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If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.
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James P. Lewis (Working Together: 12 Principles for Achieving Excellence in Managing Projects, Teams, and Organizations)
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If you can dream it up, you can team it up.
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Richie Norton
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It is great to do what you love but greater with the great team.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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We can only reach the highest height, if we encourage each other.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Few teams sometimes fails miserably because team members wish to work in the team but they want to be recognized individualy.
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Amit Kalantri
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Effective leaders almost never need to yell. The leader will have created an environment where disappointing him causes his people to be disappointed in themselves. Guilt and affection are far more powerful motivators than fear. The great coaches of team sports are almost always people who simply need to say, in a quiet voice, “That wasn’t our best, now was it?” and his players melt. They love this man, know he loves them, and will work tirelessly not to disappoint him. People are drawn to this kind of leader, as I was drawn all those years ago to Harry Howell, the grocer. A leader who screams at his employees or belittles them will not attract and retain great talent over the long term.
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James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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With a decision and a defined purpose, you can begin work.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Do all the work you while you still have strength.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Work for what you want, the pursuit of life.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Some problems are imaginary and not real.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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How one treats another one, determines success.
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Rajen Jani
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Conflicts are expensive.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Actions undertaken in anger, only result in pain, sorrow, and regret.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Change is constant.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Time well-spent is life well-lived.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Leaders prioritize what they want.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Compromise makes relationships survive.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Sometimes, changing circumstances also changes relationships.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Relationships are built on trust.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Good times don’t last and bad times don’t stay forever.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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autonomy over four aspects of work: what people do, when they do it, how they do it, and whom they do it with. As Atlassian’s experience shows, Type I behavior emerges when people have autonomy over the four T’s: their task, their time, their technique, and their team.
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Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
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If you can dream it up. You can team it up.
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Richie Norton
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I work as hard as possible and try to fail gracefully. :-)
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Plex Team
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Drama free workplace and ego free team mates are crucial for a healthier workplace
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Narayanan Palani
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Aspire to do anything, start something and stop at nothing.
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Kayambila Mpulamasaka
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For every great success, diligence is desirable from the beginning to the very end.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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The individual great spirit and great efforts create a great team.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Definite purpose, absolute commitment.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Do all the work you can in your youthful days while you have the greatest strength.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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To become a better you, work in a team of like-minded people and learn new things you don’t know.
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Israelmore Ayivor (Become a Better You)
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If the difficult tasks are completed first, then the remaining tasks seem easy.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Conflicts have small beginnings.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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The wise communicate in subtle ways.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Angry issues need settling time.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Anger management requires understanding.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Calmness subdues anger.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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A clear mind achieves success.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Over time, repetition brings perfection, which brings success.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Perseverance guarantees success.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Change is difficult, since it challenges the status quo.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Time management is essential for a work-life balance.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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A positive change in approach improves quality.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Knowledge is something that fire cannot burn, water cannot wet, air cannot dry, thieves cannot steal, and the more you spend the more it increases.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Experience is costly knowledge.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Conflicts need to be resolved at the earliest.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Personal meaning is the way we connect to a wider team purpose. If our values and beliefs are aligned with the values and beliefs of the organization, then we will work harder towards its success. If not, our individual motivation and purpose will suffer, and so will the organization.
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James Kerr (Legacy)
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People play differently when they’re keeping score,” the 4DX authors explain. They then elaborate that when attempting to drive your team’s engagement toward your organization’s wildly important goal, it’s important that they have a public place to record and track their lead measures. This scoreboard creates a sense of competition that drives them to focus on these measures, even when other demands vie for their attention. It also provides a reinforcing source of motivation. Once the team notices their success with a lead measure, they become invested in perpetuating this performance.
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Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
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When it comes to your career, you want to strive to become the type of person Patrick Lencioni describes in his book The Ideal Team Player: someone who is hungry (a motivated go-getter), humble (knows who they are and what they bring to the table), and smart (expertly manages relationships). Isn’t that the kind of person you want to work with?
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Chris Hogan (Everyday Millionaires)
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I truly believe that success is determined not on Friday nights during games but rather in practice away from the lights and glimmer where coaches and players only have each other, their sweat, their discipline and their loyalty to each other. It is at practice where the boys of America become men through hard work, dedication and perseverance.
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George M. Gilbert (Team Of One: We Believe)
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My two most unproductive days of the week have always been yesterday and tomorrow. Keeping that in mind, I try to focus majority of my attention on today.
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Mark W. Boyer
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Work with enthusiasm.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Nothing great was ever achieved without 100% dedication, discipline and determination.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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you give your best for today, you create a greater tomorrow.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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If you put your heart into everything you do, you will recreate yourself.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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In a highly performing team everyone achieves better than he/she would have achieved when working alone.
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Israelmore Ayivor (Become a Better You)
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The spirit of volunteerism is the spirit of service.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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An army of disciplined sheep is greater than an army of undisciplined wolves.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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If a worker’s motivation is slumping, it’s probably because the work is weakly defined or appears pointless, or because others on the team are acting like tools.
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Jason Fried (Remote: Office Not Required)
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We choose and wear our clothes every morning. Attitude is the same. Positivity is an attitude – we can choose to wear it every morning
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Marako Marcus (From Team Mediocrity To Team Greatness: A handbook of practical tips to working with Teams (Pocket Self-help Handbooks for Agility, Creativity & Inspiration))
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To achieve any group goal, individuals must work to improve themselves as a means to improve the group.
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George M. Gilbert (Team Of One: We Believe)
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Quality is all about taking care of the details.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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A team is more than the sum of the individuals.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Make sure a conflict exists before working to resolve it.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Adverse situations used advantageously can offer solutions to problems.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Problems kept unresolved invite more problems.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Mutual respect is an integral part of communication.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Sometimes a problem itself offers its own solution.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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With a common ground, solution of problems is easy.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Improvements enable adapting to new situations.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Intelligent efforts are successful.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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In relationships, the cheater is unable to trust anyone, including the cheated.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Change is possible only if the top management agrees.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Only time can reveal the future.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Employees are usually motivated to stay or leave due to their managers.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Workers can offer guidance for improving the work.
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Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
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Before success can truly become routine, there must be that transition from that wanting/hoping to have success toward honestly knowing you can earn success with your talents and work ethic.
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George M. Gilbert (Team Of One: We Believe)
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Grant says it makes sense that introverts are uniquely good at leading initiative-takers. Because of their inclination to listen to others and lack of interest in dominating social situations, introverts are more likely to hear and implement suggestions. Having benefited from the talents of their followers, they are then likely to motivate them to be even more proactive. Introverted leaders create a virtuous circle of proactivity, in other words. In the T-shirt-folding study, the team members reported perceiving the introverted leaders as more open and receptive to their ideas, which motivated them to work harder and to fold more shirts.
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Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
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I will not promise boys positions, I will not promise any of you football success, I will demand discipline, character, respect, and work ethic throughout the program. If I succeed in getting people to believe then success will follow.
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George M. Gilbert (Team Of One: We Believe)
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Obsess to find ways to win. Work ethic separates the great from the good."
"Be so focused on your own ambitions that no one can distract you from achieving them."
"Have a maniacal work ethic. You want to overprepare so that luck becomes a product of design."
"Stay hungry. Dominate each day with ambition unknown to humankind."
"Goals motivate you. Bad habits corrode you."
"Operate with love. It fuels the desire to become great."
"Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Growth comes at the end of discomfort."
"Don't wait for opportunity. Create it. Seize it. Shape it."
"Learn every aspect of your craft and substance will follow."
"Find your killer instinct. Impose your will. But also realize you are part of a team.
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Kobe Bryant (The Mamba Mentality: How I Play)
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if you want to set the tone or mood, make sure you get some of the first words in. Think about it, which meeting would you prefer to attend? One that starts with “Let’s get going because we have so much to do today and a lot of fires to put out” or one that starts with “I’m happy to see you all today—it’s great that we have such a strong team working on these exciting new projects”? Same reality but a very different outlook. Then sit back and watch how people’s engagement and motivation improve in response to your power lead. It’s one of the most effective tools in this book.
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Shawn Achor (Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change)
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Effective leaders almost never need to yell. The leader will have created an environment where disappointing him causes his people to be disappointed in themselves. Guilt and affection are far more powerful motivators than fear. The great coaches of team sports are almost always people who simply need to say, in a quiet voice, “That wasn’t our best, now was it?” and his players melt. They love this man, know he loves them, and will work tirelessly not to disappoint him. People are drawn to this kind of leader, as I was drawn all those years ago to Harry Howell, the grocer. A leader who screams
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James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.” To explain this peculiar phenomenon, Jost’s team developed a theory of system justification. Its core idea is that people are motivated to rationalize the status quo as legitimate—even if it goes directly against their interests. In one study, they tracked Democratic and Republican voters before the 2000 U.S. presidential election. When George W. Bush gained in the polls, Republicans rated him as more desirable, but so did Democrats, who were already preparing justifications for the anticipated status quo. The same happened when Al Gore’s likelihood of success increased: Both Republicans and Democrats judged him more favorably. Regardless of political ideologies, when a candidate seemed destined to win, people liked him more. When his odds dropped, they liked him less. Justifying the default system serves a soothing function. It’s an emotional painkiller: If the world is supposed to be this way, we don’t need to be dissatisfied with it. But acquiescence also robs us of the moral outrage to stand against injustice and the creative will to consider alternative ways that the world could work.
