Home Christian News The Top 50 Quotes From the Global Leadership Summit 2017

The Top 50 Quotes From the Global Leadership Summit 2017

Global Leadership Summit quotes

The 2017 Global Leadership Summit has come and gone, but the words of the speakers will remain in the minds and hearts of the leaders who attended for weeks to come. We will bring these words to mind and ruminate on them, over and over again, like a hungry person savoring a delicious meal.

Take a look at the top 50 quotes we heard at the conference and be encouraged!

Bill Hybels

“We all owe huge debts to those who planted leadership seeds in us.”

“How do we lead in an era of runaway divisiveness and disrespect? The solution has to begin with me.”

“We of faith do not get to choose who we respect.”

“Maybe it’s time we all step up and say we will set the standard for inclusivity and have zero tolerance for disrespect while we are at the helm.”

“God is an equal-opportunity story writer.”

“We leaders love to be challenged. We thrive on challenges. It’s how God made us.”

“My biggest concern about leaders is their lack of reflection time. We stop asking who we are doing this work for, what kind of person we are becoming, and whether what we’re doing is working.”

“Your culture will only ever be as healthy as your top leader wants it to be.”

“Do you have a personal betterment plan for your leadership in the following year?”

Sheryl Sandberg

“Hire for the people you’re going to need. Not the people you need.”

“Most organizations fail for reasons everyone is aware of but no one says.”

“We blame women for not doing housework and childcare perfectly and we applaud men for doing any of it.”

“We do not need to be someone’s best friend since first grade to show up in their tragedies. We just need to be there.”

“With good values and with vision anyone can be a leader.”

Fredrik Härén

“We can’t create out of nothing. Only God can. Creativity is taking two formerly known things and putting them together in a new way.”

“Your organization doesn’t become more creative by talking about creativity, teaching about creativity, or adding creativity to your mission statement, you do it by as a leader doing creative things.”

“The number one thing a leader has to do is to make the people who work for him or her more creative.”

“We are never closer to God than when we have a really, really good idea. We can sense God.”

Bryan Stevenson

“Hopelessness is the enemy of social justice. It is the enemy of effective leadership.”

“Effective leadership only happens when great leaders are willing to do uncomfortable things.”

“It’s the broken that understand the power of mercy. It’s the broken that understand the power of redemption.”

“True leadership is measured by how you treat the poor and neglected.”

“The opposite of poverty is justice.”

Laszlo Bock

“The experience of work should be meaningful.”

“We as human beings have far more in common than whatever separates us.”

“By treating people right, they do right by you.”

Juliet Funt

“In our days all of us are getting less and less comfortable with ‘the pause.’ This comes with a very high cost to our lives, our minds, and our organizations.”

“What are the costs of worshipping the god of busy-ness?”

“White space is a strategic pause taken between activities. These become the oxygen that allows our ideas to catch fire.”

“You must de-crappify your workflow.”

Marcus Buckingham

“When you take bad and invert it, you just get ‘not bad.’ Good is something so much better.”

“Excellence has its own pattern. You learn nothing about excellence by studying your failures.”

“People on your team want two things: 1) Make me feel apart of something bigger than me. 2) Make me feel special.”

“People say they want feedback, but they don’t. They want attention.”

“A year is 52 little sprints.”

“Leading is taking someone’s unique gifts and helping them contribute to the world.”

“I believe God blessed us with unique gifts and work is a space to discover those unique gifts and spread them to the world.”

Sam Adeyemi

“In leadership you don’t attract who you want, you attract who you are.”  

“Real and sustainable change in someone’s life begins with a change in their sense of identity.”

“Whatever people see and hear consistently in their lives will shape the direction of their hearts.” 

“Vision is the ability to see people, places, and things not just the way they are, but the way they could be.”

Immaculée Ilibagiza

“It is such a gift to have faith—to know that when you can’t, He can.” 

Michael Jr.

“The further you’ve been set back, the further you’re going to reach.”

Angela Duckworth 

“Of course talent counts, but effort counts twice.”

“Somebody in your life needs to love you so much that yes, they will let you quit on a good day, but not on a bad day.”

Gary Haugen

“All great leadership flows first from dreams.”

“Fear is the destroyer of the love that inspires the dream and replaces it with a preoccupation of self.”

“Am I more impressed with what humans are getting wrong, or what GOD is getting right in the world?”

“There are more people held in slavery today than at any other time in history.”

“Lone rangers do not make great dreams come true, ever.”


To read more about the 2017 GLS, check out these articles:

How the Practice of Solitude and Silence Increases Productivity

Bill Hybels: Incivility (Even in Christian Leadership) Is Killing Us

Sheryl Sandberg: The Problem With the Way We Treat Girls

Bryan Stevenson’s Primer on Social Justice