Robert K. Greenleaf > Quotes

“On an important decision one rarely has 100% of the information needed for a good decision no matter how much one spends or how long one waits. And, if one waits too long, he has a different problem and has to start all over. This is the terrible dilemma of the hesitant decision maker.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader

“Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams. Much more than a dreamer is required to bring it to reality; but the dream must be there first.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader

“Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader

“Don't assume, because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated, that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“The servant-leader is servant first, it begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first, as opposed to, wanting power, influence, fame, or wealth.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“Ego can’t sleep. It micro-manages. It disempowers. It reduces our capability. It excels in control.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“For the person with creative potential there is no wholeness except in using it.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader

“Ego focuses on one’s own survival, pleasure, and enhancement to the exclusion of others; ego is selfishly ambitious. It sees relationships in terms of threat or no threat, like little children who classify all people as “nice” or “mean.” Conscience, on the other hand, both democratizes and elevates ego to a larger sense of the group, the whole, the community, the greater good. It sees life in terms of service and contribution, in terms of others’ security and fulfillment.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader

“Moral authority is another way to define servant leadership because it represents a reciprocal choice between leader and follower. If the leader is principle centered, he or she will develop moral authority. If the follower is principle centered, he or she will follow the leader. In this sense, both leaders and followers are followers. Why? They follow truth. They follow natural law. They follow principles. They follow a common, agreed-upon vision. They share values. They grow to trust one another.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“Good leaders must first become good servants.”
― Robert Greenleaf

“One must not be afraid of a little silence. Some find silence awkward or oppressive. But a relaxed approach to dialogue will include the welcoming of some silence. It is often a devastating question to ask oneself, but it is sometimes important to ask it - 'In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader

“Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“The variable that marks some periods as barren and some as rich in prophetic vision is in the interest, the level of seeking, the responsiveness of the hearers. The variable is not in the presence or absence or the relative quality and force of the prophetic voices. The prophet grows in stature as people respond to his message...It is the seekers, then, who make the prophet.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader

“Rabbi Heschel replied: “I would say: Let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can—every one—do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“Knowledge may be power, but not without the willingness, and the release from inhibiting mind-sets, to use that knowledge.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Power of Servant-Leadership

“vision, without which we perish, is required to open us to willingness to use what we know and to work to extract hard reality from a dream.”
― Robert K Greenleaf, The Power of Servant-Leadership

“In the context of religious leadership, tinkering with structure is not a first choice of means for building or sustaining quality in an institution. Leadership is the prime concern!”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Power of Servant-Leadership

“Now you can do as I do, stand outside and criticize, bring pressure if you can, write and argue about it. All of this may do some good. But nothing of substance will happen unless there are people inside these institutions who are able to (and want to) lead them into better performance for the public good. Some of you ought to make careers inside these big institutions and become a force for good—from the inside.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“I hold that hope, thus defined, is absolutely essential to both sanity and wholeness of life.”
― Robert K Greenleaf, The Power of Servant-Leadership

“The servant leader is servant first... It begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first...”
― Robert K. Greenleaf

“One must not be afraid of a little silence. Some find silence awkward or oppressive, but a relaxed approach to dialogue will include the welcoming of some silence. It is often a devastating question to ask oneself-but it is sometimes important to ask it"In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“Everywhere there is much complaining about too few leaders. We have too few because most institutions are structured so that only a few—only one at the time—can emerge.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“But perhaps the greatest threat is that we lack the mechanism of consensus, a way of making up our collective minds.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“Listening, coupled with regular periods of reflection, are essential to the growth of the servant-leader.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Power of Servant-Leadership

“Too much of the public concern for the quality of society is still devoted to caring directly for individuals and not enough attention goes to caring for institutions and the way they are structured. Structural flaws can cause harm to individuals; conversely, conceptually sound and ably administered institutions can build people and enrich society. All too often we seem to disregard this important influence that institutions can have on people.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“The outlook for better leadership in our leadership-poor society is not encouraging.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“The answer to this question is that trustees need a new view of people at their best in institutional roles. That view can be simply stated: No person is complete; no one is to be entrusted with all. Completeness is to be found only in the complementary talents of several who relate as equals. This flouts one of the time-honored assumptions—almost an axiom—of administrative lore: “You cannot manage by committee! Delegation of authority must be made to an individual.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

“Knowledge is but a tool. The spirit is of the essence.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Power of Servant-Leadership

“The principal limitation of the conventional trustee role, as it is practiced today, is the common assumption by trustees that internal officers and staffs, left largely on their own and structured as they usually are, will see to it that the institution performs as it should, that is, close to what is reasonable and possible with its resources. The arguments against this assumption are presented in the last chapter in the section “Organization: Some Flaws in the Concept of the Single Chief,” a concept that seems likely to continue in force as long as trustees remain in their conventional nominal roles.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness