“When your boss listens to you carefully, reaches out to help you, and learns from you, it enhances your dignity and pride. Doing so also helps your boss gain empathy for you, to better understand how it feels to be you and what you need to succeed in your job and life.”
"If you are a boss, ask yourself: When you look back at how you’ve treated followers, peers, and superiors, in their eyes, will you have earned the right to be proud of yourself? Or will they believe that you ought to be ashamed of yourself and embarrassed by how you have trampled on others’ dignity day after day?"
- Robert I. Sutton
Leadership
"Bosses shape how people spend their days and whether they experience joy or despair, perform well or badly, or are healthy or sick. Unfortunately, there are hoards of mediocre and downright rotten bosses out there, and big gaps between the best and the worst."
- Robert I. Sutton
Leadership
"Psychological safety is the key to creating a workplace where people can be confident enough to act without undue fear of being ridiculed, punished, or fired – and be humble enough to openly doubt what is believed and done. As Amy Edmondson’s research shows, psychological safety emerges when those in power persistently praise, reward, and promote people who have the courage to act, talk about their doubts, successes, and failures, and work doggedly to do things better the next time."
- Robert I. Sutton
Leadership
"As the research shows, the more time you spend around rotten apples – those lousy, lazy, grumpy, and nasty people – the more damage you will suffer. When people are emotionally depleted, they stop focusing on their jobs and instead work on improving their moods. If you find that there are a few subordinates who are so unpleasant that, day after day, they sap the energy you need to inspire others and feel good about your own job, my advice – if you can’t get rid of them – is to spend as little time around them as possible."
- Robert I. Sutton
Leadership
"The best management is sometimes less management or no management at all. William Coyne, who led 3M’s Research and Development efforts for over a decade, believed a big part of his job was to leave his people alone and protect them from other curious executives. As he put it: ‘After you plant a seed in the ground, you don’t dig it up every week to see how it is doing.”"
- Robert I. Sutton
Leadership
"Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Leadership
"Pay attention to those employees who respectfully ask why. They are demonstrating an interest in their jobs and exhibiting a curiosity that could eventually translate into leadership ability."
- Harvey Mackay
Leadership
"Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first."
- Angela Ahrendts
Leadership
"Leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure."
- Stanley McChrystal
Leadership
"An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage."
- Jack Welch
Leadership