“If you keep nonproductive people, the productive ones become frustrated and leave. If you remove the people who don’t add value, then the whole team gets better. It’s just like trimming trees: If you don’t cut the deadwood, eventually the whole tree falls. But if you remove the deadwood, the tree becomes healthier, the healthy branches produce more, and there’s room for productive new branches on the tree.”
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John C. Maxwell
“If you don’t know how to add to others, then you probably subtract by default.”
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John C. Maxwell
“Leadership is developed, not discovered. It’s a process.
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John C. Maxwell
“One of the most important things you can do as a leader is make sure you and your organization are delivering what you promised. The question I ask to make an assessment of this is “Did we exceed expectations?” This ensures my future success and that of my organization. The future is dim professionally for anyone who doesn’t exceed the expectations of customers or clients.”
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John C. Maxwell
“In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.”
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John C. Maxwell
“The higher you want to climb, the more you need leadership. The greater the impact you want to make, the greater your influence needs to be.”
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John C. Maxwell
“A good leader encourages followers to tell him what he needs to know, not what he wants to hear.”
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John C. Maxwell
“People who wait for the one great opportunity often keep waiting.”
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John C. Maxwell
“The respect that leadership must have requires that one’s ethics be without question. A leader not only stays above the line between right and wrong, he stays well clear of the ‘gray areas.”
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John C. Maxwell
“Uniformity is not the key to successful teamwork. The glue that holds a team together is unity of purpose.”
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John C. Maxwell
“When you accomplish something that you once believed was impossible, it makes you a new person. It changes the way you see yourself and the world.”
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John C. Maxwell
“The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.”
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John C. Maxwell
“One day when the Raiders were in Oakland, a reporter visited their locker room to talk to Ken Stabler. Stabler really wasn’t known as an intellectual, but he was a good quarterback. This newspaperman read him some English prose: “I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than that it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy, impermanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” After reading this to the quarterback, the reporter asked, “What does this mean to you?” Stabler immediately replied, “Throw deep.” Go after it. Go out to win in life.”
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John C. Maxwell
“You can’t stop people from thinking—but you can start them.”
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John C. Maxwell