Encourage dissent: Leaders should have associates who have contrary views, who are devil’s advocates, “variance sensors” who can tell them the difference between what is expected and what is really happening, between what they want to hear and what they need to hear. There are too many naked emperors running around today.
– Warren G Bennis
It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.
– Warren G Bennis
Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.
– Warren G. Bennis
Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary
– Warren G. Bennis
More leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together.
– Warren G. Bennis
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 Bennis
No leader sets out to be a leader. People set out to live their lives, expressing themselves fully. When that expression is of value, they become leaders. So the point is not to become a leader. The point is to become yourself, to use yourself completely – all your skills, gifts and energies – in order to make your vision manifest. You must withhold nothing. You, must, in sum, become the person you started out to be and to enjoy the process of becoming.
– Warren G Bennis
Silence – not dissent – is the one answer that leaders should refuse to accept.
– Warren G. 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 G 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 G Bennis
Leadership Licks 