Quote

True leadership is moral authority, not formal authority. Leadership is a choice, not a position. The choice is to follow universal timeless principles, which will build trust and respect from the entire organization. Those with formal authority alone will lose this trust and respect.

Stephen Covey

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Stephen Covey
Age: 79 †
Born: 1932
Born: October 24
Died: 2012
Died: July 16
Author
Businessperson
Professor
Writer
Salt Lake City
Utah
Stephen Richards Covey
Loses
Follow
Alone
Choice
Timeless
Choices
Leadership
Formal
Moral
Lose
Entire
True
Trust
Organization
Respect
Build
Position
Universal
Principles
Authority

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You can't have the fruits without the roots.
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The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.
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If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
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If you don't choose to do it in leadership time up front, you do it in crisis management time down the road.
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Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.
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Be proactive. Ask yourself, Are my actions based on self-chosen values or on my moods, feelings and circumstances?
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People behave more on the basis of how they feel than how they think unless there are good feelings between people, it is almost impossible to reason intelligently.
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It is extremely ironic that the more we care about what people think about us the less we care about people, and the less we care about what people think about us the more we begin to care for others
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I believe that correct principles are natural laws, and that God, the Creator and Father of us all, is the source of them, and also the source of our conscience. I believe that to the degree people live by this inspired conscience, they will grow to fulfill their natures to the degree that they do not, they will not rise above the animal plane.
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When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen.
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Each of us guard a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside.
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Treat them all the same by treating them differently.
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I love interaction with audiences. If were my choice, I would spend most of my time interacting with audiences. Walking around and asking them to challenge me.
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The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don't have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.
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Common sense is not always common practice.
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When people seriously undertake to identify what really matters most to them in their lives, what they really want to be and do, they become very reverent. They start to think in larger terms than today and tomorrow.
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It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.
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