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Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.

Warren G. Bennis

People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Ideas People Standing
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
Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Business Failure Leadership
Think of successful creative collaborations are dreams with deadlines.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Dream Successful Thinking
Judgment without character is expediency… or worse.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Character Expediency Judgment
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 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
Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Dance Leadership Music
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
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

Leaders People Roles
That is the key challenge facing management today; change is the only constant.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Challenges Keys Today
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Born Future Leaders Leadership
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
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
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
Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Believe Dream Leadership
One of the worst mistakes is to do nothing.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Mistake More Nothing Worst
To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life
WARREN G. BENNIS

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

Bridges Groups Islands
Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Combination Followers Tells Unbeatable
In great groups, the right people always have the right job.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Groups Jobs People
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
Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Accomplishment Believe Inspirational
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
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
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
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

Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.

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Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.

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