While managing and leading your team is a set of tasks and challenges that can carry many nuances, some of the best advice is surprisingly simple. That's why today, we're bringing you a collection of some of our favorite leadership quotes we've found over the years that capture a key lesson or inspiration.
"I apologize for the length of this letter; I didn't have time to make it shorter.” - Mark Twain
This is one of my favorite, famous leadership quotes from the ever-quotable, Mark Twain.
I've caught myself many times getting over verbose in an email or blog post, that when investing more time made it more effective, and shorter. The beauty of Twitter is it forces exactly those kinds of condensed, poignant thoughts.
Take a moment to read and really contemplate these lessons; there's truly deep insights in many of them. Also, consider following the authors; many of them are brilliant leaders whose tweets we've been enjoying and learning from on a regular basis.
23 Leadership Quotes to Inspire You
I've organized these leadership quotes into a few categories for you that are commonly on the mind of most managers and leaders, so you can jump to your favorite ones quickly:
Table of Contents: Categories for our Favorite & Famous Leadership Quotes
- Retaining Your Team
- Being Successful
- Serving Your People
- Giving Feedback
- Growing Your People
- Leading Effectively in Today's World
I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did curating them.
Leadership Quotes on: Retaining Your Team
It's no secret that it's expensive to lose a member of your team (we've calculated it at costing over $65,000 to replace an employee.)
There are a lot of reasons why people leave jobs, but there are a few key concepts that can help you think of how to keep your best people for a long time. We also couldn't help but include Joe Stump's tweet showing a clever recruiting hack that can help you think about all these tweets as ways to consider how you can recruit because someone's manager is not following this advice.
As Elias reminds us, and the other leaders above show, it's on *you* as a manager to retain your team. Your actions, and inaction, make all the difference.
Learn more about how to retain your team with:
Leadership Quotes on: Keys to Success
We all want to be successful, but what does that really mean? I've personally invested a lot of time in reading books and blog posts on the subject trying to crack the code.
What I found was that it's actually a handful of simple things not that far from the Golden Rule combined with a strong work ethic. These tweets capture a number of key aspects of it.
These 3 tweets may seem simple, but how consistently are you managing your team well, helping others succeed, and following Vala's 7 steps to success?
Learn more keys to success with:
- Avoid the common pitfalls when your company reaches 25 employees
- Learn why so many Silicon Valley companies have bad managers
Leadership Quotes on: Serving your people!
What is the difference between management and leadership? That's a question worthy of a deep dive of its own post, but here we look at a key aspect of the difference: Leaders focus on their people.
These sets of tweets show all the ways you should focus, invest, and listen to your people.
Trusting your team members, giving them the autonomy to do their best work, and taking care of those on your team is how you level up your leadership skills.
Learn more about how to better serve you team with:
- A detailed breakdown of Servant Leadership
- Learn how to use Stephen Covey's Emotional Bank Account to bring out your team's best
Leadership Quotes on: Essentials for Feedback
Whether you're giving feedback up the chain in your company, to a peer, or to someone on your team, it's important to have empathy for the other person's views.
You also have to seek out feedback from your people so you can help them, see what they see, and not miss anything important. No leader can fix a problem they're not aware of, so consider these essential feedback concepts for your company.
Giving and receiving honest, clear feedback is a crucial part of any good leader's routines. Are you doing enough of both?
Learn more about how to master feedback as a leader with:
- 6 ways you can give feedback that are better than the sh*t sandwich
- How to get more feedback from your team
Leadership Quotes on: Growing Your People
No company survives without growth. The same can be said for the modern worker; if you're not growing and learning new skills, not only are you less likely to be happy, you run the risk of your skills become outdated.
As a leader, you must help your team achieve their goals for the sake of both the survival of your company and to keep your best people happy and motivated. Consider these quotes when you want to make the key investment every leader must make: growing their people.
Whether you're a founder, or a mid level leader, it's important to make growth part of who you are as a leader. Your team members need opportunities to grow, and so do you.
Learn more about how to grow your team:
- Why you should promote from within and common pitfalls when you do
- Get answers to common questions managers have about growing their team members
Leadership Quotes on: The Modern Leader
Leading today is different than it's ever been before. Whether it's a desire for more feedback, Gallup's report showing high levels of disengagement, or the latest on managing Millennials and Gen Z, it's clear new approaches are needed.
These quotes capture well the mindsets you need to be a great modern leader.
What worked 20 years ago doesn't always work today. While some lessons are timeless, there are always tweaks, improvements, and adjustments to make based on modern realities. Whether we see that in the permanent shift to hybrid and remote work, or differences in what generations want from work, the best leaders recognize these shifts and adapt.
Are you ready?
Better navigate the major challenges of hybrid leadership with these posts:
- Avoid these 5 big pitfalls of managing partially remote (aka- hybrid) teams
- Ready to hire remote team members? Explore all of our advice on Remote employees here
Image source: Motivation icons created by Freepik - Flaticon