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Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
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Boundaries help you perform your best when you’re on the clock, and they help you recharge effectively when you’re not. They improve your mental and physical health; create a culture of respect and trust; keep morale, motivation, and loyalty high; and prevent good employees (like you) from burning out—because burnout is very, very real even if you’re doing a job you love. When employees are feeling energized, respected, and valued, it has a positive impact on their productivity, creativity, and the results they achieve for the business. Remember that the next time you’re tempted to feel guilty for setting a boundary at work—you’re a true team player because you’re helping to create a workplace culture in which everyone thrives.
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Melissa Urban (The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free)
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Everyone on your team should be connected to your customers—maybe not every day, but at least a few times throughout the year. That’s the only way your team is going to feel the hurt your customers are experiencing. It’s feeling the hurt that really motivates people to fix the problem. And the flip side is true too: The joy of happy customers or ones who have had a problem solved can also be wildly motivating. So
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Jason Fried (ReWork)
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Being a leader doesn’t mean you have people reporting to you on an organizational chart—leadership is about inspiring and motivating those around you. A good leader affects a team’s ability to deliver code, architect good systems, and apply Lean principles to how the team manages its work and develops products. All of these have a measurable impact on an organization’s profitability, productivity, and market share.
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Nicole Forsgren (Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations)
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Leadership means making choices and then rallying the team around those choices. One thing I had learned from my dad’s experience as a senior Indian government official was that few tasks are more difficult than building a lasting institution. The choice of leading through consensus versus fiat is a false one. Any institution-building comes from having a clear vision and culture that works to motivate progress both top-down and bottom-up.
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Satya Nadella (Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone)
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The hands-on approach takes an active interest on a very regular basis in the members' work. The hands-off approach trusts team members and recognizes their need for autonomy to carry out their roles, as they see fit. It hinges on their self-motivation. When the leader goes too far with the hands-on approach, he is seen as an anxious and interfering type. If he goes too far hands-off, he is seen as abdicating his responsibility or not being interested. Today,
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A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (Wings of Fire)
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Autonomy, the ability to have control over some part of your work, is an important element of motivation. This is why micromanagers find it so difficult to retain great teams. When you strip creative and talented people of their autonomy, they lose motivation very quickly. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you can’t make a single decision on your own, or feeling like every single piece of work you do has to be double- and triple-checked by your manager.
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Camille Fournier (The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change)
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contrary to conventional leadership in which the leader’s focus is on himself and what he can accomplish and achieve. Rather, the focus is on those being served. Servant leaders do many of the same things other leaders do—cast vision, build teams, allocate resources, and so on. The big difference is their orientation and their motivation; these make all the difference in the world. They possess an others-first mindset. The servant leader constantly works to help others win.
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Mark Miller (The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow)
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Follow these steps—over and over again for a decade—and you just might become a master: • Remember that deliberate practice has one objective: to improve performance. “People who play tennis once a week for years don’t get any better if they do the same thing each time,” Ericsson has said. “Deliberate practice is about changing your performance, setting new goals and straining yourself to reach a bit higher each time.” • Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition matters. Basketball greats don’t shoot ten free throws at the end of team practice; they shoot five hundred. • Seek constant, critical feedback. If you don’t know how you’re doing, you won’t know what to improve. • Focus ruthlessly on where you need help. While many of us work on what we’re already good at, says Ericsson, “those who get better work on their weaknesses.” • Prepare for the process to be mentally and physically exhausting. That’s why so few people commit to it, but that’s why it works.
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Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
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Burned-out, stressed-out, and frazzled leaders foster organizations that experience high turnover, low employee engagement, steep healthcare costs, and dysfunctional teams that often work against one another. The current models of leadership require organizations to motivate their people largely with fear and extrinsic rewards. Though no one argues that these forms of motivation can produce short-term results, they are usually accompanied by distrust and cynicism in the workplace, which have long-term negative consequences.
