Leadership

Leadership is about responsibility, not authority

Your first job is to serve those you lead—and any failure is always your fault

Dee Hock's One From Many is one of the best books I've read on the subject of creating an organization that values the individual contributions to it. I can't recommend it enough.

I'll definitely share some Dee Hock quotes and passages here. :)

"In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led. True leaders work to epitomize the general sense of a community." — Dee Hock

A few other great quotes on leadership:

"Leadership is action, not position." — Donald H. McGannon

"Good leaders must first become good servants." — Robert Greenleaf

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." — John Quincy Adams

“If you want to change something for the better, you need to change people more than [anything else].” — Mikeal Rogers (source)

"Of the best leaders, when their work is done, the people will say 'we did it ourselves.'" — Lao-Tzu

“Leadership is about change, management is about the avoidance of change... Leadership gets people to follow in a way they feel is dangerous.” — Horace Dediu

Insightful, fascinating comparison of management vs. leadership to disrupting vs. sustaining starting about 19:25: http://5by5.tv/criticalpath/45

"Don't hold on to small things, build trust and empower other without fear of what is ahead"

Too often I believe leaders hold on to what they are comfortable, limiting the growth of others because they don't feel they are done with a responsibility, or more likely, that they are afraid of the responsibility ahead. The reality is, as we grow the responsibilities that we hold grow small within our hands and that is a sign that we need to hand them off to people we can trust; if they don't exist then you need to build trust.