Fundamental Elements of Leadership

This morning at the Creative Infusion Conference at Daybreak, I enjoyed a breakout session on Creative Leadership by Terry Woychowski, and executive with General Motors. Some notable quotes...

• The single most important element in your ministry is leadership. More important than worship, discipleship or missions. Because without good leadership--you can't do any of that.
• Leadership is not of the masses. When the masses lead, the best you can get is mediocrity and the worst is a riot.
• It takes leadership to effect change...it will never happen by itself.
• Good is not a stepping stone to Greatness. Good is not an ally of Great. Good is the enemy of Great.
• As the chief engineer at GM, the most important and crucial thing I do is to say "no" to good ideas.
• Leadership is not about fairness. At budget time, it's not about fairness. Leadership makes tough calls based on the vision.
• In a closed system (with no input of energy), confusion and disorder must increase. Whether your family or ministry, things will naturally tend toward confusion and disorder. It is up to leaders to continually inject energy into that system.
• If things are going well, you have to work on it continually. Otherwise it will disintegrate. If you want things to be better, you have to work on it exponentially hard. That is leadership.
• People will not naturally lead themselves.
• Every morning when I shave I look in the mirror and say: "Terry, greater men than you have fallen. Be on your guard today."
• Leaders articulate the vision over and over. Just when you are sick of saying it, there are some people who just start to understand.
• You learn a lot more from your failures than you do your victories.