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Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
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Because of their inclination to listen to others and lack of interest in dominating social situations, introverts are more likely to hear and implement suggestions. Having benefited from the talents of their followers, they are then likely to motivate them to be even more proactive. Introverted leaders create a virtuous circle of proactivity, in other words. In the T-shirt-folding study, the team members reported perceiving the introverted leaders as more open and receptive to their ideas, which motivated them to work harder and to fold more shirts.
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Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
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great. This is a good description of Rovio, which was around for six years and underwent layoffs before the “instant” success of the Angry Birds video game franchise. In the case of the Five Guys restaurant chain, the founders spent fifteen years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, the right number of times to shake the french fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, and where to source their potatoes before expanding nationwide. Most businesses require a complex network of relationships to function, and these relationships take time to build. In many instances you have to be around for a few years to receive consistent recognition. It takes time to develop connections with investors, suppliers, and vendors. And it takes time for staff and founders to gain effectiveness in their roles and become a strong team.* So, yes, the bar is high when you want to start a company. You’ll have the chance to work on something you own and care about from day to day. You’ll be 100 percent engaged and motivated, and doing something you believe in. You can lead an integrated life, as opposed to a compartmentalized one in which you play a role in an office and then try to forget about it when you get home. You can define an organization, not the other way around. But even if you quit your job, hunker down for years, work hard for uncertain reward, and ask everyone you know for help, there’s still a great chance that your new business will not succeed. Over 50 percent of companies fail within their first three years.2 There’s a quote I like from an unknown source: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.
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Andrew Yang (Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America)
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Mediocre people are a drag on quality and morale, but they tend to do just enough good work to stick around—managers have a tough time justifying letting them go because there’s no actionable offense. The scent of mediocrity on your team can also scare off talented candidates. Mediocrity is an albatross we tether ourselves to when we don’t give the hiring process our full attention. When you hire, look for skill fit, but don’t make it your primary evaluation criteria. Look for passion, curiosity, selflessness, openness, confidence, communication skills, emotional intelligence, and intrinsic motivation, too. These things can’t be taught—most skills can.
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Anonymous
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But as a Puerto Rican woman, she belonged to not one but two minority groups. New research suggests that her double minority status may have amplified the costs and the benefits of speaking up. Management researcher Ashleigh Rosette, who is African American, noticed that she was treated differently when she led assertively than were both white women and black men. Working with colleagues, she found that double minority group members faced double jeopardy. When black women failed, they were evaluated much more harshly than black men and white leaders of both sexes. They didn’t fit the stereotype of leaders as black or as female, and they shouldered an unfair share of the blame for mistakes. For double minorities, Rosette’s team pointed out, failure is not an option. Interestingly, though, Rosette and her colleagues found that when black women acted dominantly, they didn’t face the same penalties as white women and black men. As double minorities, black women defy categories. Because people don’t know which stereotypes to apply to them, they have greater flexibility to act “black” or “female” without violating stereotypes. But this only holds true when there’s clear evidence of their competence. For minority-group members, it’s particularly important to earn status before exercising power. By quietly advancing the agenda of putting intelligence online as part of her job, Carmen Medina was able to build up successes without attracting too much attention. “I was able to fly under the radar,” she says. “Nobody really noticed what I was doing, and I was making headway by iterating to make us more of a publish-when-ready organization. It was almost like a backyard experiment. I pretty much proceeded unfettered.” Once Medina had accumulated enough wins, she started speaking up again—and this time, people were ready to listen. Rosette has discovered that when women climb to the top and it’s clear that they’re in the driver’s seat, people recognize that since they’ve overcome prejudice and double standards, they must be unusually motivated and talented. But what happens when voice falls on deaf ears?
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Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
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To Polish the Gold & Help Others Shine . . . Catch people doing things right:
Outstanding leaders know that people will be more engaged, perform at higher levels, and be more loyal when they are appreciated and celebrated. Jeff West, international speaker and author of The Unexpected Tour Guide, shares that “People will jump over high hurdles, fight fires and break through walls for leaders who find them doing things right. Building that kind of chemistry is essential if a team is going to jell.” Capitalize on the opportunity to notice what people are doing right at work and at home and they will deliver their best. As the old saying goes, “A person who feels appreciated will always do more than expected.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
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In Drive, Daniel H. Pink is clear on the three drivers that actually motivate people: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. If someone is constantly on the receiving end of advice, with no option to share their own ideas, their autonomy and mastery certainly decline, and most likely their purpose too. Being told what to do—even with the best of intentions—signals that the advice-receiver is not really here for their ability to think, but only for their ability to implement someone else’s ideas. They certainly do not feel encouraged to bring their best self to work, to bring their creativity and commitment and competency, to assume leadership and try something new. If you lead these people, you now find yourself with an over-dependent team, a group that come to you for everything and seem to have traded in their self-sufficiency and autonomy.
