Ran across this interesting quote the other day by Dwight David Eisenhower. I have run across it on several occasions in different works and the following quote is attributed to him as shown in the following image. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.”

I never made the mental connection before but it is nearly the same exact wording as found in the 1945 TWI manual on improving Job Relations for supervisors. It is a subset of the one of the five required items (2 knowledge components + 3 skills components) for basic leadership. Here is an image of the actual quote from TWI Job Relations training.

 

I don’t know which one came first or if there is an earlier person or work to attribute the quote to for recognition. Both are from around the same time period. This site containing some Eisenhower materials has a similar quote documented in a speech in 1955 meaning the TWI material appears earlier

“The job of getting people really wanting to do something is the essence of leadership. And one of the things a leader needs occasionally is the inspiration he gets from the people he leads. The old tactical textbooks say that the commander always visits his troops to inspire them to fight. I for one soon discovered that one of the reasons for my visiting the front lines was to get inspiration from the young American soldier. I went back to my job ashamed of my own occasional resentments or discouragements, which I probably — at least I hope I concealed them.”

Remarks at the Breakfast Meeting of Republican State Chairmen, Denver, Colorado, 9/10/55