Great leadership!

What makes great leaders? Is it their courage? Their business acumen? Their expert knowledge? Their ability to organize?

Truly great leaders have a specific blend of skills. But they also possess something else; certain characteristics which are harder to define. If you're in a leadership role, then you've likely wondered how you can move to that "next level," going from good to great leadership.

One of the more fascinating topics of life is the leaders of history and how they shaped the world.

Here are 10 great and insightful thoughts on leadership.

I hope you get something helpful out of them.

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.

- John Buchan

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

- Theodore Roosevelt

To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!

- Lao-Tsu

Do not follow where the path may lead.

Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

- Harold R. McAlindon

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.

- Isaac Newton

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.

- Everett Dirksen

Leadership: the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

- Eric Hoffer

The price of greatness is responsibility.

- Winston Churchill

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

- Benjamin Disraeli

- CBH