Boy Scout Troop 325
Scoutmaster Minute
Ten Leadership Quotes
August 22, 2006
Larry Polyak, Scoutmaster

Last week and tonight we elected new leaders for our troop. Can I have all those newly elected leaders please come up to the front please? These are the guys you have chosen to lead us. They will be involved in planning our entire program for the next year and in leading them for the next six months.

Scouting is a unique program, one of the most important aspects being the opportunity for leadership. Tonight I'd like to share with you a few quotes from some famous people regarding leadership.

John C. Maxwell, bestselling author:
A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.

Robert Half, well known businessman:
Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too.

Benjamin Disraeli, former prime minister of England:
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

Rosabeth Canter, professor at Harvard business school:
Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, president of the United States:
- Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
- You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.

John Quincy Adams, president of the United States:
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

Warren G. Bennis, Author and University Professor:
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born; that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

Vince Lombardi, head football coach Green Bay Packers:
Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.

And finally, the author of this one is unknown but it is perhaps the most memorable:
A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.

Thanks for listening.