These quotes guide Yale managers in their work
In the October issue of Managers’ Essentials, managers were asked to send in quotes that resonate with them. The names of all participants were entered into a random prize drawing and there are three winners: Susan Durant, Joann DelVecchio, and Joel Ball (see their departments in list below). Winners will be contacted shortly by email. Thank you to all who participated.
Carrie Bemis, Yale Health Center
“The fundamental task of leaders, we argue, is to prime good feelings in those they lead. In its root then, the primary job of a leader is emotional. Great leadership works through emotion.”
Nancy Kravitz, Office of the Chair, Internal Medicine
“The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.”
Cesar Zapata, Yale Law Library
“No one is indispensable, even myself….” (Not sure if this is a real quote, but it guides me on everything I do as amanager and how I approach supervisory issues.)
Susan Durant, Yale School of Medicine, Neurology
“The goal of management is to remove obstacles”. I believe that if we hire talented people and remove obstacles to their success, we will have a happy, productive team.
Courtney McCarthy, Human Resources, Staffing
“The quality of leaders is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.” Ray Kroc
Margo Tucker, Office of Development
My favorite quote is one by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham and relates to always aiming high (although I use children and grandchildren instead of sons and grandsons): “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
My other favorite quote is by Dr. Seuss and relates to why a logically constructed plan is required for any successful endeavor:
“You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.”
Susan Larkin, School of Medicine, Office of Education
“Always Go the Extra Mile”. Or more abstract and poetic: “The extra mile is a vast, unpopulated wasteland.” An example: on my team, we never refer anyone who has come to us for something—faculty, students, others. If it is not something we can solve for them, and we have to send them to someone else, we facilitate the introduction and follow up to make sure they got the help they needed. If not, we find out who else can help them and continue until resolved. We do not say “we don’t do that.”
Joann DelVecchio, Department of Statistics and Data Science
This is on my board in my office: “It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.” Harry S. Truman
Gai Doran, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
“Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” Steven Covey
Hema Bakthavatchalam, Yale Health Center
This quote by Dalai Lama really inspires me to listen more; re-reading this quote has helped me to improve my active listening skills: “When you talk, you are only repeating what you know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.”
Kelly Proctor, Yale Medicine Administration
“Thank you” is my quote to enter.
Frank Savino, Yale Printing and Publishing Services
“Process Drives Production”
Joel Ball, Yale School of Medicine
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
Aristotle, Greek Philosopher
“Everything originates from the seed of Determination.”
Chinese fortune cookie
“Think big, believe big, act big, and the results will be big.”
Unknown author