Warren g. bennis quotes

Recognize and respect mutual self-interests, then build creative collaborations to serve them.

The leader has a clear idea of what he wants to do professionally and personally, and the strength to persist in the face of setbacks, even failures

Around the world, the generals are being ousted, and the poets are taking charge.

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.

Who succeeds in forming and leading a Great Group? He or she is almost always a pragmatic dreamer. They are people who get things done, but they are people with immortal longings. Often, they are scientifically minded people with poetry in their souls.

All of great leaders evidence four basic qualities that are central to their ability to lead: adaptive capacity, the ability to engage others through shared meaning, a distinctive voice, and unshakeable integrity. These four qualities mark all exemplary leaders, whatever their age, gender, ethnicity, or race.

People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.

Leadership is like beauty - it's hard to define but you know it when you see it.

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

Trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leaders together.

Just as no great painting has ever been created by a committee, no great vision has ever emerged from the herd.

Coaching will become the model for leaders in the future... I am certain that leadership can be learned and that terrific coaches... facilitate learning.

People vary enormously in how they learn. Some learn through their eyes - by reading but also by responding to all kinds of visual information. Others learn mostly through their ears or touch or other senses.

The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

Encourage reflective backtalk: Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.

Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict, but rather see it as an opportunity

Without a terrific leader, you're not going to have a Great Group. But it is also true that you're not going to have a great leader without a Great Group.

We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven't devised a means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows.

All great leaders constantly seek new information and new ways of thinking.

If you're the leader, you've got to give up your omniscient and omnipotent fantasies - that you know and must do everything. Learn how to abandon your ego to the talents of others.

The ability to plan for what has not yet happened, for a future that has only been imagined, is one of the hallmarks of leadership.

Walt Disney, of all people, did a good job of describing his own netony. "People who have worked with me say I am 'innocence in action,'" he wrote. "They say I have the innocence and unselfconsciousness of a child. Maybe I have. I still look at the world with uncontaminated wonder."

Emotional intelligence, more than any other factor, more than I.Q. or expertise, accounts for 85% to 90% of success at work... I.Q. is a threshold competence. You need it, but it doesn't make you a star. Emotional intelligence can.

This is more than just having a vision. You can see the difference in the often-cited way in which Steve Jobs brought in John Sculley to take over Apple. At the time, Sculley was destined to be the head of Pepsico. The clincher came when Jobs asked him, "How many more years of your life do you want to spend making colored water when you can have an opportunity to come here and change the world?"

Without character, there is no credibility; and without credibility, there is no trust.

Leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential.

In order to serve its purpose, a vision has to be a shared vision.

Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.

Organizations should try to find out if their learning programs actually work.

In great groups, the right people always have the right job.

Understand the "Pygmalion Effect": Leaders should always expect the very best of those around them. They know that people can change and grow.

If great teams don't have an "enemy," they create one for themselves because, as former Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta pointed out, "you can't have a war without one."

The first job of a leader is to define a vision for the organization...the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Effective leaders make a full commitment to be a learner, to keep increasing and nourishing their knowledge and wisdom.

Embrace error: Create an atmosphere in which prudent risk taking is strongly encouraged.

Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.

What job is worth the enormous psychic cost of following a leader who values loyalty in the narrowest sense.

A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless... someone's got to make a wake up call.

Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.

Great things are achieved by talented people who are absolutely convinced that they not only can but will achieve them.

Recognize the skills and traits you don't possess, and hire the people who have them.

One of the qualities that all the leaders have is a voracious appetite to learn whatever they do not as yet know and understand, coupled with an openness to new experiences.

Charisma is the result of effective leadership, not the other way around.

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.

We must move from ... the primacy of technology toward considerations of social justice and equity, from the dictates of organizational convenience toward the aspirations ofself realization and learning, from authoritarianism and dogmatism toward more participation, from uniformity and centralization toward diversity and pluralism, from the concept of work as hard and unavoidable, from life as nasty, brutish, and short toward work as purpose and self~fulfillment, a recognition of leisure as a valid activity in itself.

Leaders are people who do the right thing: managers are people who do things right. Both roles are crucial, but they differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing wrong things well.

Leaders wonder about everything, want to learn as much as they can, are willing to take risks, experiment, try new things. They do not worry about failure but embrace errors, knowing they will learn from them.

The future has no shelf life

The basis of leadership is the capacity of the leader to change the mindset, the framework of the other person.

Encourage dissent: Leaders should have associates who have contrary views, who are devil's advocates, "variance sensors" who can tell them the difference between what is expected and what is really happening, between what they want to hear and what they need to hear. There are too many naked emperors running around today.

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change.

Leaders must earn the trust of their teams, their organizations, and their stakeholders before attempting to engage their support.

Growing other leaders from the ranks isn't just the duty of the leader, it's an obligation.

What makes a good follower? The single most important characteristic may well be a willingness to tell the truth. In a world of growing complexity leaders are increasingly dependent on their subordinates for good information, whether the leaders want to hear it or not. Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.

I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be.

The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.

Some of the strongest resistance to necessary change is the result of what Jim O'Toole has so aptly characterized as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.

If I had to reduce the responsibilities of a good follower to a single rule, it would be to speak truth to power.

In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital.

Keep reminding people of what's important and that their fates are correlated.

The new leader is one who commits people to action, who converts followers into leaders, and who may convert leaders into agents of change.

Servant leadership teaches us that you have to lay your cards on the table.

While great leaders may be as rare as great runners, great actors, or great painters, everyone has leadership potential, just as everyone has some ability at running, acting, and painting.

The learning person looks forward to failure or mistakes. The worst problem in leadership is basically early success.

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born.

You are your own raw material. When you know what you consist of and what you want to make of it, then you can invent yourself.

Leadership has become a heavy industry. Concern and interest about leadership development is no longer an American phenomenon. It is truly global. Though I will probably be in less demand, I wanted to move on.

Every great group is an island... but an island with a bridge to the mainland.

Power is the basic energy needed to initiate and sustain action or, to put it another way, the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it. Leadership is the wise use of this power: Transformative leadership.

In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflicting demands, often under great time pressure, leaders must make decisions and take effective actions to assure the survival and success of their organizations. This is how leaders add value to their organizations. They lead them to success by exercising good judgment, by making smart calls when especially difficult and complicated decisions simply must be made, and then ensuring that they are well executed.

One of the worst mistakes is to do nothing.

The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Great Groups need to know that the person at the top will fight like a tiger for them.

Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.

Trust resides squarely between faith and doubt.

Every one of the geezers who continues to play a leadership role has one quality of overriding importance: neotony. The dictionary definition is that neotony, a zoological term, involves "the retention of youthful qualities throughout old age." It is more than merely retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neotony is the retention of all those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy.

More leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit, or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together.

The failure to find the right niche for people - or to let them find their own perfect niches - is a major reason that so many workplaces are mediocre, even toxic, in spite of the presence of talent. Leaders of great groups give them whatever they need and free them from everything else.

Successful leaders are great askers

See the long view: By all means "plant the corn, milk the cows, and feed the horses" but always keep the eventual "harvest" in mind.

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.

The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to the same failure something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic, something that made them feel that desperate sense of hitting bottom-as something they thought was almost a necessity. It's as if at that moment the iron entered their soul; that moment created the resilience that leaders need.

Innovation- any new idea-by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.

Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.

Listening to the inner voice - trusting the inner voice - is one of the most important lessons of leadership.

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.

Manage the dream: Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality.

Followers who tell the truth, and leaders who listen to it, are an unbeatable combination.

If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.

Great groups deliver great results. And for everyone involved in a great group, great work is its own reward.

There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.

Don't over-react to the trouble makers.

The organizations of the future will increasingly depend on the creativity of their members to survive. Great Groups offer a new model in which the leader is an equal among Titans. In a truly creative collaboration, work is pleasure, and the only rules and procedures are those that advance the common cause.

The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

Make sure you have someone in your life from whom you can get reflective feedback.

The leader...is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.

Think of successful creative collaborations are dreams with deadlines.

Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.

Leading with character gives the wise leader clear-cut advantages. They are easier to trust and follow; they honor commitments and promises; their words and behavior match; they are always engaged in and by the world; they are open to "reflective backtalk": they can speak with conviction because they believe in what they are saying...and everyone else knows that. They are comfortable in their own skin. They feel at ease in the spotlight and they enjoy it there. They tend to be more receptive to opportunity and risk.

Great groups give the lie to the remarkably persistent but incorrect notion that successful organizations are the lengthened shadow of a great woman or man. However, each great group has a strong leader. In fact, great groups and great leaders create each other.

That is the key challenge facing management today; change is the only constant.

Those who take risks walk the high wire with no fear of falling.

Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.

To be authentic is literally to be your own author... to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them.

It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.

Leaders learn by leading, and they learn bestby leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders.

The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon.

Expect the best from your people and they will usually deliver but your expectations must be realistic.

The manager administers; the leader innovates.

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.

Companies which get misled by their own success are sure to be blind sided.

To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life

Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.

Successful leadership is not about being tough or soft, sensitive or assertive, but about a set of attributes. First and foremost is character

Learning to be an effective leader is no different than learning to be an effective person. And that's the hard part

I'd always rather err on the side of openness. But there's a difference between optimum and maximum openness, and fixing that boundary is a judgment call. The art of leadership is knowing how much information you're going to pass on - to keep people motivated and to be as honest, as upfront, as you can. But, boy, there really are limits to that.

A leader is someone whose actions have the most profound consequences on other people's lives, for better or worse, sometime forever and ever.

Possess the "Nobel Factor": Possess and constantly demonstrate optimism, faith, and hope. They create choices. I am reminded of an ancient Chinese proverb: "That the birds of worry and care fly above your head, this you cannot change; but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent."