"We recognize real leadership when we see it in others. What we often don't recognize is our own behavior reflected back to us. For example, children act like their parents despite all attempts to get them to love learning. Teams act like their leaders, despite attempts to train them otherwise."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Changing Me to Change Them"

"Education and communication strategies influence the energy levels for change and improvement. Strong communications keep everyone focussed on goals and priorities while providing feedback on progress and the course corrections needed. Effective communication strategies, systems, and practices have a huge and direct effect on organization learning and innovation."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Communication Strategies, Systems, and Skills"

"As actor and comedian, W.C. Fields, once said, 'there comes a time that you must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.' Failing to face tough situations usually makes them worse."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Discipline Can Be Habit Forming"

"Improving personal and organizational performance without constant feedback is like trying to pin the tail on the donkey when we're blindfolded. Only through knowing where we are, can we change where we are going."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Don't Wait to See Blood"

"A constantly improving and highly effective team or organization is transparent. The why, who, what, and how of decisions made and actions taken are obvious to everyone. The culture is marked by openness and informality. Information is widely shared."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Education and Communication Build Commitment"

"If my team or organization avoids or even resists performance measurement and feedback, I need to take a hard look at my own approach to personal feedback. If I don't have a continuous system and practice of actively soliciting feedback on my behavior, our organization is reflecting my measurement values."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Feedback is an Essential Element of Learning and Improvement"

"Human nature seems to endow us with the ability to size up everybody but ourselves. As painful as it may be, feedback is a big contributor to our leadership development. Feedback is often a key element in personal learning and improvement."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Feedback to See How Others See Me"

"Not all feedback is valid and helpful. Ultimately I have to decide what fits and what doesn't. I have to choose the feedback that rings true to me. According to an ancient story, a man once approached Buddha and began to call him ugly names, Buddha listened quietly until the man ran out of insults and had to pause for breath. 'If you offer something to a person and that person refuses it, to whom does it belong?' asked Buddha. 'It belongs, I suppose, to the one who offered it,' the man said. Then Buddha said, 'The abuse and vile names you offer me, I refuse to accept.' The man turned and walked away."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Feedback to See How Others See Me"

"Like beauty, service, quality, honesty, or integrity, leadership is in the eye of the beholder. I judge myself by my intentions. Others judge me by my actions. My intentions and the actions that others see may be miles apart. Unless I know that, I am unlikely to change my actions or try to get others to see me differently."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Feedback to See How Others See Me"

"An extremely useful step in our leadership development is seeing myself as others see me. So I need to understand their perceptions of my behavior. My effectiveness in leading, relating to, or working with others is highly dependent on their perceptions of me."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Feedback to See How Others See Me"

"Feedback is central to learning. Faulty feedback is one of the biggest contributors to organization, team, and personal learning disabilities. If I don't know how I am doing, I can't improve."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Measurement and Feedback are Vital to Improvement"

"Used effectively, measurement can provide vital feedback that shows whether approaches being used are moving the organization toward its goals. It can assess whether staff training, teamwork, empowerment, process improvement, re-engineering or other trendy ideas are producing real results."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Measurement Traps"

"Weighing myself ten times a day won't reduce my weight. No matter how sophisticated our measurements are, they're only indicators. What the indicators say are much less important then what's being done with the information. Measurements that don't lead to meaningful action aren't just useless; they are wasteful."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Organizational Measurement and Feedback Pathways and Pitfalls (Part One) "

"Crude measures of the right things are better than precise measures of the wrong things."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Strategic Measurements Guide Change and Improvement"