and enthuse others to work with you to fulfil that
vision.

Set High Standards

You exhibit absolute honesty and integrity with everyone in everything you
do. You are the kind of person others admire and respect and want to be like.
You set a standard that others aspire to. You live in truth with yourself and
others so that they feel confident giving you their support and their
commitment.
Face Your Fears

You demonstrate courage in everything you do by facing doubts and

uncertainties and moving forward regardless. You put up a good front even
when you feel anxious about the outcome. You don't burden others with your
fears and misgivings. You keep them to yourself. You constantly push
yourself out of your comfort zone and in the direction of your goals. And no
matter how bleak the situation might appear, you keep on keeping on with a
smile.

Be Realistic About Your Situation

You are intensely realistic. You refuse to engage in mental games or self-
delusion. You encourage others to be realistic and objective about their
situations as well. You encourage them to realize and appreciate that there is
a price to pay for everything they want. They have weaknesses that they will
have to overcome, and they have standards that they will have to meet, if
they want to survive and thrive in a competitive market.

Accept Responsibility

You accept complete responsibility for results. You refuse to make excuses or
blame others or hold grudges against people who you feel may have wronged
you. You say, 'If it's to be, it's up to me.' You repeat over and over the
words, 'I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible.'

Take Vigorous Action

Finally, you take action. You know that all mental preparation and character
building is merely a prelude to action. It's not what you say but what you do
that counts. The mark of the true leader is that he or she leads the action.
He or she is willing to go first. He or she sets the example and acts as the
role model. He or she does what he or she expects others to do.

Strive For Excellence

You become a motivational leader by motivating yourself. And you motivate

yourself by striving toward excellence, by committing yourself to becoming
everything you are capable of becoming. You motivate yourself by throwing
your whole heart into doing your job in an excellent fashion. You motivate
yourself and others by continually looking for ways to help others to improve
their lives and achieve their goals. You become a motivational leader by
becoming the kind of person others want to get behind and support in every
way.

Your main job is to take complete control of your personal evolution and
become a leader in every area of your life. You could ask for nothing more,
and you should settle for nothing less.
Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, see yourself as an outstanding person, parent, co-worker and leader in

everything you do. Pattern your behaviour after the very best people you
know. Set high standards and refuse to compromise them.

Second, be clear about your goals and priorities and then take action
continually forward. Develop a sense of urgency. Keep moving forward and
you'll automatically keep yourself and others motivated.

Written by Brian Tracy

Leadership Stories

Truth and Trust: They Go Together

We've lost trust. How do I regain the trust of my employees after six rounds
of layoffs? How does my organization regain the trust of the community after
we dumped toxic waste and covered it up? How does my management team
regain trust of each other after a nasty political battle?

Do you trust me? Good. The truth is, you can't regain trust. Period. You
doubt? Think hard about the times you've been betrayed. Did the villain ever
find their way back into your heart? If you're like the thousands I've asked,
the answer is never. Trust can be gained once and lost once. Once lost, it's
lost forever.

So let's ask how we can keep trust from the start. It's really quite easy; if
you want to be trusted, simply be trustworthy. The pressures will be great to
act otherwise, and if you succumb, well, you'll lose trust and you'll never get
it back.

Tell the truth

I've heard countless discussions about how customers, suppliers, employees,

shareholders, or communities can't be told the truth. Maybe we believe that
they can't handle the truth, or that the truth will make us look bad, or maybe
we don't want to take responsibility for the consequences. So we 'position'
our statement. We 'frame it' carefully. We 'massage it.' We use careful 'spin.'
In other words, we lie.

Little white lies can work - they help life run smoothly. But bigger lies
compound. We end up committing beyond our own moral comfort. This
action is recognized in a social psychology principle called 'commitment and
consistency.' That is, once we have taken a position, we are motivated by
various pressures to behave consistently with that position, even if it is
eventually proven wrong. Our ethical standards slip a bit more each time we
hold on to our original stand. Pretty soon, our relationship with the truth is
arms-length at best. (For more on commitment and consistency, see the
wonderful book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini.)

When people find out you've been lying to them, they know your words can't
be trusted. If it's your spouse, they may give you a second chance. If it's
your community, they may tell you they're giving you a second chance, but
don't count on it. Of course, there can be genuine reasons you can't tell the
truth. Sometimes you're legally bound to remain silent. Sometimes you're
negotiating and can't reveal your position. In those cases consider saying, 'I
can't discuss that.' People won't like it, but they won't feel betrayed when the
outcome is revealed.

