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

Warren G. Bennis

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

Great Groups Rewards Work
Those who take risks walk the high wire with no fear of falling.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Fall Risk Wire
Great leaders love talent and know where to find it. They surround themselves with talented people who can work effectively together.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Leader People Together
Just as no great painting has ever been created by a committee, no great vision has ever emerged from the herd.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Herds Painting Vision
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
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

Errors Knowing Worry
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Opportunity Optimistic People
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Jobs Opportunity Years
Leaders learn by leading, and they learn bestby leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Leadership Mountain Weather
Followers who tell the truth, and leaders who listen to it, are an unbeatable combination.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Followers Leadership Telling Truth
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

Being Ideas Knowing Yourself
The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Boss Inspirational Leadership
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

Hospitality Leadership Vision
Ineffective leaders often act on the advice and counsel of the last person they talked to.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Advice Lasts Leader
Without character, there is no credibility; and without credibility, there is no trust.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Character Credibility No Trust
Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Inspirational Leadership People
Every great group is an island… but an island with a bridge to the mainland.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Bridges Groups Islands
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Country Instinct Puck Soon
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

Colored Sculley Time Water
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
Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Inspire Purpose Vision
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.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Leadership Running Thinking
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.”
WARREN G. BENNIS

Create Enemy Team War
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 G. BENNIS

Demand Development Moving
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.”
WARREN G. BENNIS

Backward Enemy Ideas Themselves Winning
It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Follower Leadership Skills
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

Always Dreamer People Pragmatic Soul

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

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

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