Bennis Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Companies which get misled by their own success are sure to be blind sided. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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?" — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

Successful leaders are great askers — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

Perhaps the central task of the leader of leaders thus becomes the development of other leaders. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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

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

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

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. — Warren G. Bennis

In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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. — Warren G. Bennis

A promising junior executive of IBM was involved in a risky venture for the company and managed to lose over $10 million in the gamble. It was a disaster. When Watson called the nervous executive into his office, the young man blurted out, 'I guess you want my resignation?' Watson said, 'You can't be serious. We've just spent $10 million educating you! — Warren G. Bennis

Listening to the inner voice - trusting the inner voice - is one of the most important lessons of leadership. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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

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

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

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led. — Warren Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

The manager administers; the leader innovates. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren Bennis

Winston Churchill said that appetite was the most important thing about education. Leadership guru Warren Bennis says he wants to be remembered as 'curious to the end.' David Ogilvy contends that the greatest ad copywriters are marked by an insatiable curiosity 'about every subject under the sun.' — Tom Peters

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

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

As my blog editor knows all too well, I wasn't all that keen to enter the blogosphere world. — Warren Bennis

Trust resides squarely between faith and doubt. — Warren G. Bennis

Don't over-react to the trouble makers. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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

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

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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

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 — Warren G. Bennis

In order to serve its purpose, a vision has to be a shared vision. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

The future has no shelf life — Warren G. Bennis

Specialized management courses are useful but should come well after the complexity of management and business are understood. — Warren Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

Around the world, the generals are being ousted, and the poets are taking charge. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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

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. — Warren Bennis

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders
are made rather than born. — Warren G. Bennis

Americans believe that the bottom line isn't everything, it's the only thing, and America is strangling on that lack of vision."13 Bennis also noted, "It isn't either a bull or a bear market anymore, it's a pig market."14 — Richard Blackaby

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. — Warren G. Bennis

I've become more and more aware of the promise and struggle to teach the global mind nowadays because I use every chance I get to ask faculty and administrators of management education programs why we don't offer at least one course - not even required, just an elective - on the world's religions. — Warren Bennis

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

The original and brilliant idea of an MBA was the opportunity for students to study the theory and application of business and management principles. — Warren Bennis

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

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

The ideal boss for a growing leader is probably a good boss with major flaws, so that one can learn all the complex lessons of what to do and what not to do simultaneously. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

Make sure you have someone in your life from whom you can get reflective feedback. — Warren G. Bennis

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

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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

Leadership is the capacity to turn vision into reality. — Warren Bennis

One of the best teaching experiences Ed Schein and I had when we were teaching at MIT in the 1960s was inventing a course on leadership through film. — Warren Bennis

Silence - not dissent - is the one answer that leaders should refuse to accept. — Warren G. Bennis

Once you recognize, or admit, that your primary goal is to fully express yourself, you will find the means to achieve the rest of your goals ... — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren Bennis

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

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

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

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

Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing. — Warren G. Bennis

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 — Warren G. Bennis

The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing. — Warren G. Bennis

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

Servant leadership teaches us that you have to lay your cards on the table. — Warren G. Bennis

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. - WARREN G. BENNIS, — Timothy Ferriss

The primary goal of management education was, as originally conceived, to impart knowledge that could be applied to a variety of real-world business situations. — Warren Bennis

Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict, but rather see it as an opportunity — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

Most regular, two-year MBA programs provide both experience and the capacity to link together the essential elements of management such as finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and operations. — Warren Bennis

Learning options will indeed mushroom for business students and leaders, but it will take prudence and shrewdness to find and utilize the best option. — Warren Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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

A great director or leader knows his people, creates a great team, and then makes a great movie that can influence millions more than the readers of his column. — Warren Bennis

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it. — Warren Bennis

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. — Warren G. Bennis

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

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. — Warren G. Bennis

Trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leaders together. — Warren G. Bennis