Leadership is the often forgotten key to excellence in most facets of business and life. Formal and informal leaders in business need to be trained in Safety Leadership.

Classic Leadership quotes (pictured Eleanor Roosevelt)

• You can only lead others where you yourself are willing to go.
• Nothing is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.
• The best leader is the one who has enough sense to pick good people to do the job and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
• What is important as a leader is not what happens when you are there but what happens when you are NOT there.
• The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It has to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion.
• Leaders must behave the way they wish their followers would behave.
• Every now and then leaders should look back to see if anyone is following.
• A leader takes people where they want to go, a great leader takes people where they ought to be.
• The first basic ingredient of leadership is a guiding vision. The leader has a clear idea of what he wants to do professionally and personally and the strength to persist in the face of setbacks, even failures.
• As a leader you set the tone for your entire team. If you have a positive attitude, your team will achieve much more.
• A sense of humour is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people and getting things done.
• Make heroes out of the employees who personify what you want to be seen in the organisation.
• You do not know what you can get away with until you try.
• Lead, follow or get out of the way.
• If you are truly a leader, you will help others to not just see themselves as they are, but also what they can become.
• A real leader faces the music even when he does not like the tune-Anon.
• A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves-Elenor Roosevelt
• It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him-John Steinbeck
• Successful leaders see the opportunity in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity-Reed Markham
• The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or have concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership-Colin Powell
• A leaders role is to raise peoples aspirations for what they can become and release their energies so they will try to get there-David R Gergen
• If you obey all the rules, you will miss all the fun-Katherine Hepburn
• Hell, there are no rules here, we are trying to accomplish something-Thomas A Edison
• The supreme quality of leadership is unquestionably integrity-Dwight D Eisenhower
• A good objective of leadership is to help those that are doing poorly do well and to help those that are doing well to do even better. –Jim Rohn

For further information put Leadership Quotes into Google. Laurie Lawrence’s web site is particularly good. Refer also to the paper on Safety Leadership on ohschange.com.au