My most memorable meal is every Thanksgiving. I love the food: the turkey and stuffing; the sweet potatoes and rice, which come from my mother’s Southern heritage; the mashed potatoes, which come from my wife’s Midwestern roots; the Campbell’s green-bean casserole; and of course, pumpkin pie.

If you have people who are high-performing working for you, it’s so easy to do your job. Otherwise, you can’t even agree on the time of the meeting or who will bring the coffee.

Leadership does take work. And it should. If you aspire to be a leader, you ought to treat leadership as a craft, you ought to become a student of it, and you ought to work at it. And if you’re not willing to work at it, well, you get what you give.

Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and the future. Each of those many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone’s day.

If you cultivate a relationship in a genuine, thoughtful way, people will be more inclined to want to help you even though they don’t have to help you.

The corporate world has the resources to improve the world. It’s where people live and work.

Ultimately as a leader, you’re evaluated on how you interact with people. If you do it well, you develop a reputation as effective leader. If you don’t, you develop a reputation for being a highly ineffective leader.

Courage means feeling all those hard human emotions – all that uncertainty and anxiety – and getting the job done anyway.

You can’t talk your way out of something you behaved your way into. You have to behave your way out of it.

You can't talk your way out of something you behaved your way into.