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Michael Bungay Stanier (The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever)
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It truly is a team sport, and we have the best team in town. But it’s my relationship with Ilana that I cherish most. We have such a strong partnership and have learned how we work most efficiently: I need coffee, she needs tea. When we’re stressed, I pace around and use a weird neck massager I bought online that everyone makes fun of me for, and she knits. When we’re writing together she types, because she’s faster and better at grammar. We actually FaceTime when we’re not in the same city and are constantly texting each other ideas for jokes or observations to potentially use (I recently texted her from Asheville: girl with flip-flops tucked into one strap of tank top). Looking back now at over ten years of doing comedy and running a business with her I can see how our collaboration has expanded and contracted. But it’s the problem-solving aspect of this industry, the producing, the strategy, the realizing that we could put our heads together and figure out the best solution, that has made our relationship and friendship what it is. Because that spills into everything. We both have individual careers now, but those other projects have only been motivating and inspiring to each other and the show. We bring back what we’ve learned on the other sets, in the other negotiations, in the other writers’ rooms or press situations. I’m very lucky to have jumped into this with Ilana Rose Glazer, the ballsy, curly-haired, openhearted, nineteen-year-old girl that cracked me up that night at the corner of the bar at McManus. So many wonderful things have happened since we began working together, but there are a lot of confusing, life-altering things in there too, and it’s such a relief to have someone who completely understands the good and the bad.
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Abbi Jacobson (I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff)
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For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting
differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team.
Picture that person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side.
You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way
for them to succeed. In short, you must do three things: → DIRECT the Rider FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. Investigate what’s working and clone it. [Jerry Sternin in Vietnam, solutions-focused therapy] SCRIPT THE CRITICAL MOVES. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. [1% milk, four rules at the Brazilian railroad] POINT TO THE DESTINATION. Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it. [“You’ll be third graders soon,” “No dry holes” at BP] → MOTIVATE the Elephant FIND THE FEELING. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something. [Piling gloves on the table, the chemotherapy video game, Robyn Waters’s demos at Target] SHRINK THE CHANGE. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant. [The 5-Minute Room Rescue, procurement reform] GROW YOUR PEOPLE. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset. [Brasilata’s “inventors,” junior-high math kids’ turnaround] → SHAPE the Path TWEAK THE ENVIRONMENT. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation. [Throwing out the phone system at Rackspace, 1-Click ordering, simplifying the online time sheet] BUILD HABITS. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. [Setting “action triggers,” eating two bowls of soup while dieting, using checklists] RALLY THE HERD.
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Chip Heath (Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard)
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The goal was ambitious. Public interest was high. Experts were eager to contribute. Money was readily available. Armed with every ingredient for success, Samuel Pierpont Langley set out in the early 1900s to be the first man to pilot an airplane. Highly regarded, he was a senior officer at the Smithsonian Institution, a mathematics professor who had also worked at Harvard. His friends included some of the most powerful men in government and business, including Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell. Langley was given a $50,000 grant from the War Department to fund his project, a tremendous amount of money for the time. He pulled together the best minds of the day, a veritable dream team of talent and know-how. Langley and his team used the finest materials, and the press followed him everywhere. People all over the country were riveted to the story, waiting to read that he had achieved his goal. With the team he had gathered and ample resources, his success was guaranteed. Or was it? A few hundred miles away, Wilbur and Orville Wright were working on their own flying machine. Their passion to fly was so intense that it inspired the enthusiasm and commitment of a dedicated group in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio. There was no funding for their venture. No government grants. No high-level connections. Not a single person on the team had an advanced degree or even a college education, not even Wilbur or Orville. But the team banded together in a humble bicycle shop and made their vision real. On December 17, 1903, a small group witnessed a man take flight for the first time in history. How did the Wright brothers succeed where a better-equipped, better-funded and better-educated team could not? It wasn’t luck. Both the Wright brothers and Langley were highly motivated. Both had a strong work ethic. Both had keen scientific minds. They were pursuing exactly the same goal, but only the Wright brothers were able to inspire those around them and truly lead their team to develop a technology that would change the world. Only the Wright brothers started with Why. 2.
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Simon Sinek (Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action)