Workplace Quotes

Most of us want to be authentic. Yet, we are not who we think we are. We are made up of a rich array of facets and possibilities, many of which we ignore because we label them as “bad”. We create a cardboard cutout image of ourselves to look good to others. The discord between who we are and the image we have to live up to slowly kills our aliveness. When we suppress parts of ourselves, it lowers our mojo, sense of fulfillment, leadership effectiveness and impact in the workplace.

Henna Inam

The most decisive and certainly most delicious option for an aggrieved worker in a narcissist’s office is simply quitting. Slamming your resignation letter on the boss’s desk and striding out to take a better job somewhere else is satisfying and in both its finality and its totality. Instantly the feared figure is stripped of all power, reduced to a person of utter inconsequence in your life. Not only does this spell immediate freedom for the exiting employee, it can also contribute to the long-term decline of the boss.

Jeffrey Kluger

When an organization starts hemorrhaging talent, CEOs and boards of directors want to know why. If the boss gets blamed for the brain drain and is ultimately removed, it means relief for the employees still there and ex post facto vengeance for the former ones.

Jeffrey Kluger

CENTER-OF-THE-UNIVERSE, that was me entering the workplace. And I woke up one day soon after that, struggling at the bottom of a vast ocean. But I needed that. Humbling experiences are part of growing - they help shape us and mold our character. Welcome to life.

Yay Padua-Olmedo

Discipline at the office had long been enforced by use of three methods: the meeting of the first kind, the meeting of the second kind, and the meeting of the third kind.

Pawan Mishra

I sometimes go to a mythical place called "workplace", where the doable is always unpassable as possible, especially when it pisses you off.

Will Advise

Speaking less and doing more says more.

Kayambila Mpulamasaka

Observe the behavior of your environment carefully for clues as to what is acceptable and rewarded.

Bonnie Marcus

Why work today? I'll take Tuesday on, just like I took Monday off. That's just the kind of dedicated worker I am.

Will Advise

Successful leaders know how to line up support for their initiatives and create the right environment for change and innovation.

Bonnie Marcus

…golf was no longer the most interesting sport to the corporate czars because they found playing with natural balls much more satisfying.

Pawan Mishra

Ask one question: Would a Millennial (anyone born between 1980 and 2000) look forward to working here?Try this exercise. Take a group of people into a large, open room with tackable wall surfaces or whiteboards. Give them large sheets of paper, sticky notes, markers, and tape. Ask them to create a concept for a work environment (don't say “office”) using the following words: high-energy, collaborative, healthy, productive, engaging, innovative, interactive, high-tech, and regenerating.

Rex Miller Sr.

The key to healthy communication is having a willingness to lay aside our defensive tendencies and accept responsibility for our part of the relationship

Asa Don Brown

And I will wait for Jarod to work for me. For free, cause if it's paid, it's work and not love, unless, of course he loves to work, in which case he’ll surely love working for me, because I love people who love to do that to love to do that.

Will Advise

So where does that leave me? I like hosting the show....It’s become my identity. If that’s gone, where am I?

Barbara Delinsky

As a leader, it’s critical to take the time to reflect in order to create a powerful vision for the company.

Bonnie Marcus

While complying can be an effective strategyfor physical survival, it's a lousy one for personal fulfillment. Living a satisfying life requires more than simply meeting the demands of those incontrol. Yet in our offices and our classrooms we have way too much compliance and way too little engagement. The former might get youthrough the day, but only the latter will get you through the night.

Daniel H. Pink

Quality Workplace: "a place of wor(k)ship is frequently equated as holy as that of worshiping

Priyavrat Thareja- The Temple of TQM

Relationships are an art form created by two or more individuals who have similar or complementary visions, passions, and ambitions.

Asa Don Brown

Communication can be sent or received through verbal or nonverbal cues.

Asa Don Brown

Intrapersonal communication is a reflection of our daily messages.

Asa Don Brown

I have been through the OSHA system twice and I can confirm that I did not have the right to a safe workplace or whistle-blower protection on either occasion.

Steven Magee

When the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) found out that Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were going to visit the site to assist in bringing it into legal compliance, they freaked out! They insisted that the visit had to be canceled and the result was that I eventually became so sick from the toxic workplace environment that I had no option but to leave.

Steven Magee

When you feel good about the value you offer the organization, communicating and demonstrating your value to others is much easier.

