Welcome to Stories for Trainers!

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
~John Quincy Adams

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
~Susan B. Anthony

It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief.
~Ernest Becker

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

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born -- that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.
~Warren Bennis

The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.
~Tony Blair

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
~Kenneth Blanchard

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.
~James Callaghan

A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be.
~Rosalynn Carter

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.
~Noam Chomsky

The price of greatness is responsibility.
~Winston Churchill

Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?
~Robert Coles

I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and mis-representatives of the masses -- you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.
~Eugene V. Debs

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
~Everett Dirksen

What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.
~Elizabeth Dole

Leaders shouldn't attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can't compromise.
~Peter F. Drucker

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
~Peter Drucker

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
~Albert Einstein

You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.
~Edwin H. Friedman

Most important, leaders can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.
~John Gardner

Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.
~John Gardner

Good leaders must first become good servants.
~Robert Greenleaf

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.
~Theodore Hesburgh

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
~Eric Hoffer

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
~Henrik Ibsen

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
~Jesse Jackson

Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.
~Rosabeth Moss Kantor

There's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing.
~James Kouzes and Barry Posner

You must unite your constituents around a common cause and connect with them as human beings.
~James Kouzes and Barry Posner

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
~Walter Lippman

Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.
~Vince Lombardi

The communication style of leaders helps us distinguish great leaders from the wannabes.
When facing a problem the great leader says, 'Let's find out,' while the wannabe says that 'nobody knows.'
Great leaders communicate commitment while wannabe leaders make promises.
Great leaders have the capacity to listen while wannabes can't wait for their turn to talk.
Great leaders say 'there is a better way to do this', while wannabes say 'this is the way we have always done things around here.'
Great leaders say 'I'm a good leader, but could do better" while the wannabe says 'I'm better than a lot of people.'
Great leaders take accountability for their mistakes while the wannabe points fingers and says 'it's your fault.'
-Reed Markham, PhD

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
~Ralph Nader

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.
~Isaac Newton

Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.
~H. Ross Perot

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.
~Tom Peters

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
~Carl Sagan

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static "snapshots." It is a set of general principles -- distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management.... During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility -- for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character.
~Peter Senge

Leadership is not manifested by coercion, even against the resented. Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any measures.
~Margaret Chase Smith

It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
~Adlai Stevenson

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.
~Herbert B. Swope

Good supervision is the art of getting average people to do superior work.
~author unknown