Keep promises

Keeping promises is an especially powerful form of telling the truth. If you

say you'll do something, do it. If you promise you'll show up, be there. If you
say you'll deliver high quality, don't skimp. We all know business people who
eagerly promise anything to a customer or colleague rather than face their
disappointment. They rarely remember what was promised, which is just as
well because they couldn't have delivered. Over time, their credibility drops
so far that no one in their company believes a word they say.

Your marketing material makes promises, by the way. As a response to the

low-carb craze, some cereal companies made 'low-sugar' cereals. Read the
label carefully and you'll discover they have as many carbs as high-sugar
cereals. If you're targeting health-conscious consumers, don't promise them
health and then deliver junk food. Keep your promises and you'll keep trust.

Their interests before yours

One powerful way to sustain trust is to put the interests of others ahead of
your own. When people know you're looking out for them, they'll believe in
your intentions even when you have hard news to deliver or need them to
put in heroic efforts.

In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins introduces the 'Level 5 leader' who
puts the needs of the organization ahead of his or her own ego. Such leaders
really inspire us to give our all because they demonstrate by example that
with personal sacrifice we can achieve greater success as a group. Putting
others first means knowing their goals and concerns, and helping them. Is a
colleague a passionate baseball fan? Give them your Red Sox tickets some
afternoon, for no reason at all. Is that the game where the Red Sox win the
World Series? Even better! You'll suffer real pain at giving up your tickets.
Public sacrifice, if it's real and visible, builds huge credibility when it's in the
service of others. And the sacrifice must be real. Reducing your bonus from
$2 million to $1.75 million just doesn't count.

Behave ethically

At its core, people trust you when they know you're safe to deal with. They
observe how you treat them and others. Do the right thing in all your
dealings and people will get it. They'll know you're trustworthy. If you get a
reputation for taking advantage of others, however, even people whom you
have treated well can start to doubt. One CEO wrote articles trumpeting his
ethical behaviour. Employees knew otherwise; they'd seen him cheat
distributors and shirk on his commitments to his partners. So the more the
CEO crowed, the more the grapevine passed anonymous notes highlighting
his lies.

Changing players to gain trust

Trust isn't one-way, of course - trust happens between two people, or

between a person and an organization. You can trust a person while
distrusting their organization. I love my trusted bank manager; she fixes my
problems even when I feel like the bank is hell-bent on alienating me at
every opportunity. (They charge how much for a bounced cheque?) You can
trust an organization while distrusting its people. Think politics. We can trust
our country's integrity even when individual politicians make our stomachs
crawl.

In business, one bad manager rarely destroys trust in the entire company.
But several bad managers, armed with policies that clearly treat people as
disposable implements, can destroy trust in an entire organization. At that
point, bringing in a new management team that takes clear, visible action
might have a chance of rebuilding trust. These actions will be hampered
because employees have learned to distrust the organization as a whole. But
at least the new leaders will have a chance to gain one-on-one trust and
translate that into the organizational changes needed to build trust
throughout.

Is this really necessary?

I must confess that this article has been hard to write. 'Do the right thing,
treat people with respect and don't lie.' Do these things really need to be said
to adults? Apparently so. As business people, we're not trustworthy. The
June 2002 Conference Board Commissions on Public Trust and Private
Enterprise Report found that somewhere between 37 percent and 76 percent
of employees 'observed misconduct they believe could result in significant
loss of public trust if it were to become known.' Of course, the employees are
the public, so public trust is losing on an ongoing basis.
It's up to us to fix the situation. We need to regain the public's trust, which
means we need to regain our trust in each other. And it will only happen if
we become the most trustworthy people we can become.

Your action challenge this week

Pay attention to how often you tell the truth, how often you make decisions
as if other people (customers, employees, suppliers) don't matter, and how
often you put the well-being of others ahead of your own. Then ask yourself:
Am I someone I would trust?

Author - Stever Robbins

Stever Robbins helps businesses and executives gain the traction that leads
to breakaway momentum. Co-founder of FTP Software and member of eight
other start-up teams over 30 years, Robbins has deep operational knowledge
of how traction happens, spanning people, process, and product.

Leadership Stories

Manager versus Leader

The manager administers; the leader innovates.

The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.

The manager maintains; the leader develops.

The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on

people.

The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.

The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range

perspective.

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

Managers have their eyes on the bottom line; leaders have their eyes on the
horizon.

