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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.

Warren G. Bennis

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

Define Hard Knows Leadership
Those who re-enter the workplace filled with new enthusiasm and new ideas often find a chilly response on the part of their supervisors.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Filled Response Supervisor Workplace
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

Ideas Leadership Want
Manage the dream: Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Dream People Reality
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
Don’t over-react to the trouble makers.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Makers Over React Trouble
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
Expect the best from your people and they will usually deliver but your expectations must be realistic.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Expectations People Realistic
Companies which get misled by their own success are sure to be blind sided.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Blind Discipline Success
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 G. BENNIS

Balance Groups Important
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
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

Different Government Onions
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
Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Combination Followers Tells Unbeatable
Effective leaders make a full commitment to be a learner, to keep increasing and nourishing their knowledge and wisdom.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Commitment Knowledge Leader 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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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