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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

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

Hero Problem Reality
Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Believe Dream Leadership
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
In great groups, the right people always have the right job.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Groups Jobs People
There is a profound difference between information and meaning.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Differences Knowledge Learning
Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Inspire Purpose Vision
Those who take risks walk the high wire with no fear of falling.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Fall Risk Wire
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
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
Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict, but rather see it as an opportunity
WARREN G. BENNIS

Conflict Leadership Opportunity
Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality.
WARREN G. BENNIS

People Reality Vision
Expect the best from your people and they will usually deliver but your expectations must be realistic.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Expectations People Realistic
Companies which get misled by their own success are sure to be blind sided.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Blind Discipline Success
One of the worst mistakes is to do nothing.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Mistake More Nothing Worst
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
Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Management World
That is the key challenge facing management today; change is the only constant.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Challenges Keys Today
Followers who tell the truth, and leaders who listen to it, are an unbeatable combination.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Followers Leadership Telling Truth
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
Servant leadership teaches us that you have to lay your cards on the table.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Cards Leadership Servant Tables
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
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
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
Successful leadership is not about being tough or soft, sensitive or assertive, but about a set of attributes. First and foremost is character
WARREN G. BENNIS

Character Moving Successful
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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