Edgar Schein Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

With the changes in technological complexity, especially in information technology, the leadership task has changed. Leadership in a networked organization is a fundamentally different thing from leadership in a traditional hierarchy.

Edgar Schein
Culture is the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic 'taken for granted' fashion an organization's view of its self and its environment.

Edgar Schein
We must become better at asking and do less telling in a culture that overvalues telling. It has always bothered me how even ordinary conversations tend to be defined by what we tell rather than by what we ask. Questions are taken for granted rather than given a starring role in the human drama. Yet all my teaching and consulting experience has taught me that what builds a relationship, what solves problems, what moves things forward is asking the right questions.

Edgar Schein
A pattern of basic assumptions—invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration—that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.

Edgar Schein
Organizational cultures are created by leaders, and one of the decisive functions of leadership may well be the creation, the management, and—if and when that may become necessary—the destruction of culture.

Edgar Schein
One of the best mechanisms that founders, leaders, managers, or even colleagues have available for communicating what they believe in or care about is what they systematically pay attention to.

Edgar Schein
The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.. The unique talent of leaders is their ability to understand and work with culture; and that it is an ultimate act of

Edgar Schein
We do not think and talk about what we see; we see what we are able to think and talk about.

Edgar Schein
In most organizational change efforts, it is much easier to draw on the strengths of the culture than to overcome the constraints by changing the culture.

Edgar Schein