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

Warren G. Bennis

Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Eye Horizon Leadership
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
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
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
First and foremost, effective leaders must continuously strive to make themselves smarter and better at making judgments.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Firsts Judgment Leader
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
It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Follower Leadership Skills
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
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
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born.
WARREN G. BENNIS

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

Advice Lasts Leader
Think of successful creative collaborations are dreams with deadlines.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Dream Successful Thinking
Organizations should try to find out if their learning programs actually work.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Organization Program Trying
Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Honesty Leadership Simple
Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Hero Problem Reality
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
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
There is a profound difference between information and meaning.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Differences Knowledge Learning
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
Servant leadership teaches us that you have to lay your cards on the table.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Cards Leadership Servant Tables
Those who take risks walk the high wire with no fear of falling.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Fall Risk Wire
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
The leader…is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Creators Ideas Inspirational Leader
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
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
Listening to the inner voice – trusting the inner voice – is one of the most important lessons of leadership.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Important Listening Voice
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

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

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

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