Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Leaders gain love by sharing the physical hardships of their followers.
In plain terms
If a leader endures the same heat and cold as followers, they will be loved.
What can you take from it?
Shared hardship builds loyalty.

Where it applies

  • military campaigns
  • sports teams
  • field work

Putting it to work

  • share working conditions
  • endure hardships visibly

Questions to consider

  • Does hardship build loyalty?
  • How do you show empathy as a leader?

Another view

Physical sharing is not always possible or sufficient for all leadership contexts.

More from Xenophon

  1. That:is the road to the obedience of compulsion. But there is a shorter way to a nobler goal, the obedience of the will. When the interests of mankind are at s…

    Permalink to quote #5
  2. Every one of you is the leader.

    Permalink to quote #7
  3. As to what happened next, it is possible to maintain that the hand of heaven was involved, and also possible to say that when men are desperate no one can stan…

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enri…

    Samuel AdamsSamuel Adams quote #1
  2. When you have sweated, toiled, had mad dreams, hopeless nightmares, you find yourself in London's streets, cold and dank in the night air. Think - what have I …

    Michael CollinsMichael Collins quote #1
  3. You take an oath to a man whom you know follows the laws of providence, which he obeys independently of the influence of earthly powers, who leads the German p…

    Rudolf HessRudolf Hess quote #1