Daily, leadership tests and challenges are played out, for better or worse.

And the outcome of these leadership tests can affect hundreds, thousands, or frequently, millions of people.

Today, for example, leadership challenges are being played out in the following arenas: the oil spill, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, world and national economies…and there’s plenty more to choose from.

Your own company may have leadership challenges in play, as many do while trying to navigate ongoing economic challenges safely.

Knowing how many people’s lives are affected by leadership decisions and actions, whatever they may be, I sometimes reach for famous quotes for ideas, clarity, and to help me take a long-term perspective.

A few leadership thoughts for today:

Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.
Bill Bradley

The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president.
David Herbert Donald

Actions, not words, are the ultimate results of leadership.
Bill Owens

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision to reality.
Warren G. Bennis

Leadership is diving for the loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It’s being able to take it as well as dish it out. That’s the only way you’re going to get respect from the players.
Larry Bird

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you’re ready to play as tough as you’re able to, you’d better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you’re not giving it all you’ve got.
Larry Bird

Example is leadership.
Albert Schweitzer

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Sometimes creativity just happens. And sometimes it’s coaxed.

Here are a few ideas about how creativity is activated, encouraged, or grown:

Learning is movement from moment to moment.
J. Krishnamurti

Nothing encourages creativity like the chance to fall flat on one’s face.
James D. Finley

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Each person has their own answer.

What’s the best type of day for you?

And what’s the best day of your life…so far?

Here’s one intriguing response to the “best day of your life” thought, as well as a few other thought-provokers:

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame.  The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.
Bob Moawad

The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.
Norman Vincent Peale

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically – to say “no” to other things.  And the way to do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.”
Stephen Covey

Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have – and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.
James Belasco and Ralph Stayer, “Flight of the Buffalo”

Innovation – the heart of the knowledge economy – is fundamentally social.
Malcolm Gladwell

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Celebration is not a minor thing. But it’s easily treated as an expendable thing.

Consider these ideas as you consider what and when to celebrate…especially if celebration is something you tend to naturally overlook:

Celebrate what you want to see more of.
Tom Peters

People often resist change for reasons that make good sense to them, even if those reasons don’t correspond to organizational goals. So it is crucial to recognize, reward and celebrate accomplishments.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Never celebrate until you are really out of the woods. They might be behind the last tree.
Unknown

I will celebrate, but I know new goals and objectives will come and I am ready to take them.
Ronaldo

We all know good leadership when we experience it.

And we know it when we don’t.

Think back:

- Who’s the best leader you ever had?

- And who was the worst?

- What was the difference?

- Whether you’re a leader or a follower in the role you now have, how can you apply these lessons from your past?

Here are a few ideas from others about leadership at its best:

Leadership is the special quality which enables people to stand up and pull the rest of us over the horizon.
James L. Fisher

Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.
Warren Bennis

A good leader inspires others with confidence in him a great leader inspires them with confidence in themselves.
Unknown

To grow, you must expose yourself – or at least be open to – new ideas, new methods, new skills, and often, new people, as well.

To grow, you must take chances.

To grow, you must let go.

Here are others’ thoughts on growing – on not staying the same – when that is your goal:

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
John Foster Dulles

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman

Begin growing from where you are – not from where others think you ought to be by now.
Steven Douglas Lawrence

Impossible is a word humans use far too often.
Jeri Ryan

We must walk consciously only part way towards our goal, and then leap in
the dark to our success.
Thoreau

Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
St. Francis of Assisi

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Problem-solving doesn’t really begin until “What if…”

And “There has to be a better way…”

And “I wonder if…”

Curiosity is the key.

Curiosity leads you down the path of inquiry. It leads to problem-identifying, cause-seeking, pattern-finding, cause-removing, improvement-making, future-creating.

And it all has to start somewhere.

It starts with, “I wonder…”

Here are a few more thoughts along those lines from the king of curiosity, Albert Einstein, and others:

Never lose a holy curiosity.
Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Albert Einstein

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.
Albert Einstein

A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.
Smiley Blanton

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
E. E. Cummings

Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.
William Wirt

If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
Bill Gates

One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.
William Lyon Phelps

Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.
Dr. Linus Pauling

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Sometimes you don’t.

If you get a second chance at something that’s important to you, something that didn’t work on the first pass, you know the surge of energy it can bring. You also know the wisdom of the second pass, the lessons learned that tighten your focus, improve your aim, and increase your chances of success, if you apply those lessons well.

Here are thoughts from others about second chances, persistence, and trying again, with better aim:

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
Harrison Ford

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Napoleon Hill

Don’t think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success.
Robert Orben

The key to success is often the ability to adapt.
Unknown

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
Unknown

The key to change…is to let go of fear.
Rosanne Cash

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Part of successful problem-solving is having the right long- and short-term perspective.

A game frame of mind helps, too.

It’s also good – and productive – to believe and act as if you expect to succeed somehow, some way: in seeing the problem, seeing the answer, and making change and improvement well.

Here are a few more thoughts from change-makers of the past:

In times like these it is good to remember there have always been times like these.
Paul Harvey

I never decide whether it’s time to retire during training camp.
Bob Christian, NFL player

The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.
Peter Drucker

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
Edward R. Murrow

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
Theodore Rubin

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
James Thurber

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
Albert Einstein

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than trying to solve them.
Henry Ford

When a problem comes along, study it until you are completely knowledgeable. Then find that weak spot, break the problem apart, and the rest will be easy.
Abraham Maslow

Often the greatest challenge facing an organization is recognizing and acting on opportunity rather than solving a problem.
Arnold Glasgow

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Many people desire leadership, the opportunity to be in charge.

But leadership comes with risks, often great ones. It also comes with uncertainty – lots of it.

And so, leaders, to be effective, must be attentive to their plans, and how they’re working out, then able to learn and adapt – and get their teams to do so – while work is well underway.

Here are some of the lessons of leadership others have shared:

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
JFK

Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader.
General George S. Patton

Enduring setbacks while maintaining the ability to show others the way to go forward is a true test of leadership.
Nitin Nohria

The man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
James Crook

And this is one of the things that many leaders may not talk about:

Leadership has been defined as the ability to hide your panic from others.
Unknown

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.