Practice self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-improvement. If we are aware that our manners - language, behavior, and actions - are measured against our values and principles, we are able to more easily embody the philosophy, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.
We do not know what lies ahead, yet whatever the challenge, leaders will rise, finding the heart, the language, the caring that embraces and sustains.
In my life, I don't have roadblocks and obstacles. I might have something you would call a 'challenge.' I throw that out the window, and I call that a wonderful opportunity.
Carry a big basket. In other words, be open to new ideas, different partners, and new practices, and have a willingness to dump out the old and irrelevant to make room for new approaches.
When you see a roadblock or challenge as an opportunity, it is amazing how you are already halfway there.
Leadership is not a basket of tricks or strategies or skills that you pull out. Leadership begins with the quality of the person.
Leadership is a matter of how to be - not how to do it.
It takes courage for a leader to identify and confront self-imposed barriers, to put in place the personal strategies required to unleash the energy, innovation, and commitment to self-development.
I believe that tears should be very private, and no matter what issue or what situation, we should have a very dignified demeanor.
Good leaders make people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.
If you are building a corporate culture of greatness, you have to define culture on your own terms and with the people you work with.
In 1976, I was invited to interview for the CEO position of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.
At one time, there was a stereotype that your Girl Scout leader was the mother of a Brownie, but increasingly, we are having young businesswomen and professional women who are not mothers but care about children.
It is not business, it is not government - it is the social sector that may yet save the society.
If you grow up in Germantown, Pennsylvania, as I did, 5:30 means 5:30.
Leadership flows from inner character and integrity of ambition, which inspires others to lend themselves to your organization's mission.
Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world.
I thought I'd never leave Pennsylvania. And I never imagined that I'd one day have the chance to lead the largest organization for girls and women around the world.
Not long after I was married, World War II began. My husband John volunteered for the Navy and was sent to Pensacola for training as a Naval Combat Air Crew photographer. It seemed a strange assignment for a young newspaper editor and writer, already exempt, but off he went, saying goodbye to our 18-month-old Johnny and me.
Some corporations are extremely well managed; some nonprofit organizations are. It has nothing to do with the sector. It has to do with quality of management.
