From team building to strategic planning, find the insights needed to achieve excellence and success with this list of management quotes!
Great management isn’t just about processes and procedures; it’s about leading people, fostering growth, and navigating the complexities of the business world with vision and integrity. In today’s dynamic landscape, the right insights can illuminate the path forward, inspire action, and transform challenges into opportunities. The following collection of management quotes is curated to share wisdom from seasoned leaders, groundbreaking thinkers, and influential figures across history. Whether you’re an aspiring manager, a seasoned executive, or simply passionate about leadership, these words should offer invaluable perspectives to help achieve excellence in your role and guide the team to success – and beyond.
(by Jonathan M. Pham)
Short Management Quotes
- Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. – Peter Drucker
- Time management is really personal management, life management and management of yourself. – Brian Tracy
- Management must speak with one voice. – Pat Riley
- A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men. – Frederick W. Smith
- Real management is developing people through work. – Agha Hasan Abedi
Good Management Quotes
- Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive. – Anne M. Mulcahy
- Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work. – Paul Hawken
- The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. – Ken Blanchard
- Get the right people. Then no matter what all else you might do wrong after that, the people will save you. That’s what management is all about. – Tom DeMarco
- A man should never be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weaknesses rather than on their strengths. – Peter Drucker
Read more: 80 Employee Engagement Quotes
Quotes about good managers
Bad Management Quotes
- Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. – Kin Hubbard
- To make a long story short, there’s nothing like having a boss walk in. – Doris Lilly
- Not all bosses are bad. But all bad bosses are losses. – Richie Norton
- People who make big promises can also make big lies. Trust first, but exercise smart trust. – Richie Norton
- Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done. – Peter Drucker
Inspirational Quotes for Managers
- The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid. – Jim Rohn
- Leadership is not a license to do less. Leadership is a responsibility to do more. – Simon Sinek
- Your mindset determines the height of your achievements. – Anonymous
- Great leaders are lifelong learners. – Anonymous
- Good managers don’t fire. They hire and inspire. – Michael Scott
Read more: 123 Motivational Quotes for Employees From Managers
Good lines for manager
Quotes about Management Skills & Mindset
- The first step out of the gate has to be knowing where you want to end up. – Stan Slap
- Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet. – Henry Mintzberg
- Growth starts with the willingness to step outside your comfort zone. – Anonymous
- Goals are for people who care about winning once. Systems are for people who care about winning repeatedly. – Anonymous
- To make a decision, all you need is authority. To make a good decision, you also need knowledge, experience, and insight. – Denise Moreland
Read more: 70 Agility Quotes – Adapt, Innovate, and Thrive
Powerful quotes for boss
Quotes about Management and Learning
- Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing. – Warren Bennis
- Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. – John F. Kennedy
- Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. – Anthony J. D’Angelo
- Change is the end result of all true learning. – Leo Buscaglia
- The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay. – Henry Ford
Learning and development quotes
Quotes about Management and Organization
- For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned. – Anonymous
- Organizing is a journey, not a destination. – Anonymous
- Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions. – Barbara Hemphill
- If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. – John Quincy Adams
- An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage. – Jack Welch
Read more: Continuous Learning Culture – The Blueprint for an Agile & Resilient Organization
Top management quotes
Quotes about Management and Leadership
- The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He gets people to do the greatest things. – Ronald Reagan
- Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge. – Simon Sinek
- Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. – Warren Bennis
- Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another. – John C. Maxwell
- What you do has far greater impact than what you say. – Stephen Covey
Leadership quotes for managers
Quotes about Managers vs Leaders
- Leaders create fans, managers have employees. – Anonymous
- The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. – Warren Bennis
- Management’s job is to convey leadership’s message in a compelling and inspiring way. Not just in meetings, but also by example. – Jeffrey Gitomer
- You manage things; you lead people. – Grace Hopper
- Leadership is inspiring people. Management is keeping the trains running on time. – Andy Dunn
Quotes for manager appreciation
Quotes about Managing People & Teams
Team management
- Teamwork makes the dream work. – John C. Maxwell
- Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. – Michael Jordan
- Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. – Henry Ford
- No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it. – H. E. Luccock
- The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. – Phil Jackson
Read more: 45 Team Building Quotes for Sustainable Growth
Teamwork management quotes
Talent management
- The best way to motivate people is by setting high standards and then helping them meet those standards. – Tony Robbins
- People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. – Marcus Buckingham
- When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute. – Simon Sinek
- Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to. – Richard Branson
- I hire people brighter than me and I get out of their way. – Lee Iacocca
Human resource management
- You’d better get the human capital part right. – Dave Bookbinder
- People are not your most important asset. The right people are. – Jim Collins
- Recruiting should be viewed as a business partner, someone who is critical to the success of the business. – Mathew Caldwell
- Human Resources isn’t a thing we do. It’s the thing that runs our business. – Steve Wynn
- Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves. – Ken Robinson
Human resource management quotes
Empowerment and delegation
- Great leaders hire people who are smarter than themselves and empower them. – Richard Branson
- The greatest gift you can give people is clear, concise communication. – Jeff Price
- No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit. – Andrew Carnegie
- Our best managers are those that are really leveraging those human skills, leaning in, understanding the needs of their teams. And when we see that potential, these are the folks that then we start doing some deeper work with. – Lori Castillo Martinez