Bonnie Marcus

It is clear that the protective functions of workplace health and safety have transferred to the workers through the process of corporate government deregulation and reduced funding of relevant government departments.

Steven Magee

He didn’t care if I hated him, only that I did as I was told.

Sheri Webber

One of the biggest lies that is currently being told in the USA workplace is on the legally required OSHA poster: All workers have the right to a safe workplace.

Steven Magee

The upper management team had informed me that an employee that worked for me was a poor performer and would be terminated soon. This employee was clearly displaying mental health issues that were causing problems in the workplace. When I followed the company procedures and reported this to human resources, their response was to inform me that my contract would not be renewed and I would be immediately fired if anyone complained about me. This was my introduction to how mental health issues are handled in the USA.

Steven Magee

As a manager, I was able to put the USA workplace mental health system to the test. In each of three separate companies there was an employee that was displaying mental health issues and I reported this to the human resources department. The outcome: I was terminated every time. The conclusion: Reporting mental health issues in USA employees will lose you your job!

Steven Magee

Too right things could be better, that’s my whole point. My going to work for the badge will not change that, will it?” Joanna said, “And Pride? There is absolutely no pride in being used and cast aside every twelve-weeks for someone equally replaceable. Do you see pride on the faces of people on Workplace? I don’t. I see worry, I see weariness, I see downcast men and women, shuffling to and from work, ridiculed at the shops when their badge has ran out, shouted down in the streets with insults like ‘badger’ and ‘scum’ for simply doing all they can to survive. Pride, I don’t see that, and you know what else I never see? Any fucking hope.

Paul Howsley

Our own attitude is that we are charged with discovering the best way of doing everything.

Mark Graban

It's been six months since I took a bite of that shiny, forbidden apple, and I've never been the same.

Kristen Luciani

Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavours, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavour, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever.

Timothy J. Keller

A friend’s 14-year-old niece was asked by her teacher what she wanted to be when she finished school. The teacher asked her to think hard about it and then get back to him with an answer. She didn’t know what to say to her teacher. A friend, on hearing the girl’s predicament, said: ‘Tell your teacher that, perhaps, the thing you want to be when you leave school hasn’t been invented yet.

Ian Sanders

Our hesitancy to take credit for our accomplishments results in a loss of power, influence, and political capital in the workplace.

Bonnie Marcus

Political skills are essential career competencies to get ahead and stay ahead.

Bonnie Marcus

A good manager instills staff with self-confidence, teaches them to believe in themselves and helps them to realise their brilliance. Do not ever treat your staff with disrespect. It is competent until proven incompetent; not incompetent til proven competent.

Miya Yamanouchi

Instead of complaining about adapting for millennials, it’s imperative for leaders and managers to acknowledge the role of millennial behavior as an indication of the needs of the modern workplace to attract, leverage, and retain modern talent.

Crystal Kadakia

Unfortunately, the board of directors that the middle managers report to generally make them aggressive. Imagine being hired into a company and then being told that you have to ignore the emerging health and safety issues (This is illegal!) and not inform the workers that the system is known to be dangerous (This is illegal!). You have two options: To go to jail for illegal activities sometime in the future, or to lose your job now and have all your USA workplace rights removed for recognizing the illegal activities that your Directors want you to engage in. Welcome to the corporate America management team!

Steven Magee

Maya Angelou said, "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." I'm proud that Mike Schur and I rejected the idea that creativity needs to come from chaos. I like how we ran our writers' room and our set. People had a great time when they came to work on our show and that mattered to us. I like to think the spirit we had on set found its way onto the show.

Amy Poehler

The ramifications of workplace violence can have a lingering effect on the organization for generations.

Asa Don Brown

It wasn't only my friends who suffered from female rivalry. I remember when I was just sixteen years old, during spring vacation, being whisked off to an early lunch by my best friend's brother, only to discover, to my astonishment and hurt, that she was expecting some college boys to drop by and didn't want me there to compete with her. When I started college at Sarah Lawrence, I soon noticed that while some of my classmates were indeed true friends, others seemed to resent that I had a boyfriend. It didn't help that Sarah Lawrence, a former girls' school, included very few straight men among its student body--an early lesson in how competing for items in short supply often brings out the worst in women. In graduate school, the stakes got higher, and the competition got stiffer, a trend that continued when I went on to vie for a limited number of academic jobs. I always had friends and colleagues with whom I could have trusted my life--but I also found women who seemed to view not only me but all other female academics as their rivals. This sense of rivalry became more painful when I divorced my first husband. Many of my friends I depended on for comfort and support suddenly began to view me as a threat. Some took me out to lunch to get the dirt, then dropped me soon after. I think they found it disturbing that I left my unhappy marriage while they were still committed to theirs. For other women, the threat seemed more immediate--twice I was told in no uncertain terms that I had better stay away from someone's husband, despite my protests that I would no more go after a friend's husband than I would stay friends with a woman who went after mine. Thankfully, I also had some true friends who remained loyal and supportive during one of the most difficult times of my life. To this day I trust them implicitly, with the kind of faith you reserve for people who have proved themselves under fire. But I've also never forgotten the shock and disappointment of discovering how quickly those other friendships turned to rivalries.

