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. BENNISGreat things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.
More Warren G. Bennis Quotes
-
-
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 -
It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.
WARREN G. BENNIS -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 learn by leading, and they learn bestby leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders.
WARREN G. BENNIS -
Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
WARREN G. BENNIS -
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 -
Successful leaders are great askers
WARREN G. BENNIS -
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 -
The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to the same failure something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic.
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