"An organization can be using the latest technologies and be highly people-focused, but if the methods and approaches used to structure and organize work is weak, performance will suffer badly. People in organizations can be empowered, energized, and enlightened, but if systems and processes (and technologies) don't enable them to perform well, they won't."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Balancing Technology, Management, and Leadership"

"The process of becoming a leader is the same as the process of becoming a highly effective human being. Leadership development is personal development. Leadership ultimately shows itself in what we do 'out there.' But it starts 'in here.'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Growing the Leader in Us"

"To lead is to show the way by going in advance. To lead is to guide or direct a course of action. To lead is to influence the behavior or opinion of others. We all need to be leaders, regardless of our formal title or role."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Growing the Leader in Us"

"In Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, Lady Hunstanton says to Mrs. Allonby, "How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say." Some people seem to feel that leadership is about image and appearances. They try to look and act the part. They work hard at faking their sincerity. They're about as authentic as "natural vinyl."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Hypocrisy and Egotism: Me-Deep in Fooling Myself"

"Seizing the opportunities of tomorrow calls for leadership. It means taking off the blinders of what is in order to see what could be. To lead is to look beyond prevailing products, current services, today's competitors, and existing markets."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Innovation Calls for Leadership"

"We can't inspire and energize people with memos, mission statements, data and analysis, charts, goals and objectives, measurements, systems, or processes. These are important factors in improving performance. But that's management, not leadership. People are inspired and aroused by exciting mental pictures of a preferred future, principles or values that ring true, and being part of a higher cause or purpose that helps them feel they're making a difference."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Inspiring and Energizing with Strong Verbal Communications"

"We can't inspire and energize people with memos, mission statements, data and analysis, charts, goals and objectives, measurements, systems, or processes. These are important factors in improving performance. But that's management, not leadership. People are inspired and aroused by exciting mental pictures of a preferred future, principles or values that ring true, and being part of a higher cause or purpose that helps them feel they're making a difference."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Inspiring and Energizing with Strong Verbal Communications"

"Although goals and vision are different but co-dependent, visioning without goal-setting and action is daydreaming. And goal-setting without the broader context of an exciting vision is drudgery."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leaders Help People See Beyond What Is to What Could Be"

"Most of us want to be treated as a person, not a resource. Managers who view "their people" as property are cold and dispassionate. In fact, they would make perfect donors for heart transplants – their hearts have had such little use!"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leaders Invest in Growing and Developing People"

"A major international company studied their worker compensation claims and attitude surveys and found that where supervisors and managers are perceived to be more caring about people's injuries and compensation, claims were much lower."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leaders Make the Difference"

"Action is the outer expression of leadership. But leadership isn't just what we do. It's also something that we are, which then drives what we do."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leading from the Inside Out"

"A leader may or may not be appointed to head a group or organization — to be put in charge. Whether formally in the role or not, a leader makes things happen. A leader takes action. A leader doesn't say something must be done about this, a leader does something about it. Leadership is a verb, not a noun. Leadership is action, not a position."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leading from the Inside Out"

"We can teach leadership doing. But we can't teach leadership being. That's an inside job. It's an unending journey of personal discovery and learning. We can guide, direct, and support becoming a leader, but we can't give anyone a pre-set formula or key actions."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leading from the Inside Out"

"Both management and leadership are needed to make teams and organizations successful. Trying to decide which is more important is like trying to decide whether the right or left wing is more important to an airplane's flight. I'll take both please!"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Management vs. Leadership"

"One key distinction between management and leadership is that we manage things and lead people. When dealing with things, we talk about a way of doing. In the people realm, we're talking about a way of being."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Management vs. Leadership"

"Both management and leadership are needed to make teams and organizations successful. Trying to decide which is more important is like trying to decide whether the right or left wing is more important to an airplane's flight. I'll take both please!"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Management vs. Leadership"

"Psychologist, author, and New York Times journalist, Daniel Goleman wrote the international bestseller, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Here's how he defines emotional intelligence, "abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one's moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope." That's a great definition of personal effectiveness. It's also a pretty good outline of many of the timeless leadership principles."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Our Attitude More Than Our Aptitude Determines Our Altitude"

"Effective leaders rally people throughout their organizations or teams, customers, suppliers, strategic partners, shareholders, and anyone else that can help around a cause. They transform jobs into crusades, exciting adventures, or deeper missions."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Passionate Leaders Rally People to the Cause"

"Effective leaders generate action. Leadership is an action, not a position. That action comes from creating energy through excitement (the pull or gain of what could be), urgency (the push to avoid the pain of poor performance), or some combination of both. This creates focus and harnesses the deep urge we all have to be part of something meaningful — to make a difference."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Passionate Leaders Rally People to the Cause"

"Queen bees give off a chemical substance that keeps the hive together. It has been called "the spirit of the hive." Few of us can sit around strictly as queen bees, although it is a tempting thought. We need to be worker bees as well. It's a balance issue. As we contribute our work to our team or organization, we also need to contribute a deeper sense of meaning or purpose."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Purposeful Leaders Make Meaning"

"Now there is hard evidence that those "soft" leadership principles are the major factor in what makes a high-performance team or organization. The exciting and rapidly expanding research on emotional intelligence shows that a leader's personal characteristics and leadership competencies have a direct bearing on his or her personal performance – as well as on that of their team and organization"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Soft Skills, Hard Results (Part 1)"

"Leadership deals with the world of emotions and feelings. It is more of an art than a science. Like artists, leaders have the ability to share their vision of the world. Leaders influence our perceptions and help us look at situations in new ways."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Soft Skills, Hard Results (Part 1)"

"Leaders look beyond the current situation – beyond what is to what could be. That's why leadership is all about change. It's why leadership is action, not a position."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Steering Our Leadership Wheel"

"Effective planning is a critical success factor. But the focus and type of planning is what's critical. Two types are needed. First, personal, team, and organization planning should focus especially hard on improvement.

The second type of planning is implementation or action planning. It's disciplined, short term (today, any detailed action planning beyond two years is ludicrous) and centered on annual goals, monthly or weekly priorities."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Strategic Planning Smothers Innovation"

"Far too many organizations are ruled by bureaucrats and technocrats either in management or staff support roles. One of their (often unconscious) driving motives is to "eliminate the human factor." They feel that their technology, systems, and processes would work so much better if it weren't for all the people always messing things up."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Technomanagement: A Deadly Mix of Bureaucracy and Technology"

"A leader brings hope. That doesn't mean putting on rose-colored glasses, painting on a happy face, and avoiding problems by spouting clichés on positive thinking. Highly effective leaders help others deal with the reality of current problems by focusing their attention on what's possible. They use the dream of what could be as a magnet to draw everyone forward."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "The Dynamic Power of Hope"

"Goals are management issues. They deal with rational analysis, planning, measurement, and discipline. Visions are leadership issues. They deal with feelings, energy, ideas, and fantasy. These are not either/or choices -- both are needed. These are also paradoxes to be balanced."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Visions Provide the Energizing Context to Reach Our Goals"

"Forming respectful partnerships that let staff participate is not the cowardly act of managers in closed meetings who hide behind press releases and get consultants or the HR Department to the dirty work of firing people. If this sounds like a lot of hard, agonizing work, it is. Management can be tough, but leadership takes real courage."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Wise Managers Treat Layoffs as Last Resort"