Warren G. Bennis Quotations

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders. All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.

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

You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.

I wanted the influence. In the end I wasn't very good at being a president. I looked out of the window and thought that the man cutting the lawn actually seemed to have more control over what he was doing.

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

Trust resides squarely between faith and doubt.

Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.

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.

Cicero talks, and people marvel; Ceasar talks and people march

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.

Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions.

If I were to give off-the-cuff advice to anyone trying to institute change, I would say, "How clear is the metaphor?"

People who know what they want and why they want it, and have the skills to communicate that to others in a way that gains support

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

The opposite of hope is despair, and when we despair, it is because we feel there are no choices.

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

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

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

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.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity.

Don't over-react to the trouble makers.

The manager administers; the leader innovates.

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

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

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.

A passion for continual learning, a refined, discerning ear for the moral and ethical consequences of their actions, and an understanding of the purposes of work and human organisations

The future has no shelf life

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

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.

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

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

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

Successful leaders are great askers

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

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

Ineffective leaders often act on the advice and counsel of the last person they talked to.

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

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.

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.

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

Perhaps the central task of the leader of leaders thus becomes the development of other leaders.

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.

Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Leadership (according to John Sculley) revolves around vision, ideas, direction, and has more to do with inspiring people as to direction and goals than with day-to-day implementation. A leader must be able to leverage more than his own capabilities. He must be capable of inspiring other people to do things without actually sitting on top of them with a checklist.

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.

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?"

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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