Warren Bennis Quotes

60 Sourced Quotes

Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.

Warren Bennis
There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.

Warren Bennis
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. And the way we become leaders is by learning about leadership through life and job experiences, not with university degrees.

Warren Bennis
Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens, people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.

Warren Bennis
The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Warren Bennis
Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

Warren Bennis
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Warren Bennis
Leaders encourage reflective backtalk. Norbert Wiener told me, I never know what I say until I hear the response. Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.

Warren Bennis
I'd always rather err on the side of openness. But there's a difference between optimum and maximum openness, and fixing that boundary is a judgment call. The art of leadership is knowing how much information you're going to pass on - to keep people motivated and to be as honest, as upfront, as you can. But, boy, there really are limits to that.

Warren Bennis
Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict, but rather see it as an opportunity

Warren Bennis
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 Bennis
Leaders wonder about everything, want to learn as much as they can, are willing to take risks, experiment, try new things. They do not worry about failure but embrace errors, knowing they will learn from them.

Warren Bennis
Great groups give the lie to the remarkably persistent but incorrect notion that successful organizations are the lengthened shadow of a great woman or man. However, each great group has a strong leader. In fact, great groups and great leaders create each other.

Warren Bennis
The ability to plan for what has not yet happened, for a future that has only been imagined, is one of the hallmarks of leadership.

Warren Bennis
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 Bennis
Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.

Warren Bennis
While great leaders may be as rare as great runners, great actors, or great painters, everyone has leadership potential, just as everyone has some ability at running, acting, and painting.

Warren Bennis
Around the world, the generals are being ousted, and the poets are taking charge.

Warren Bennis
This duality, making yourself better while teaching and developing others' judgment capabilities, is the key to leadership that is both productive and principled.

Warren Bennis
We are at least halfway through the looking glass, on our way to utter chaos. When the very model of a modern manager becomes C.E.O., he does not become a leader, he becomes a boss, and it is the bosses who have gotten America into its current fix.

Warren Bennis
Listening to the inner voice - trusting the inner voice - is one of the most important lessons of leadership.

Warren Bennis
The failure to find the right niche for people - or to let them find their own perfect niches - is a major reason that so many workplaces are mediocre, even toxic, in spite of the presence of talent. Leaders of great groups give them whatever they need and free them from everything else.

Warren Bennis
The truth may be that history, in its kindness, gave this new generation a grand crucible challenge, as it did my own. The young of today have been summoned to receive that same kindness through the collective failures of their elders.

Warren Bennis
The basis of leadership is the capacity of the leader to change the mindset, the framework of the other person.

Warren Bennis
If I were to give off-the-cuff advice to anyone trying to institute change, I would say, How clear is the metaphor?

Warren Bennis