Thanks everyone for commenting!

It did seem true that some helped organize, guide and energize their groups more than others. But with such a motivated and talented group, only a gentle nudge was needed at times, and it always came in the form of a helpful suggestion.

It seemed that role of leaders in a group like this was very different from the classic stereotype. IOW was a very fluid environment where the ideas came flying in from everywhere to fast to count and tended to build one on another. I will have lasting memories of so many people speaking up at just the right moment….. it was…. and is a wonder how that happened.

Anyway, it was tremendous fun to be part of such a high performing group. Bravo and thank you IOW partners!

Sharon Louallen

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.”

— General Colin Powell

“Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not “making friends and influencing people”, that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”

— Peter F. Drucker

“To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’”

— Lao-tsu

“Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time in leading yourself—your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers.”

— Dee Hock
Founder and CEO Emeritus, Visa

“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”

— Henry Kissinger

“No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”

— Peter Drucker

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.”

— John Buchan

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers. We are tired of leaders we fear, tired of leaders we love, and of tired of leaders who let us take liberties with them. What we need for leaders are men of the heart who are so helpful that they, in effect, do away with the need of their jobs. But leaders like that are never out of a job, never out of followers. Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away.”

— Admiral James B. Stockdale

“Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”

— Harry Truman

“A leader is one who influences a specific group of people to move in a God-given direction.”

— J. Robert Clinton

“All Leadership is influence.”

— John C. Maxwell
Injoy, Inc.

“You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.”

— Sam Rayburn

“Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated.”

— Dag Hammarskjöld

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, ‘We did this ourselves.’”

— Lao-Tse

“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.”

— Harold Geneen

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.”

— Max DePree

“Four rules of leadership in a free legislative body:
First, no matter how hard-fought the issue, never get personal. Don’t say or do anything that may come back to haunt you on another issue, another day….
Second, do your homework. You can’t lead without knowing what you’re talking about….
Third, the American legislative process is one of give and take. Use your power as a leader to persuade, not intimidate….
Fourth, be considerate of the needs of your colleagues, even if they’re at the bottom of the totem pole….”

— George Bush
Former President of the United States

“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.”

— Stephen R. Covey

“He who has great power should use it lightly.”

— Seneca

“How do you know you have won? When the energy is coming the other way and when your people are visibly growing individually and as a group.”

— Sir John Harvey-Jones

“The leader must know, must know that he knows, and must be able to make it abundantly clear to those around him that he knows.”

— Clarence Randall

“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.”

— Ken Kesey

“As a leader, you’re probably not doing a good job unless your employees can do a good impression of you when you’re not around.”

— Patrick Lencioni

“Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the mastery of long term constructive goals, in a participatory environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal values.”

— Mike Vance

“The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.”

— Andrew Carnegie

“My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.”

— General Montgomery

“High sentiments always win in the end, The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”

— George Orwell

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”

— Wangari Maathai

“I think leadership comes from integrity – that you do whatever you ask others to do. I think there are non-obvious ways to lead. Just by providing a good example as a parent, a friend, a neighbor makes it possible for other people to see better ways to do things. Leadership does not need to be a dramatic, fist in the air and trumpets blaring, activity.”

— Scott Berkun

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

— Jack Welch

“I think that the best training a top manager can be engaged in is management by example. I want to make sure there is no discrepancy between what we say and what we do. If you preach accountability and then promote somebody with bad results, it doesn’t work. I personally believe the best training is management by example. Don’t believe what I say. Believe what I do.”

— Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault-Nissan

I hope the above statements help to clarify the components that we must search for in deciding who our CEO will be…I think a selection must be made carefully and intelligently as we move to position our company for success…

All The Best,
Sharon

Craig did an outstanding job in the presentation, but until I read this post, I never even considered that he would be considered “the leader” that emerged from the weekend. Spokesperson, perhaps, but not the leader.

Nothing against Craig. I thought he did an outstanding job, but your accolades of his work are limited to the group he was in. Those of us in the other groups saw Craig only during the presentations.

The true leader of the group never surfaced. Not because of anything the leader was or wasn’t, but because the other 99 of us all thought we were that one and weren’t ready to follow anyone with a singular vision.

The true leader never surfaced because he/she knew there was no need for another leader if there were no followers. The true leader of the weekend was somewhere in the background doing what needed to be done for the good of the project and the good of the team, without any recognition.

Somewhere, someone quietly made sure everything was accomplished. Someone calmed the overbearing, and ignited the timid. The irony is that among a group of 100 leaders, the one true leader knows the best way to lead the group isn’t to be the 101st person to stand up and declare themselves the leader, but the first person to sit back and guide the group to its destination without anyone even knowing it.

As the strongest personalities start to wear off over time, this person inevitably stands up with the respect of the group, and leads them forward. There wasn’t near enough time for those personalities to wear off.

All that being said, it certainly wasn’t me! It was all I could muster to keep from slugging a couple of you people

Thank you for being part of the Weekend!

- Elizabeth