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Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.

Warren G. Bennis

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

Dance Leadership Music
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
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
One of the worst mistakes is to do nothing.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Mistake More Nothing Worst
If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn’t be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Being Ideas Knowing Yourself
Successful leaders are great askers
WARREN G. BENNIS

Leader Problem Successful
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
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
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
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
The manager administers; the leader innovates.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Inspirational Leader Leadership Management
Don’t over-react to the trouble makers.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Makers Over React Trouble
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
The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Being Leader Leadership Manager
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
Without character, there is no credibility; and without credibility, there is no trust.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Character Credibility No Trust

Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.

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Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.

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