Warren G. Bennis Quotes

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

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

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

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

Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions.

Trust is difficult to define, but we know when it's present and when it's not.

Neotony is a metaphor for the quality of life - the gift - that keeps the fortunate of whatever age focused on all the marvelous undiscovered things to come.

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

Organizations have to come to grips with the fact that tests of adaptive capability aren't always pleasant. Learning can be a powerful emotional event, and organizations have to be cognizant of that. They must understand that those who complete high-quality executive education programs are going to see the organization with fresh eyes after they return. Those who re-enter the workplace filled with new enthusiasm and new ideas often find a chilly response on the part of their supervisors.

Think of successful creative collaborations are dreams with deadlines.

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

Great leaders love talent and know where to find it. They surround themselves with talented people who can work effectively together.

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

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

Judgment without character is expediency... or worse.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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."

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.

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

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."

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

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.

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.

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The crucible is a dividing line, a turning point, and those who have gone through it feel they are very different from the way they were before. Believing that they have been transformed or have transformed themselves, those who survive the crucible (and many don't) are more confident, more willing to take future risks. That new self-confidence is grounded in the belief that he or she has done something hard and done it well.

Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.

The future has no shelf life

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.

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

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

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

First and foremost, effective leaders must continuously strive to make themselves smarter and better at making judgments.