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Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.

Warren G. Bennis

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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Characteristics Important Leader Truth Willingness
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Initiate Leadership Power Translation Wise
Leaders should always expect the very best of those around them. They know that people can change and grow.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Leader Management People
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

Knows Materials Raw Want
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Individual Possibly Real Self Something Thinking
Great things are achieved by talented people who are absolutely convinced that they not only can but will achieve them.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Achieve Great People Things
Around the world, the generals are being ousted, and the poets are taking charge.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Hospitality Leadership World
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Allegiances Fate Organization Years
This duality, making yourself better while teaching and developing others’ judgment capabilities, is the key to leadership that is both productive and principled.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Judgment Keys Principle Teaching
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 G. BENNIS

Retirement Teacher Teaching
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

Ego Give Up Leader
Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Believe Dream Leadership
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Inspirational Motivational Success
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Created Iron Moment Necessity Something
Successful leadership is not about being tough or soft, sensitive or assertive, but about a set of attributes. First and foremost is character
WARREN G. BENNIS

Character Moving Successful
The American Heritage Dictionary defines crucible as “a place, time, or situation characterized by the confluence of powerful intellectual, social, economic, or political forces; a severe test of patience or belief; a vessel for melting material at high temperatures.”
WARREN G. BENNIS

Crucible Political Powerful

Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.

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Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.

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