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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

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
Without character, there is no credibility; and without credibility, there is no trust.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Character Credibility No Trust
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
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
Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Define Hard Knows Leadership
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
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
This is more than just having a vision. You can see the difference in the often-cited way in which Steve Jobs brought in John Sculley to take over Apple.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Jobs Opportunity Years
Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Hero Problem Reality
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
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
Followers who tell the truth, and leaders who listen to it, are an unbeatable combination.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Followers Leadership Telling Truth
That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.
WARREN G. BENNIS

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

Atmosphere Errors Risk
Expect the best from your people and they will usually deliver but your expectations must be realistic.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Expectations People Realistic
Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there’s any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it’s surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that’s constant is change.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Jazz Living Someone Surprise World

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.

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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.

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