Top 136 Quotes & Sayings by Warren G. Bennis - Page 2

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

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.

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

Think of successful creative collaborations are dreams with deadlines.

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

One of the worst mistakes is to do nothing.

Don't over-react to the trouble makers.

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

Understand stakeholder symmetry: Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders.

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.

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."

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

All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.

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

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

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

That's important to remember: it's not just a collection of great individuals but a group of people who enjoy playing in the sandbox, thoroughly enjoying collaborative problem solving.

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.

Create strategic alliances and partnerships: Now and in years to come, shrewd leaders will create allegiances with other organizations whose fates are correlated with their own.

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

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

The capacity for "uncontaminated wonder," ultimately, is what distinguishes the successful from the ordinary, the happily engaged players of whatever era from the chronically disappointed and malcontent. Therein lies a lesson for geeks, geezers, and the sea of people who fall in between.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

No leader can create sustainable, significant change without a reservoir of good will. Without that, you always tend to compromise with failure.

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.

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

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.

People in great groups have blinders on. Their work is all they see. They value failures as learning opportunities. They are optimistic, not realistic, as they proceed from one challenge and crisis to the next.

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.

Understand the "Gretzky Factor": Cultivate an instinct, a "touch", call it what you will, that enables you to know both where the "puck" is now and where it will be soon.

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

Think of a crucible as an occasion for real magic, the creation of something more valuable than an alchemist could possibly imagine. In it, the individual is transformed, changed, created anew. He or she grows in ways that change his or her definition of self.

Frank Gehry designs buildings that make other architects half his age (he's 78) gasp with envy. Neotony is what makes him lace up his skates and whirl around the ice rink, while visionary buildings come to life and dance in his head.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The manager administers; the leader innovates.

Successful leaders are great askers

The future has no shelf life

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

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

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.

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

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

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."

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

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

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?"

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

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.

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

Almost without exception, members of great groups see themselves as winning underdogs, as a feisty David hurling fresh ideas at a big, backward-looking Goliath. They always have an "enemy."