Mary Parker Follett Quotes

Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.

That is always our problem, not how to get control of people, but how all together we can get control of a situation.

Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power but by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those led. The most essential work of the leader is to create more leaders.

There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.

Management is the art of getting things done through people.

Give your difference, welcome my difference, unify all difference in the larger whole - such is the law of growth. The unifying of difference is the eternal process of life - the creative synthesis, the highest act of creation, the at-onement.

the best leaders try to train their followers themselves to become leaders. ... they wish to be leaders of leaders.

Part of the task of the leader is to make others participate in his leadership. The best leader knows how to make his followers actually feel power themselves, not merely acknowledge his power.

We have thought of peace as passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences ... From War to Peace is not from the strenuous to the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective, from the stagnant to the active, from the destructive to the creative way of life ... The world will be regenerated by the people who rise above these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever hardship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people can agree.

Coercive power is the curse of the universe, coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.

The most successful leader of all is the one who sees another picture not yet actualized. He sees the things which are not yet there... Above all, he should make his co-workers see that it is not his purpose which is to be achieved, but a common purpose, born of the desires and the activities of the group.

In crowds we have unison, in groups harmony. We want the single voice but not the single note; that is the secret of the group.

Leader and followers are both following the invisible leader - the common purpose. The best executives put this common purpose clearly before their group. While leadership depends on depth of conviction and the power coming therefrom there must also be the ability to share that conviction with others, the ability to make purpose articulate. And then that common purpose becomes the leader.

We must face life as it is and understand that diversity is its most essential feature.

The best leader does not ask people to serve him, but the common end. The best leader has not followers, but men and women working with him.

Democracy is not brute numbers; it is a genuine union of true individuals...the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.

Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but Few have made me want to do something.

Imitation is for shirkers, like-minded-ness for the comfort lovers, unifying for the creators.

It seems to me that whereas power usually means power-over, the power of some person or group over some other person or group, it is possible to develop the conception of power-with, a jointly developed power, a co-active, not a coercive power.

The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it.

We should never allow ourselves to be bullied by an either-or. There is often the possibility of something better than either of these two alternatives.

Experience may be hard but we claim its gifts because they are real, even though our feet bleed on its stones.

The leader is one who can organize the experience of the group ... and thus get the full power of the group. The leader makes the team. This is pre-eminently the leadership quality - the ability to organize all the forces there are in an enterprise and make them serve a common purpose.

Most people are not for or against anything; the first object of getting people together is to make them respond somehow, to overcome inertia.

While leadership depends on depth of conviction and the power coming therefrom, there must also be the ability to share that conviction with others.

we should think not only of what the leader does to the group, but also of what the group does to the leader.

It is possible to conceive conflict as not necessarily a wasteful outbreak of incompatibilities, but a normal process by which socially valuable differences register themselves for the enrichment of all concerned.

We are not wholly patriotic when we are working with all our heart for America merely; we are truly patriotic only when we are working also that America may take her place worthily and helpfully in the world of nations . . . Interdependence is the keynote of the relations of nations as it is the keynote of the relations of individuals within nations.

One of the greatest values of controversy is its revealing nature. The real issues at stake come into the open and have the possibility of being reconciled.

All polishing is done by friction.

Concepts can never be presented to me merely, they must be knitted into the structure of my being, and this can only be done through my own activity.

What people often mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity, and it is of the utmost importance that these should not be considered the same.

Fear of difference is fear of life itself.

Conflict is resolved not through compromise, but through invention.

Another idea that is changing is that the leader must be one who can make quick decisions. The leader to-day is often one who thinks out his decisions very slowly.

Power-over is resorted to time without number because people will not wait for the slower process of education.

The divorce of our so-called spiritual life from our daily activities is a fatal dualism.

The insight to see possible new paths, the courage to try them, the judgment to measure results - these are the qualities of a leader.

Leader and followers are both following the invisible leader-the common purpose.

there is a pernicious tendency to make the opinions of the expert prevail by crowd methods, to rush the people instead of educating them.

the point of educating instead of blaming seems to me very important. For nothing stultifies one more than being blamed. Moreover, if the question is, who is to blame?, perhaps each will want to place the blame on someone else, or on the other hand, someone may try to shield his fellow-worker. In either case the attempt is to hide the error and if this is done the error cannot be corrected.

if you wish to train yourself for higher executive positions, the first thing for you to decide is what you are training for. Ability to dominate or manipulate others? That ought to be easy enough, since most of the magazines advertise sure ways of developing something they call 'personality.' But I am convinced that the first essential of business success is the capacity for organized thinking.

The conflict of chemistry we do not think reprehensible. If we could look at social conflict as neither good nor bad, but simply a fact, we should make great strides in our thinking.

We are sometime truly to see our life as positive, not negative, as made up of continuous willing, not of constraints and prohibition.

We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences.

It is of equal importance with the discovery of facts to know what to do with them.

It is not opposition but indifference which separates men.

And the most successful leader of all is one who sees another picture not yet actualized. He sees the things which belong in his present picture but which are not yet there.

Responsiblity is the great developer of men.

The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them, they have a vision of the future.