“Great leaders always seem to embody two seemingly disparate qualities. They are both highly visionary and highly practical.”

“NO NOTES. This was truly an oral event. Storytellers didn’t read their stories; they told them, which allowed for eye contact.”

“Nobody on his death bed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.”

“The emotion you continually feed is the one that will dominate your life.”

“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!”

“The beauty of trust is that it erases worry and frees you to get on with other matters. Trust means confidence.”

“There is no achievement without failure.”

“Trying to get the right person in the right job can take a lot of time and energy. Let’s face it. Isn’t it easier for a leader to just put people where it is most convenient and get on with the work? Once again, this is an area where leaders’ desire for action works against them.”

“people with charisma possess an outward focus instead of an inward one. They pay attention to other people, and they desire to add value to them.”

“Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years. To become someone who can mine a lot of gold, you need to keep repeating the process of good thinking.”

“People need your influence, but it will not come through ‘lip syncing’ those you admire.”

“If you haven’t yet discovered and developed your style, study other communicators.”

“Have to sow excellent seeds to have an excellent life. Must start with sowing excellent thoughts.”

“Errors become mistakes when we perceive them and respond to them incorrectly. Mistakes become failures when we continually respond to them incorrectly.”

“We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are.”