Here’s what you need to know most about leadership: Lead your own life first. The only thing in this world that will dependably happen from the top down is the digging of your grave.

It’s impossible for a company to get what it wants most if managers have to make a choice between their own values and company priorities.

A company can’t buy true emotional commitment from managers no matter how much it’s willing to spend; this is something too valuable to have a price tag. And yet a company can’t afford not to...

The high quality of a company’s customer experience rarely has anything to do with the high price of their product.

When you don’t know what true for you, everyone else has unusual influence.

You don’t have to fear your own company being perceived as human. You want it. People don’t trust companies; they trust people.

Emotional commitment means unchecked, unvarnished devotion to the company and its success; any legendary organizational performance is the result of emotionally committed managers.

The worst thing in your own development as a leader is not to do it wrong. It’s to do it for the wrong reasons.

Do you think your people struggle with being true to themselves? Do their values match up with their work?

Get one Manager Commitment as a result of the other Manager Commitment and you have a powerful equation for Earnings: E=MC2.

There will be plenty of other problems in the future. This is as good a time as any to get ahead of them.

Careful now: even a financially rewarding, intellectually stimulating work environment isn’t the same as living your own values.

Why live my personal values at work? This is an excellent question to ask. If your attorneys are planning an insanity defense.

Hard-core results come from igniting the massive power of emotional commitment. Are your people committed?

The first step out of the gate has to be knowing where you want to end up. What do you really want from your company?

Most managers have plenty of emotional commitment to give to their jobs. If they can be convinced it’s safe and sensible to give it.

The myth of management is that your personal values are irrelevant or inappropriate at work.

Success means: I want to know the work I do means something to somebody and helps make the world, if not a Better place, not a worse one.

When rewards come from an external source instead of an internal source, they’re unreliable, which means they’re dangerous if you grow to depend on them.

Leaders are people who know exactly who they are. They know exactly where they want to go. They’re hell-bent on getting there.

You can’t sell it outside if you can’t sell it inside.

Your company really has to work for you before you’ll really work for your company.

Your company is its own competition and can deliver itself debilitating blows the competition only dreams of.

Success for Managers means: I want to be in healthy relationships. I want a real connection with people I spend so much time with.

Try not to take this the wrong way, but your brain is smarter than you are.

Leaders make a lot of mistakes but they admit those mistakes to themselves and change because of them.

Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.

Human behavior is only unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t start from humanity in the first place.

Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.

Your values are your essence: an undistorted mirror showing you at your pure, attractive best.

When you’re not on your own agenda, you’re prey to the agenda of others.

Managers know what they want most: to be allowed to achieve success by leveraging who they are, not by compromising it.

When you’re a manager, you work for your company. When you’re a leader, your company works for you.

Your dreams and the dreams of your company may be different, but they are in no way incompatible.

The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.

Let’s get right on top of the bottom line: You must live your personal values at work.

Values are the individual biases that allow you to decide which actions are true for you alone.

To integrate one’s experiences around a coherent and enduring sense of self lies at the core of creating a user’s guide to life.

You can stuff yourself with emotional fulfillment until it’s dribbling down your chin & your ego will quickly chomp it down and demand more.

Emotional commitment is a personal choice. Managers understand this even if their companies don’t.

Work/life balance is not about escaping work. It’s about living exactly the way you want to when you’re at work.

Management controls performance in people because it impacts skills; it’s a matter of monitoring, analyzing and directing.

A manager’s emotional commitment is the ultimate trigger for their discretionary effort, worth more than financial, intellectual & physical commitment combined.

Companies should be the best possible place to practice fulfillment, to live out values and to realize deep connectivity and purpose.

The economy is in ruins! Bottom line? Good management will defeat a bad economy.

This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.

What first separates a leader from a normal human being? A leader knows who they are as a human being.

Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.

What companies want most from their managers is what they most stop their managers from giving. What managers want most from their jobs is what they most stop themselves from getting.

Being relevant to your customers only when you’re trying to sell something means choosing to be irrelevant to them for the rest of the time.