- If you delegate tasks, you create followers; if you delegate authority, you create leaders. – Craig Groeschel
Quotes about managers and employees
Strategic & Operational Management Quotes
Business management
- Good business leaders create, articulate, passionately own and drive vision. – Jack Welch
- A leader is a dealer in hope. – Napoleon Bonaparte
- You are where you are today because you stand on somebody’s shoulders. And wherever you are heading, you cannot get there by yourself. If you stand on the shoulders of others, you have a reciprocal responsibility to live your life so that others may stand on your shoulders. It’s the quid pro quo of life. – Vernon Jordan
- Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. – Steve Jobs
- Leadership is always about change: it’s not about mobilising people to do what they’ve always done well to continue to do it well. – John P. Kotter
Read more: 60 Business Strategy Quotes – From Planning to Profit
Change leadership quotes
Project management
- Project management is like juggling three balls: time, cost, and quality. – G. Reiss
- No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we’re not solving the right problem, the project fails. – Woody Williams
- Those who plan do better even though they rarely stick to the plan. – Winston Churchill
- Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately become hard work. – Peter Drucker
- Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
Performance management
- What gets measured gets managed. – Peter Drucker
- It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away. – Harold Geneen
- Performance should be an expectation of employment, and it is the leader’s job to create an environment where maximum performance is possible. – Rob Burn
- Done right, a performance review is one of the best opportunities to encourage and support high performers and constructively improve your middle- and lower-tier workers. – Kathryn Minshew
- Performance Management is a holistic management discipline which needs to connect many relevant dots to involve development, enablement, and enhancement. – Pearl Zhu
Good performance quotes
Stakeholder management
- Stakeholders are people first; understanding their needs builds the foundation for trust. – Barbara Kephart
- Collaboration begins with recognizing the humanity in your stakeholders. – Barbara Kephart
- The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders—customers, business partners, investors, and coworkers—is the key leadership competency of the new global economy. – Stephen Covey
- Laying the foundation for all the stakeholders is key. You can’t build trust when a crisis happens. You build trust before a crisis happens. – Scott Keller
- To keep everyone invested in your vision, you have to back up a little bit and really analyze who the different stakeholders are and what they individually respond to. – Alan Stern
Quotes about managing expectations
Risk management
- Expect the best, plan for the worst, prepare to be surprised. – Denis Waitley
- Let our advance worrying become advance planning. – Winston Churchill
- Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all. – Peter Drucker
- Quality means doing it right when no one is looking. – Henry Ford
- Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing. – Warren Buffett
Read more: 50 Risk Management Quotes – Wisdom for Smart Decision-making
Change management
- Success in management = learning as fast as the world is changing. – Warren Bennis
- To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. – Winston Churchill
- The measure of intelligence is the ability to change. – Albert Einstein
- Only experience allows one to forge certainties through trial and corrected error. – François Dalle
- Change cannot be put on people. The best way to instill change is to do it with them. Create it with them. – Lisa Bodell
Decision-making
- A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers. – Plato
- Decision making is easy when your values are clear. – Roy Disney
- Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it. – Gordon Graham
- Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure. – John C. Maxwell
- Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach. – Tony Robbins
Personal & Ethical Management Quotes
Self management
- If you can’t manage yourself, you can’t manage your time. Discipline and self-control are what get you on track to execute your plans by managing your time effectively! – Israelmore Ayivor
- There is no such thing as time management; there is only self‑management. – Rory Vaden
- Mastering others is strength; mastering oneself is true power. – Lao Tzu
- The first and best victory is to conquer self. – Plato
- Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. – Aristotle
Quotes about managing life
Innovation and adaptability
- Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. – Brené Brown
- Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not. – Cal Newport
- The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. – W. Edwards Deming
- Good leadership combines analysis and empathy to meet modern complexity. – HBR
- When we take stock of the productivity gains that drive our prosperity, technology gets all the credit. In fact, management is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. – Joan Magretta
Read more: 75 Creativity Quotes – From Vision to Innovation
Best manager quotes
Communication in management
- The art of communication is the language of leadership. – James Humes
- To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. – Eleanor Roosevelt
- Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. – Roy T. Bennett
- When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say. – Abraham Lincoln
- No man has ever listened himself out of a job. – Calvin Coolidge
Read more: 55 Quotes About Listening – From Hearing to Understanding
Ethics and integrity in management
- Ethics must remain at the top of an organization. The chief executive must set the example. – Edward Hennessy
- Integrity is the seed for achievement. It is the principle that never fails. – Earl Nightingale
- Power is actualized only when word and deed have not parted company. – Hannah Arendt
- A person fundamentally honest doesn’t need a code of ethics. – Harry S. Truman
- If you have integrity with people, you develop trust. – John C. Maxwell
Inspirational quotes about integrity
Management, serving, and humility
- The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. – Ralph Nader
- A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit. – Arnold H. Glasow
- Being available and approachable is necessary for effective leadership. – Tony Dungy
- Leadership is not a position or title; it is action and example. – Cory Booker
- Great leaders are willing to sacrifice their own personal interests for the good of the team. – John Wooden
Humble inspiring leadership quotes
Other resources you might be interested in:
- 65 Entrepreneur Quotes: Wisdom to Launch & Lead
- 60 Collaboration Quotes: Inspiring Teamwork & Business Success
- 55 Company Culture Quotes: Building a Great Workplace
- 44 Organizational Development Quotes to Spark Change & Drive Momentum
- 75 Productivity Quotes: Boost Efficiency & Achieve More
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