“Cemetery communication: lots of people are out there, but nobody is listening.”

“Everybody on a championship team doesn’t get publicity, but everyone can say he’s a champion.”

“A great team with no bench eventually collapses. The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork”

“When I want to really get to know someone, I ask three questions. People’s answers to these give me great insight into someone’s heart. The questions are: What do you dream about? What do you sing about? What do you cry about?”

“Se requiere humildad para buscar realimentación. Se requiere sabiduría para entenderla, analizarla y actuar sobre ella apropiadamente”

“Most of us think wonderful things about people, but they never know it. Too many of us tend to be tight-fisted with our praise. It’s of no value if all you do is think it; it becomes valuable when you impart it.”

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

“A leader who produces other leaders multiples their influences.” 

“Starting a business is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. In mid air, the entrepreneur begins building a parachute and hopes it opens before hitting the ground.”

“Productive leaders communicate the superiority and the benefits of their ideas.”

“Se dice que un individuo puede vivir cuarenta días sin comida, cuatro días sin agua, cuatro minutos sin aire, pero solo cuatro segundos sin esperanza.”

“I remember looking at myself in the mirror one morning and thinking, I am not a handsome guy. What am I going to do with a face like this? Then I smiled. And I thought, That helps.”

“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”

“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!”

“In my first leadership position, I mistakenly thought that being named the leader meant that I was the leader. Back then I defined leading as a noun—as the position I was appointed to—not a verb—as what I was doing. Though I had been hired as the senior pastor, I quickly discovered the real leader of the church was a down-to-earth farmer named Claude, who had been earning his leadership influence through many positive actions over many years. He later explained it to me, saying, “John, all the letters”