The manager imitates; the leader originates.

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his own person.

The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

Warren Bennis

Leadership Stories

'Leadership and Management - Chalk and

Cheese'
'There is a difference between leadership and management. Leadership is of
the spirit, compounded of personality and vision; its practice is an art.
Management is of the mind, a matter of accurate calculation - its practice is
a science. Managers are necessary; leaders are essential.'

Field Marshall Lord Slim, when Governor-General of Australia

Leadership and management are as different as chalk and cheese. My views

have formed over many years as a UK healthcare manager and, particularly,
as a result of my research on leadership from the perspective of family
doctors (1997-1998).

Good managers do not necessarily make good leaders, and good leaders do
not necessarily make good managers. Each has a distinct role. Leadership
qualities are far less tangible and measurable whilst most management
processes can be measured. Perhaps this is best summed up by Warren
Bennis:

'Managers do things right . . . leaders do the right things.'

There is clearly something about effective leaders that makes them stand out
from the crowd. I find it impossible to identify and quantify that elusive
quality. When I look back through my own career, I have had superiors who
are clearly leaders and those who are clearly managers. From my experience
with my own past bosses, I have noted that . . .

Leaders:

1) Have high levels of integrity

2) Are focused on the bigger picture

3) Are not comfortable with "intense detail"

4) Make me (their direct reports) feel part of their vision

5) Do not punish mistakes - but, rather, see mistakes as learning

opportunities

6) Challenge the status quo

7) Are not afraid of being unpopular

Managers:

1) Are process driven

2) Are comfortable with detail

3) Are more interested in the bottom line than the wider vision

4) Want to measure everything

5) Are not comfortable challenging the corporate view

I think the difference is around the words 'hard' and 'soft.' My experience of
effective managers is they tend to be very good at the hard stuff. They are
concerned with measurable outcomes - sometime obsessed with process at
all costs. They appear to be driven by the need to prove their effectiveness in
some tangible way. But leaders, on the other hand, are also interested in the
soft stuff - the immeasurable, the anecdote, the story.

One downfall of focusing only on the hard stuff can be seen in the following
example.

One day, a manager was very stressed and volunteered up information to a

colleague that he was worried about the annual staff appraisals he ' had to
do ' for his department. A few days later, the pair met again and the
manager was now relaxed. He explained that he had completed all of the
appraisals - he had taken out appraisal files, ticked boxes, and updated them
without speaking to members of his staff. As far as he was concerned, he'd
done what was expected if him - he had ' done his appraisals, ' literally filling
in forms and ticking boxes.

Effective leaders, in my experience, are generally not as interested in the

detail of process but, rather, they need to be assured there is a process.
Paradoxically, oftentimes, the effective leader will be interested in some
things that may appear trivial to ' non-leaders. ' For example, many of us
have worked in organisations that proclaim:

'We value our staff'

'We are an equal opportunities employer'

'We value diversity'

Picture a wet, cold, and dark winter morning - a 6 a.m. early morning shift
for a cleaner who parks his or her car in the staff parking lot 200 yards from
the staff entrance. As he/she fights her way through the cold wind and rain
to the building entrance, the cleaner notices the empty car park spaces
reserved for Directors, Consultants, and Chief Executive, positioned
immediately outside the main entrance. The cleaner cannot help him/herself
from thinking that the company's mission statement somehow just doesn't
ring true.

The effective leader will be interested in the feelings of that cleaner. Quite
often, the leader will solve the problem. But even if the leader cannot solve
the problem, the fact that the leader is interested at all will spread around
the organisation quicker than the speed of light. Small things are important -
leadership is not only about the big picture.

In my experience, good leaders surround themselves with people who buy

into their vision. And leaders always seem to be striving for improvement
and, though not a 'change junkie,' good leaders constantly question the
status quo. We can learn a great deal about management and leadership -
particularly about leaders' unquenchable thirst for improvement - by studying
sport.

It is interesting that in the first media interview with Alex Ferguson, leader of
Manchester United, after United won the Premiership Trophy for the eighth
time in eleven years, Ferguson was full of references to 'how we need to
improve this team for next season.' Ferguson is formally called the 'Manager'
of Manchester United; however, to me, he is clearly the ' leader ' of the
team. I suspect he is not interested in the intricate processes involved in
running one of the biggest sporting organisations in the world. But at the
same time there are legendary tales of his detailed knowledge of what goes
on in and around the club. It is also interesting that he has achieved his
current high standing without formal management training - aside from 'The
University of Life.'

