Warren G. Bennis Quotes - Page 6

The organizations of the future will increasingly depend on the creativity of their members to survive. Great Groups offer a new model in which the leader is an equal among Titans. In a truly creative collaboration, work is pleasure, and the only rules and procedures are those that advance the common cause.

What job is worth the enormous psychic cost of following a leader who values loyalty in the narrowest sense.

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

Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.

That is the key challenge facing management today; change is the only constant.

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

Perhaps the central task of the leader of leaders thus becomes the development of other leaders.

People in great groups have blinders on. Their work is all they see. They value failures as learning opportunities. They are optimistic, not realistic, as they proceed from one challenge and crisis to the next.

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.

All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.

Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions.

That's important to remember: it's not just a collection of great individuals but a group of people who enjoy playing in the sandbox, thoroughly enjoying collaborative problem solving.

You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.

That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

Trust is difficult to define, but we know when it's present and when it's not.

Leaders should always expect the very best of those around them. They know that people can change and grow.

The capacity for "uncontaminated wonder," ultimately, is what distinguishes the successful from the ordinary, the happily engaged players of whatever era from the chronically disappointed and malcontent. Therein lies a lesson for geeks, geezers, and the sea of people who fall in between.

People who know what they want and why they want it, and have the skills to communicate that to others in a way that gains support

Frank Gehry designs buildings that make other architects half his age (he's 78) gasp with envy. Neotony is what makes him lace up his skates and whirl around the ice rink, while visionary buildings come to life and dance in his head.

No leader can create sustainable, significant change without a reservoir of good will. Without that, you always tend to compromise with failure.

Judgment without character is expediency... or worse.

Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders. All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.

First and foremost, effective leaders must continuously strive to make themselves smarter and better at making judgments.

Ineffective leaders often act on the advice and counsel of the last person they talked to.

Neotony is a metaphor for the quality of life - the gift - that keeps the fortunate of whatever age focused on all the marvelous undiscovered things to come.