2013 has been a year of incredible leadership teaching thus far. The following are the Top 25 leadership quotes I have heard this year. I made it a point to use a different speaker for each quote. These are listed in alphabetical order by speaker.
- “Don’t engage with haters…Hate only gets loud when you’re doing something that matters. No one throws rocks at someone laying down.” – Jon Acuff
- “You can’t expect the current and future generation of leadership to sustain the previous generation’s vision.” – Chad Brooks
- “The Holy Spirit will always use creatives. Remember they’re creative. They will always find a way to use their gifts.” – John Brown
- “To reach a certain level of success in any field you’re in you have to have an ego that says, ‘I want to be the best. This is what’s going to drive me and come hell or high water this needs to get done and I need to be successful.’ It’s a choice that you have to make. You can have friends and be buddy-buddy throughout the course of your career or you can choose to have a few enemies and decide to be great at what you do. That’s a decision everyone has to make at one point or another…5 championships speaks to the choice that I made.” – Kobe Bryant
- “What frustrates me is when I look at Scripture is I want to be that man. To put me as an extremist is destructive. Radical Christian living is sustainable.” – Francis Chan
- “We can become so obsessed with what’s next that we miss the now. And by missing the now, we often miss what’s next.” – Ken Coleman
- “Create Necessary Endings – This is when the worst thing a leader can do is think there is hope in a situation.” – Henry Cloud
- “The best leaders get the most from the best and the best from the least.” – Trent Dilfer
- “Jesus just held everybody close. We have people running around holding people accountable when they just need to hold them close.” – Bob Goff
- “Never once have I ever heard anyone confess ‘I’m greedy’. Nothing is more blinding than money and possessions.” – Casey Graham
- “Church, if we are racially divided (87% of churches in US are homogenous) how can we heal a racially divided country?” – Derwin Gray
- “Job security is tied to killing ministry. When someone says, ‘Something isn’t working. I want to kill it.’ That’s good leadership. They are more interested in the vision than the ministry. That’s the person I want to keep.” – Jeff Henderson
- “You need a little bit of luck to win a NBA championship and that’s exactly what we had.” – LeBron James
- “We’re in the prototype industry. We build it. We try it. If it doesn’t go faster you throw it away and move on…We make more things that don’t work than do.” – Jimmy Johnson crew chief Chad Knaus
- “The most dynamic profession on this earth is being a leader.” – Mike Krzyzewski
- “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.” – Ray Lewis
- “Over time, hypocrisy always causes us to collapse. The greatest preachers of all- time were passionate about being Godly. You are the visible representation of the truth you are declaring…You don’t separate the gift from who you are.” – Crawford Loritts
- “I improved my communication by speaking to a room full of people who didn’t want to be there.” – Michael Lukaszewski
- “Create discontent out of the potential of your mission, the progress of your mission, the gap in your mission of what is and what could be, the urgency of your mission.” – Carey Nieuwhof
- “I hear people say, ‘Fun (in church) ain’t the goal.’ Well, Heaven is going to suck for you.” – Perry Noble
- “Life is a series of events that seem quite serendipitous. And you need to put yourself in position for serendipity to happen.” – Condoleezza Rice
- “When fear knocks let faith answer the door.” – Robin Roberts at the ESPY Awards
- “He (Bear Bryant) was a very good fundamental coach. But what he really did well was create intangibles like toughness and discipline and giving great effort and executing your job…What you have to admire most about Coach Bryant is that he could do it for such a long time at such a high level. Because people think there is a continuum of success. There is no continuum of success. It starts over with every team.” – Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban
- “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” – Andy Stanley quoting Acts 15:18. He also added, “If the message of the church is for everybody, we dare not create a church culture that’s an obstacle to anybody.”
- “Jesus Christ, the gospel message, is the most important brand that has ever existed. Everything I do, every time I share the gospel, every time I start a ministry I affect the brand.” – Brian White
And now I want to share the most important leadership quote I heard in 2013. The following are the words from Rick Warren:
“Christians get to approach tragedy differently than the rest of the world. We get to rely completely on Christ. We get to have hope. But how? By intentionally leaning on Christ for stability, listening to Christ for direction, and looking to Christ for salvation. He is our Rock, our Shelter, our Great Shepherd, our Hiding Place. Suffering and tragedy are inevitable in a sinful world, but Jesus Christ makes all the difference. Decide that you will rely on Him even in the darkest of hours of your life.”
What other great quotes have you heard this year?
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