Another famous football 'Manager' was Bill Shankly of Liverpool Football

Club. Shankly spoke the immortal words 'Always change a winning team' - an
interesting variation of the better-known saying 'Never change a winning
team.' Again, Shankly was a leader with an impressive list of achievements -
yet his formal management training was probably nil.

Both of these leaders possess an ability to inspire others to sign up to their

vision, which separates the leaders from the managers. Somehow these
leaders inspire followers who will go the extra mile. I suggest it is not - in
their case - an academic understanding of the science of management or
leadership. It is probably some personal characteristic that is not tangible.

Finally, I would suggest that leaders are generally born - not made. I doubt
that people can learn how to be a leader from reading, studying, or listening
to lectures. There is something that makes leaders stand out from the rest of
us. Leadership training is worthwhile - it is possible to teach leadership
techniques, and leadership competencies are becoming more widely used in
management academia. I suspect that what emerges through the 'leadership
development' process will be good managers who become good leaders. But
the outstanding, natural leader will not need that training. Some of the
greatest leaders in history never received training in the art of leadership - it
came to them naturally and we should celebrate that mystical quality - even
if we cannot measure it.

At the same time, let us remember that leaders are in the minority and most
of us mere mortals are very effective foot soldiers (and we should celebrate
this!). Many would argue that wars are won by foot soldiers - not colonels.
There is no question that managers and leaders are both important - both
play crucial roles in organisations. But likewise, it is important to
acknowledge that good managers and good leaders are not one and the
same.

'Leaders say this is where we are going' and 'Managers say this is
how we are going to get there'

Written by Trevor Gay

Trevor Gay, MA Management (Healthcare) is an independent leadership and

management coach, trainer, consultant and author with a self confessed
obsession for simplicity and liberating front line staff. Trevor's career from
age 16 was spent in National Health Service management until he decided to
leave the NHS in 2004. He now enjoys the independence to express his views
and reflect on what he has learned both from his 30 years' practical
experience as a manager and his academic study of leadership and
management.

The Qualities of Skilful Leadership

by Jim Rohn

If you want to be a leader who attracts quality people, the key is to become
a person of quality yourself. Leadership is the ability to attract someone to
the gifts, skills, and opportunities you offer as an owner, as a manager, as a
parent. I call leadership the great challenge of life. What's important in
leadership is refining your skills. All great leaders keep working on
themselves until they become effective. Here are some specifics:
Learn to be strong but not rude

It is an extra step you must take to become a powerful, capable leader with a
wide range of reach. Some people mistake rudeness for strength. It's not
even a good substitute.

Learn to be kind but not weak

We must not mistake kindness for weakness. Kindness isn't weak. Kindness
is a certain type of strength. We must be kind enough to tell somebody the
truth. We must be kind enough and considerate enough to lay it on the line.
We must be kind enough to tell it like it is and not deal in delusion.

Learn to be bold but not a bully

It takes boldness to win the day. To build your influence, you've got to walk
in front of your group. You've got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle
the first problem, and discover the first sign of trouble.

You've got to learn to be humble, but not timid

You can't get to the high life by being timid. Some people mistake timidity
for humility. Humility is almost a God-like word. A sense of awe. A sense of
wonder. An awareness of the human soul and spirit. An understanding that
there is something unique about the human drama versus the rest of life.
Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet having the
feeling that we're part of the stars. So humility is a virtue; but timidity is a
disease. Timidity is an affliction. It can be cured, but it is a problem.

Be proud but not arrogant

It takes pride to win the day. It takes pride to build your ambition. It takes
pride in community. It takes pride in cause, in accomplishment. But the key
to becoming a good leader is being proud without being arrogant. In fact I
believe the worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance. It's when
you don't know that you don't know. Now that kind of arrogance is
intolerable. If someone is smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if
someone is ignorant and arrogant, that's just too much to take.

Develop humour without folly

That's important for a leader. In leadership, we learn that it's okay to be

witty, but not silly. It's okay to be fun, but not foolish.

Lastly, deal in realities. Deal in truth. Save yourself the agony. Just accept
life like it is. Life is unique. Some people call it tragic, but I'd like to think it's
unique. The whole drama of life is unique. It's fascinating. And I've found
that the skills that work well for one leader may not work at all for another.
But the fundamental skills of leadership can be adapted to work well for just
about everyone: at work, in the community, and at home