“The first important step in weathering failure is learning not to personalize it.”

“If a team is to accomplish its goals, it has to know where it stands.”

“Vision isn’t enough—it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs.”

“If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you’ll end up not doing anything for anybody.”

“Leaders Who Attract Followers . . . Need to Be Needed Leaders Who Develop Leaders . . . Want to Be Succeeded”

“Good leaders listen, learn, and then lead.”

“Before you attempt to set things right, make sure you see things right.”

“Years ago, I used to tell new leaders I hired that every person in our organization walked around with two buckets. One bucket contained water, and the other gasoline. As leaders, they would continually come across small fires, and they could pour water or gasoline on a fire. It was their choice.”

“Several years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book, Psycho-Cybernetics, was one of the most popular books on the market. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who often took disfigured faces and made them more attractive. He observed that in every case, the patient’s self-image rose with his and her physical improvement. In addition to being a successful surgeon, Dr. Maltz was a great psychologist who understood human nature. A wealthy woman was greatly concerned about her son, and she came to Dr. Maltz for advice. She had hoped that the son would assume the family business following her husband’s death, but when the son came of age, he refused to assume that responsibility and chose to enter an entirely different field. She thought Dr. Maltz could help convince the boy that he was making a grave error. The doctor agreed to see him, and he probed into the reasons for the young man’s decision. The son explained, “I would have loved to take over the family business, but you don’t understand the relationship I had with my father. He was a driven man who came up the hard way. His objective was to teach me self-reliance, but he made a drastic mistake. He tried to teach me that principle in a negative way. He thought the best way to teach me self-reliance was to never encourage or praise me. He wanted me to be tough and independent. Every day we played catch in the yard. The object was for me to catch the ball ten straight times. I would catch that ball eight or nine times, but always on that tenth throw he would do everything possible to make me miss it. He would throw it on the ground or over my head but always so I had no chance of catching it.” The young man paused for a moment and then said, “He never let me catch the tenth ball—never! And I guess that’s why I have to get away from his business; I want to catch that tenth ball!”

“You cannot separate your identity from your perspective. All that you are and every experience you’ve had color how you see things. It is your lens.”

“REAL: relationships, equipping, attitude, and leadership.”

“People need clear objectives set before them if they are to achieve anything of value.”

“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done and those who don’t want to make mistakes.”

“Many Christians estimate difficulty in the light of their own resources, and thus they attempt very little, and they always fail. All giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and His presence to be with them.”

“Uniformity is not the key to successful teamwork. The glue that holds a team together is unity of purpose.”