Max De Pree Quotes

In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.

We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion.

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.

The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers. Are the followers reaching their potential? Are they learning? Serving? Do they achieve the required results? Do they change with grace? Manage conflict?

The leader is the servant who removes the obstacles that prevent people from doing their jobs.

Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do.

Leaders should be able to Stand Alone, Take the Heat, Bear the Pain, Tell the Truth, and Do What's Right

The greatest thing is, at any moment, to be willing to give up who we are in order to become all that we can be.

By ourselves we suffer serious limitations. Together we can be something wonderful.

Above all, leadership is a position of servanthood.

The key elements in the art of working together are how to deal with change, how to deal with conflict, and how to reach our potential...the needs of the team are best met when we meet the needs of individual persons.

We do not grow by knowing all of the answers, but rather by living with the questions.

Trust grows when people see leaders translate their personal integrity into organizational fidelity. At the heart of fidelity lies truth-telling and promise-keeping.

To be a leader means, especially, having the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those who permit leaders to lead.

There may be no single thing more important in our efforts to achieve meaningful work and fulfilling relationships than to learn to practice the art of communication.

Jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals.

In addition to all of the ratios and goals and parameters and bottom lines, it is fundamental that leaders endorse a concept of persons. This begins with an understanding of the diversity of people's gifts and talents and skills. Recognizing diversity gives us the chance to provide meaning, fulfillment and purpose, which are not to be relegated solely to private life any more than such things as love, beauty and joy. The art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling those gifts.

We talk about the quality of product and service. What about the quality of our relationships and the quality of our communications and the quality of our promises to each other?

We can teach ourselves to see things the way they ARE. Only with vision can we begin to see things the way they CAN BE.

Leadership is liberating people to do what is required of them in the most effective and humane way possible.

Change without continuity is chaos. Continuity without change is sloth-and very risky.

Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see that each of us is needed.. It also enables us to begin to think about being abandoned to the strengths of others, of admitting that we cannot know or do everything.

Leaders don't inflict pain - they share pain.

Trust cannot be bought or commanded, inherited or enforced. To maintain it, leaders must continually earn it.

When we think about the people with whom we work, people on whom we depend, we can see that without each individual, we are not going to go very far as a group. By ourselves, we suffer serious limitations. Together we can be something wonderful.