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Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

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

Certain Coaching Leader
Around the world, the generals are being ousted, and the poets are taking charge.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Hospitality Leadership World
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
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
Those who take risks walk the high wire with no fear of falling.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Fall Risk Wire
To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life
WARREN G. BENNIS

Leader Leadership Makers
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
The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Being Leader Leadership Manager
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
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
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
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
That is the key challenge facing management today; change is the only constant.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Challenges Keys Today
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
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
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
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
Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Management World
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
The manager administers; the leader innovates.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Inspirational Leader Leadership Management
Embrace error: Create an atmosphere in which prudent risk taking is strongly encouraged.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Atmosphere Errors Risk
First and foremost, effective leaders must continuously strive to make themselves smarter and better at making judgments.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Firsts Judgment Leader
Successful leaders are great askers
WARREN G. BENNIS

Leader Problem Successful
Encourage reflective backtalk: Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Importance Knows Leader
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Born Future Leaders Leadership

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

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Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

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