Quotes About Followers Not Leaders

“You did what your heart told you to do,' Brain complimented. 'It is what leaders, not followers, do.”

— Tonya Hurley

“The Function of Leadership is to produce more Leaders, Not more Followers.”

— Ralph Nader

“[Public housing projects] are not lacking in natural leaders,' [Ellen Lurie, a social worker in East Harlem] says. 'They contain people with real ability, wonderful people many of them, but the typical sequence is that in the course of organization leaders have found each other, gotten all involved in each others' social lives, and have ended up talking to nobody but each other. They have not found their followers. Everything tends to degenerate into ineffective cliques, as a natural course. There is no normal public life. Just the mechanics of people learning what s going on is so difficult. It all makes the simplest social gain extra hard for these people.”

— Jane Jacobs

“Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders.”

— John Holt

“Isn't the real scandal not that our religious leaders might be imagined walking across a road or talking as friends together in a bar, but rather that their followers are found speaking against one another as enemies, day after day in situation after situation?”

— Brian D. McLaren

“When I was younger, I thought my task was to forge ahead and succeed as an individual. But growing older has helped me realize that our success lies in our relationships- with the family we are born into, the friends we make, the people we fall in love with, and the children we have. Sometimes we struggle, sometimes we adapt, and at other times we set a course for others to follow. We are all leaders and followers in our lives. We are constantly learning from and teaching one another. We learn, too, that the most important work is not done by those who seem the most important, but by those who care the most.”

— Caroline Kennedy

“True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.”

— Robert Townsend

“Asuras are not bad people; they just have an understanding of dharma that is not valid for today's world. Sometimes, the followers are good but the leaders let them down.”

— Amish Tripathi

“If prophets are real, they are not leaders but followers.”

— M.F. Moonzajer

“Leading, not following We've been trained to follow. In fact, the very nature of training has following built right into it. We follow instructions. We follow the rules. We follow the leader. The challenge in a six-billion person world is that we don't have a shortage of followers. Followers are easy to find, and the tools for compliance are more powerful (but less useful) than ever. Now the economy is demanding leaders. Human beings who can engage in what it really means to be a person-to forge connections, to see a path and to make a difference.”

— Seth Godin

“Good followers do not become good leaders.”

— Laurence J. Peter

“There's so many lies being told throughout the media and people just run with the lies. They're numb to it. Too many followers, not enough leaders.”

— Big Boi

“By pushing children and wanting quick success, parents are producing followers, not leaders.”

— Sophie B. Hawkins

“When leaders claim that God bypasses their followers and speaks directly to them, they greatly diminish all God does through the lives of believers.
Leaders who begrudge people the opportunity to seek God themselves and who do not actively teach their people how to hear God's voice have disqualified themselves as spiritual leaders.”

— Henry T. Blackaby

“Social media is itself as temporary as any social gathering, nightclub or party. It's the people that matter, not the venue. So when the trend leaders of one social niche or another decide the place everyone is socializing has lost its luster or, more important, its exclusivity, they move on to the next one, taking their followers with them.”

— Douglas Rushkoff

“Real leadership is not seeking the applause from followers; real leadership is applauding the followers who become leaders.”

— Onyi Anyado

“Followers often hesitate to act, out of fear that they'll do the wrong thing. Leaders aren't afraid to make a call, even when they're not sure if it's the right one. They'd rather make a decision and be wrong than suffer from the paralysis of indecision.”

— Anonymous.

“All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That's why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.”

— Martha Beck

“My favourite mentor brother told me that there were three kinds of people: followers, leaders and scouts. Scouts are capeable of leadership, but they could not tolerate the responsibility of it. Disinclined to take orders either, they invariably flouted authority and fomented strife. This is why scouts, he said wryly, were the first to be sent into danger, It was half hoped they would be killed. 'I fear you are destined to trouble us as a scout, little sister' he said”

— Isobelle Carmody

“Here is Max De Pree at his best, and that is very good indeed. In Leading Without Power, De Pree shows us why we cannot master the how-to-dos of effective leadership without also being clear about what leaders?and followers?must be. In doing so, he not only provides us with much practical wisdom about creative leading and organizational health, he also nurtures our souls. This is a book to be savored by all who care about such things as vision, faithfulness, trust, and hope.”

— Richard J. Mouw

“Don't fear sharing your best ideas online: 1) Competition already knows what you are up to 2) People like leaders not followers.”

— David Meerman Scott

“Conventional wisdom is no wisdom at all. Conventional wisdom is taking somebody else's word for the way things are It's the followers of this world who rely on assumption. Not the leaders.”

— Richard Marcinko

“If [Christian leaders] do not teach Christian principles to all followers of Christ, we are not equipping them with God's truth that will
overcome worldly influence.”

— Billy Graham

“One of the most difficult problems of our age is that leaders, and perhaps academics as well, cannot readily admit that things are out of control and that we do not know what to do. We have too much information, limited cognitive abilities to think in systemic terms and an unwillingness to appear to be in control and to have solutions for our problems. We are afraid that if we admit to our confusion, we will make our followers and students anxious and disillusioned. We know we must learn how to learn, but we are afraid to admit it.”

— Donald Michael Kraig

“Generally speaking, followers will not commit themselves for very long to a leader who is not also a pragmatist. As most of us have discovered, dreams are only powerful when we believe they can come true. Pipe dreams belong in the realm of fantasy; leaders' dreams belong in the realm of possibility.”

— Marlene Caroselli

“Not many of us will be leaders; and even those who are leaders must also be followers much of the time. This is the crucial role. Followers judge leaders. Only if the leaders pass that test do they have any impact. The potential followers, if their judgment is poor, have judged themselves. If the leader takes his or her followers to the goal, to great achievements, it is because the followers were capable of that kind of response.”

— Garry Wills

“My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.”

— John The Apostle

“None but praying leaders can have praying followers. A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need pastors and evangelists who will set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints. Who will restore this breach? The greatest will he be of reformers who can set the Church to praying.”

— Edward McKendree Bounds

“The unwillingness of most leaders to set standards, to administer feedback when standards are not met, to praise clearly when standards are met, stands in the way of the development of excellence. The leader who makes no demands of his disciples cannot really lead them at all. The sense of new excitement and new challenge generated by the gospel will be blunted by leaders who shield followers from the full demands of fellowship.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

“A true leader is not the one with the most followers, but one who creates the most leaders.”

— Neale Donald Walsch

“Cult leaders are often self-styled prophets who have not studied with great teachers or undergone lengthy training or discipline themselves ... Many of the most dangerous cultic figures of our times have no such stabilizing context of tradition, lineage or transmission, but are self-proclaimed gurus who sway their followers through their charismatic talents ...”

— John Welwood

“The job of a leader today is not to create followers. It's to create more leaders.”

— Ralph Nader