Impact Players Quotes

“Do the Job That’s Needed.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Impact Players Wear Opportunity Goggles The approach taken by Impact Players isn’t just marginally different, it is radically different—and”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Some people seem to know how to make themselves valuable. They pay attention. They look for the most productive places to put their capability to use. They make things work, and they get the job done, even when the job gets difficult. They not only deliver results but send ripples of positive impact throughout their team and across the organization. Managers trust them when the stakes are high and turn to them in critical situations. They find a way to break through and make an impact while others are merely going through the motions.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“In ordinary life we suffer alone. Any struggle, any pain winds up isolating us from other people or even making us resentful of everybody else, who seem to somehow have it easier. But in a disaster, an entire community suffers together. Trauma and even death, the stuff that we suppress in daily life, spills out as a public phenomenon for everyone to see . . . and all those who share in the experience are brought together in a very powerful, psychological sense.30”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Impact Player Pro Tip As a general rule, if you aren’t working on your boss’s top three priorities, you are not working on the agenda.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Build trust by sharing three essentials: (1) share your intent: let people know what you are trying to accomplish and how it will benefit others; (2) share power: create opportunities for others to lead pieces of the work, or let them know the leadership role will rotate; (3) share the spotlight: make heroes of the people you are leading. When others win, too, people will follow.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“chance to advance to the playoffs later in the season. As Boles put it, “Fear is expensive.”4”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“If you work in a complex organization or a dynamic environment, you know that challenges are unavoidable. Still, many of us do our best to avoid them. But what happens when we try to sidestep these problems? Former NFL wide receiver Eric Boles recounted a moment of weakness in his rookie year with the New York Giants. As a wide receiver, his role was to run, catch passes, and keep running. So his mentality as a player was to avoid getting hit. But in addition to playing wide receiver, he played on special teams as a flyer. During the kickoff, his job was to sprint down the field toward the opposing players and break up their offensive formation called “the wedge”—a human wall of massive blockers who run in front of their kickoff returner to prevent the receiver from being tackled. In one of his first season games, as he came face-to-face with this enormous obstacle intent on destroying anything in its way, his instinct to avoid getting hit kicked into effect. Instead of hitting the wedge head-on, he cut to the left and ran around it. He then successfully made the tackle from behind, but on the 45-yard line rather than the 20. That 25-yard advancement ultimately cost the Giants the game and a”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“As a general rule, if you aren’t working on your boss’s top three priorities, you are not working on the agenda.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Contributors see themselves as position holders. They do the work they’re given and stay within the boundaries of their role but risk becoming so myopic that they lose sight of the overall strategy and veer off the agenda.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“As problems become messier and mutate faster than a formal organization can respond, agility must come from the culture”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“the Impact Player was “someone I would want to be trapped on a desert island with” compared to another employee, who is “someone I would have to help survive.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“value decoys—professional habits or beliefs that seem useful and appear appreciated but erode more value than they create.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“managers want people to help them find solutions and foster teamwork.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Impact Players see everyday challenges through an opportunity lens while others view the same challenges through a threat lens. This fundamental difference in outlook separates Impact Players from others.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Where others may spot a single bee but fear an entire swarm, the Impact Player is figuring out how to build a hive and harvest the honey.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“change is inevitable but growth is optional.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Changing and evolving is extending, not compromising, ourselves.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“The Impact Players in our study see everyday challenges as opportunities. To Impact Players, unclear direction and changing priorities are chances to add value. They are energized by the messy problems that would enervate or foil others. Lack of clarity doesn’t paralyze them; it provokes them. Invitations to make changes are intriguing, not intimidating. Perhaps most fundamentally, they don’t see problems as distractions from their job; rather, they are the job—not just their job, but everyone’s job.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

“Theodore Rubin captured this orientation when he said, “The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
― Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact