Great quotes from the inspiring business leader interviews at LeaderFest 2014.
Bernard Cook
- Leadership is not the same thing as management.
- You can teach management; you can’t teach leadership.
- Recruit people who share your purpose first and have the right skills second.
- I didn’t do it. I brought in a Chief Executive – She did it!
Kevin Morley
- Leadership needs focus.
- If you have a gift it’s your duty to use it.
- What drives me? I just do things. They come to me.
- Why do you do so much? I’m just not very good at saying “No”.
- The most important thing in decision making is speed.
- The best form of decision making is gut instinct.
- The only way you can hone your decision-making skills is by being in a position where you have to make decisions.
- We all need a boss who can bolster us when we feel down.
- Great leaders don’t grab the limelight. They push it onto others.
- You have to plough your own furrow.
- Everyone at the top of the business should spend two years in sales and marketing.
- The only way to be SEEN as successful is to BE successful.
- Success is a result of focus and hard work.
- Once you are successful it’s easy to stay successful because your reputation gains you support.
Jamie Shepperd
- Even if you have a system and a process you have to treat clients as individuals
- All challenges – like in our case regulation – create opportunities – others can’t handle it and so sell out to us
- I don’t get stressed – I do what I do and I’ve recruited a good senior team who do what they do well
Craig Marshall
- Rather than trying to be impressive, you need to be able to be impressed by your team.
- Changing your mind is OK too.
- It is important to understand the difference between management and leadership. Managing is about managing complexity and achieving stability. Leadership is about inspiring others and driving change.
- Is management or leadership more important? Both are essential. Great leadership is built upon good management. You need management first.
- Is it better to be over-managed and under-led or over-led and under-managed? The first won’t go anywhere, the latter will be chaos.
- When you add to the truth you subtract from it.
Liz Jackson
- Life should be an adventure.
- I spend most of my day at work so I want it to be interesting.
- I love selling. I love work.
- I cannot understand the joy in retiring.
- If you think you can or if you think you can’t you’re bound to be right.
- Be nice to geeks – you’ll probably end up working for one.
- Leaders are interesting and interested – they think out of the box.
- Leaders are hardworking servants.
- Leaders have a single-minded determination to make a difference and the self-belief to know they can.
- I love recessions. They drive you to be leaner, smarter and to stand out from the competition.
- Getting better at what you do happens more in the bad times than the good.
- We close our eyes and imagine where we want to be in 1, 3 and 5 years and then we set goals.
- If you’re focused you will always be unpopular with some people.
- You don’t become successful without getting on and doing something.
- Success brings problems.
- I love to help people.
- Equal partnerships don’t work. They always end in tears.
Bob Bradley
Bob is a specialist in running high value added service businesses, having run five such businesses as General Manager, Managing Director or Chief Executive. His last employed role was as Chief Executive of a £16M, 200 person family owned business having previously been Chief Executive of an AIM listed company for which he raised £5M funding and which he grew from £4M to £12M in three years through two acquisitions and organic growth, and a corporate PLC subsidiary where he was Managing Director responsible for delivering £10M profit on £45M turnover through 450 staff.
Bob is now following a portfolio career providing entrepreneurial business leaders with mentoring and coaching around business leadership, business growth, merger integration and exit planning.
Core to his portfolio is MD2MD. Having experienced for himself the value of having a strong sounding board of fellow Managing Directors he founded MD2MD in 2004 to provide groups of business leaders with a confidential environment within which they can support and challenge each other to raise their game as leaders and by doing so improve the success of their organisation.
More about BobMD2MD membership
- You meet your peer group privately for structured confidential conversations about real business challenges. You meet online for 90 minutes every 3 weeks.
- You attend one of a selection of open workshops led by top professional speakers sharing best practice on a wide range of leadership topics.
- You join our annual conference LeaderFest and our annual ‘Retreat to advance’.