“The truth is that leadership opportunities are plentiful and within reach of most people.”

“Several years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book, Psycho-Cybernetics, was one of the most popular books on the market. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who often took disfigured faces and made them more attractive. He observed that in every case, the patient’s self-image rose with his and her physical improvement. In addition to being a successful surgeon, Dr. Maltz was a great psychologist who understood human nature. A wealthy woman was greatly concerned about her son, and she came to Dr. Maltz for advice. She had hoped that the son would assume the family business following her husband’s death, but when the son came of age, he refused to assume that responsibility and chose to enter an entirely different field. She thought Dr. Maltz could help convince the boy that he was making a grave error. The doctor agreed to see him, and he probed into the reasons for the young man’s decision. The son explained, “I would have loved to take over the family business, but you don’t understand the relationship I had with my father. He was a driven man who came up the hard way. His objective was to teach me self-reliance, but he made a drastic mistake. He tried to teach me that principle in a negative way. He thought the best way to teach me self-reliance was to never encourage or praise me. He wanted me to be tough and independent. Every day we played catch in the yard. The object was for me to catch the ball ten straight times. I would catch that ball eight or nine times, but always on that tenth throw he would do everything possible to make me miss it. He would throw it on the ground or over my head but always so I had no chance of catching it.” The young man paused for a moment and then said, “He never let me catch the tenth ball—never! And I guess that’s why I have to get away from his business; I want to catch that tenth ball!”

“This helps me ‘keep the main thing, the main thing,’ since I am so easily distracted.” You may want to do something similar,

“leadership is really more art than science.”

“You cannot enjoy others until you  enjoy yourself because you cannot give to others what you do not have.”

“If you want people to remember what you say, you need to say the right thing at the right moment in the right way!”

“their success is more important to you than your success,”

“Real leadership is being the person others will gladly and confidently follow.”

“A mistake is simply another way of doing things.”

“When you realize that people treat you according to how they see themselves rather than how you really are, you are less likely to be affected by their behavior.”

“Occasionally someone will ask me about how ego fits into the leadership equation. They’ll want to know what keeps a leader from having a huge ego. I think the answer lies in each leader’s pathway to leadership. If people paid their dues and gave their best in obscurity, ego is usually not a problem.”

“Learn to be flexible. Thomas Jefferson once said, “In matters of principle, stand like a rock. In matters of taste, swim with the current.”

“Leadership has less to do with position than it does disposition.”

“people with a positive attitude focus their time and attention on solutions, not problems.”

“When you don’t want to change, you look for differences in others. When you are willing to change, you look for similarities.”