Susan Shapiro Barash

When we combine very real workplace inequalities with these romantic opt-out stories, the idea that "having it all" is a laughable goal becomes enshrined as immutable truth. And when we portray opting out as a simple matter of "choice," we ignore the systematic problems that make combining work and motherhood so difficult.

Emily Matchar

The feminism of equality, of toughness, of anti-discrimination, has been overwhelmed by one of victimhood and demands for special treatment....At a certain point, when we demand an equal ratio of men to women in certain fields, what we’re criticizing is not “the system,” but the choices that women themselves are making.....let’s keep our eye on the question of equal opportunity and stop obsessing about equal outcomes, lest we find ourselves trying to cure society, not of sexism, but of free choice.

Elizabeth Wasserman

Just as we have created a society in which it would be unthinkable to light up a cigarette in the Kennedy Center lobby, we can create a society where it is unthinkable that a child suffers abuse, fails in school, becomes delinquent, or faces teasing and bullying. We could have a society in which diverse people and organizations work together to ensure that families, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods are nurturing and that our capitalistic system functions to benefit everyone.

Anthony Biglan

Every great athlete, artist and aspiring being has a great team to help them flourish and succeed - personally and professionally. Even the so-called 'solo star' has a strong supporting cast helping them shine, thrive and take flight.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

When your heart is right, you want to bring out the best in others.

Jane Ripley

The thirty-plus years of marriage between the ceiling and the cement plaster showed signs of weakness by frequently developing cracks and holes.

Pawan Mishra

Communication is an art form that is crafted throughout our lives.

Asa Don Brown

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.

Seth Godin

As a leader, it's your job to get everyone to share what they know.

Jane Ripley

Leaders can change the tenor of the workplace and create harmony in motion toward a favorable result. So every time you say to your team, "Let's rock and roll," make sure you have already set up the stage to where they can actually perform like rock stars.

Thomas Huynh

We live in a world in which everything seems to needed now and working quickly is normally viewed as a positive attribute in the workplace...Do not let yourself become too frazzled and stressed by doing everything at high speed.As I have coached hundreds of individuals in the workplace, I have discovered that we waste precious time by delaying and procrastinating. We might know that the work is very urgent and important but we still might find ourselves being slow to start the task.

Nigel Cumberland

Despite the continual rise of the knowledge worker over the last 60 years, we haven’t done enough to question “how we’ve always done things” and redefine effectiveness in organizations.

Crystal Kadakia

The nature of your work does not have to be the culture of your team.

Janna Cachola

God often uses failure to make us useful. When Jesus called the disciples, He did not go out and find the most qualified and successful people. He found the most willing, and He found them in the workplace. He found a fisherman, a tax collector, and a farmer. The Hebrews knew that failure was a part of maturing in God. The Greeks used failure as a reason for disqualification. Sadly, in the Church, we often treat one another in this way. This is not God's way. We need to understand that failing does not make us failures. It makes us experienced. It makes us more prepared to be useful in God's Kingdom -- if we have learned from it. And that is the most important ingredient for what God wants in His children.

Os Hillman

God sees the workplace of some people as a mission field, where they are to fulfill their calling

Sunday Adelaja

...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with only the added difficulty that whereas families are at least well-recognised and sanctioned loci for hysteria reminiscent of scenes from Medea, office life typically proceeds behind a mask of shallow cheerfulness, leaving workers grievously unprepared to handle the fury and sadness continually aroused by their colleagues.

Alain de Botton

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.

Idowu Koyenikan

Your career success in the workplace of today–independent of technical expertise–depends on the quality of your people skills. (9)

Max Messmer Jr.

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Workplace Quotes

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