Warren G. Bennis Quotes

Without character, there is no credibility; and without credibility, there is no trust.

The new leader is one who commits people to action, who converts followers into leaders, and who may convert leaders into agents of change.

Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.

Successful leadership is not about being tough or soft, sensitive or assertive, but about a set of attributes. First and foremost is character

In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital.

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Just as no great painting has ever been created by a committee, no great vision has ever emerged from the herd.

More leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit, or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together.

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

The future has no shelf life

Effective leaders make a full commitment to be a learner, to keep increasing and nourishing their knowledge and wisdom.

The manager administers; the leader innovates.

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.

Successful leaders are great askers

A leader is someone whose actions have the most profound consequences on other people's lives, for better or worse, sometime forever and ever.

Recognize the skills and traits you don't possess, and hire the people who have them.

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life

It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.

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

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.

Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.

The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.

Manage the dream: Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality.

Charisma is the result of effective leadership, not the other way around.

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.

One of the worst mistakes is to do nothing.

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.

Leadership is like beauty - it's hard to define but you know it when you see it.

Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.

All great leaders constantly seek new information and new ways of thinking.

Followers who tell the truth, and leaders who listen to it, are an unbeatable combination.

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.

The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.