black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.

Warren G. Bennis

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Born Future Leaders Leadership
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
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
Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Accomplishment Believe Inspirational
Expect the best from your people and they will usually deliver but your expectations must be realistic.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Expectations People Realistic
Organizations should try to find out if their learning programs actually work.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Organization Program Trying
Followers who tell the truth, and leaders who listen to it, are an unbeatable combination.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Followers Leadership Telling Truth
Think of successful creative collaborations are dreams with deadlines.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Dream Successful Thinking
Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders. All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Balance Groups Important
Leaders should always expect the very best of those around them. They know that people can change and grow.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Leader Management People
Just as no great painting has ever been created by a committee, no great vision has ever emerged from the herd.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Herds Painting Vision
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
The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Boss Inspirational Leadership
Something that made them feel that desperate sense of hitting bottom-as something they thought was almost a necessity. It’s as if at that moment the iron entered their soul; that moment created the resilience that leaders need.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Created Iron Moment Necessity Something
You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Needs People Vision
Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Define Hard Knows Leadership
The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Being Leader Leadership Manager
Think of a crucible as an occasion for real magic, the creation of something more valuable than an alchemist could possibly imagine. In it, the individual is transformed, changed, created anew. He or she grows in ways that change his or her definition of self.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Individual Possibly Real Self Something Thinking
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
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

Iron Leadership Motivational
Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Different Government Onions
Judgment without character is expediency… or worse.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Character Expediency Judgment
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
Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Business Failure Leadership
The manager administers; the leader innovates.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Inspirational Leader Leadership Management
At the time, Sculley was destined to be the head of Pepsico. The clincher came when Jobs asked him, “How many more years of your life do you want to spend making colored water when you can have an opportunity to come here and change the world?”
WARREN G. BENNIS

Colored Sculley Time Water
It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.
WARREN G. BENNIS

Follower Leadership Skills

Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Warren G. Bennis Quotes