A Quote by Harry S. Truman

Leadership is getting people to do things that they don't want to do.

Harry S. Truman

Quote Topics

Getting Leadership People Things Want

Quote Author

Harry S. Truman
American - President
May 8, 1884 - December 26, 1972

Leadership is not always about getting things done 'right.' Leadership is about getting things done through other people.

Andy Stanley

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

Michael J. Fox

I speak directly to the people, and I know that the people of California want to have better leadership. They want to have great leadership. They want to have somebody that will represent them. And it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican, young or old.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

It's often said that leadership is the art of getting people to do what you want, and making them think it's what they want. This captures a lot of what Abraham Lincoln did.

Allen C. Guelzo

The single biggest barrier to effective leadership is, in my view, the leadership industry itself. Instead of telling people the skills and behaviors they need to be effective in getting things done, we tell them almost the opposite - blandishments about how we wish people would be, and how we wish workplaces were. That information is worse than useless as, to the extent people believe it, they often wind up losing their jobs.

Jeffrey Pfeffer

Leadership does not mean getting people to do their job. It means getting people to do their best.

Harvey Mackay

'Fantasy' is one of the fewer tracks where it's more literal than most of our things, but at the same time it's totally open-ended. Clearly it's a song about things not really appearing as you want them to, or things either getting what you want and not being satisfied with it because it wasn't how you hoped it would be, or thinking you want something and not getting it and the realisation of that.

Lizzy Plapinger

Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.

Steve Jobs

Influence is getting others to do what you want them to do because they want to do it - a take on Eisenhower's famous leadership statement

Phil Harding

Leadership is creating an environment in which people want to be part of the organization and not just work for the organization. Leadership creates an environment that makes people want to, rather than have to, do.

Horst Schulze

Leadership is the name that people use to make sense out of complex events and the outcomes of events they otherwise would not be able to explain. In other words, people attribute leadership to certain individuals who are called leaders because people want to believe that leaders cause things to happen rather than have to explain causality by understanding complex social forces or analyzing the dynamic interaction among people, events, and environment.

Joseph C. Rost

This objective of getting what we want from other people-or getting them to do what we want them to do-threatens the autonomy of people, their right to choose what they want to do. And whenever people feel that they're not free to choose what they want to do, they are likely to resist, even if they see the purpose in what we are asking and would ordinarily want to do it.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

That's what world leadership is: A willingness to point at bad guys and say they're the bad guys and to keep the bad guys from getting worse! That's leadership. Obama didn't want to go there.

Rush Limbaugh

People want things now. People in the rock world seem to not want to give it to them - they want to keep doing things the old way - and one thing that has always bummed me out is when we get a single three months out, and then you have to keep getting fed with bread crumbs.