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Judgment without character is expediency… or worse.

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 People Roles
Think of successful creative collaborations are dreams with deadlines.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Dream Successful Thinking
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
Effective leaders make a full commitment to be a learner, to keep increasing and nourishing their knowledge and wisdom.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Commitment Knowledge Leader Wisdom
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
Every great group is an island… but an island with a bridge to the mainland.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Bridges Groups Islands
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
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. BENNIS

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

Hero Problem Reality
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
It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Follower Leadership Skills
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

Country Instinct Puck Soon
Great groups deliver great results. And for everyone involved in a great group, great work is its own reward.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Great Groups Rewards Work
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
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
Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Dance Leadership Music

Judgment without character is expediency… or worse.

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Judgment without character is expediency… or worse.

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