Latest Warren G. Bennis Quotes from Interviews

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

  Warren G. Bennis

  Teaching, Keys, Judgment

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Leaders must earn the trust of their teams, their organizations, and their stakeholders before attempting to engage their support.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Team, Organization, Support

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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

  Warren G. Bennis

  Character, No Trust, Credibility

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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

  Warren G. Bennis

  Commitment, Leader, Knowledge And Wisdom

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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

  Warren G. Bennis

  Leader, Firsts, Judgment

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Judgment without character is expediency... or worse.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Character, Judgment, Expediency

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Leading with character gives the wise leader clear-cut advantages. They are easier to trust and follow; they honor commitments and promises; their words and behavior match; they are always engaged in and by the world; they are open to "reflective backtalk": they can speak with conviction because they believe in what they are saying...and everyone else knows that. They are comfortable in their own skin. They feel at ease in the spotlight and they enjoy it there. They tend to be more receptive to opportunity and risk.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Wise, Believe, Character

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflicting demands, often under great time pressure, leaders must make decisions and take effective actions to assure the survival and success of their organizations. This is how leaders add value to their organizations. They lead them to success by exercising good judgment, by making smart calls when especially difficult and complicated decisions simply must be made, and then ensuring that they are well executed.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Smart, Exercise, Organization

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Walt Disney, of all people, did a good job of describing his own netony. "People who have worked with me say I am 'innocence in action,'" he wrote. "They say I have the innocence and unselfconsciousness of a child. Maybe I have. I still look at the world with uncontaminated wonder."

  Warren G. Bennis

  Jobs, Children, People

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• 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.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Lying, Fall, Successful

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• 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.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Ice, Envy, Design

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Every one of the geezers who continues to play a leadership role has one quality of overriding importance: neotony. The dictionary definition is that neotony, a zoological term, involves "the retention of youthful qualities throughout old age." It is more than merely retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neotony is the retention of all those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Play, Curiosity, Age

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• 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.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Age, Quality, Metaphor

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• The crucible is a dividing line, a turning point, and those who have gone through it feel they are very different from the way they were before. Believing that they have been transformed or have transformed themselves, those who survive the crucible (and many don't) are more confident, more willing to take future risks. That new self-confidence is grounded in the belief that he or she has done something hard and done it well.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Believe, Self Confidence, Risk

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• 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.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Real, Thinking, Self

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Organizations have to come to grips with the fact that tests of adaptive capability aren't always pleasant. Learning can be a powerful emotional event, and organizations have to be cognizant of that. They must understand that those who complete high-quality executive education programs are going to see the organization with fresh eyes after they return. Those who re-enter the workplace filled with new enthusiasm and new ideas often find a chilly response on the part of their supervisors.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Powerful, Eye, Emotional

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• The American Heritage Dictionary defines crucible as "a place, time, or situation characterized by the confluence of powerful intellectual, social, economic, or political forces; a severe test of patience or belief; a vessel for melting material at high temperatures." A crucible was the vessel in which medieval alchemists attempted to turn base metals into gold. That the alchemists inevitably failed in their audacious attempts doesn't denigrate the power of the crucible as a metaphor for the circumstances that cause an individual to be utterly transformed.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Powerful, Political, Crucible

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Organizations should try to find out if their learning programs actually work.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Organization, Trying, Program

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• People vary enormously in how they learn. Some learn through their eyes - by reading but also by responding to all kinds of visual information. Others learn mostly through their ears or touch or other senses.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Reading, Eye, People

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• One of the qualities that all the leaders have is a voracious appetite to learn whatever they do not as yet know and understand, coupled with an openness to new experiences.

  Warren G. Bennis

  New Experiences, Leader, Quality

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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

  Warren G. Bennis

  Thinking, Leader, Information

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• All of great leaders evidence four basic qualities that are central to their ability to lead: adaptive capacity, the ability to engage others through shared meaning, a distinctive voice, and unshakeable integrity. These four qualities mark all exemplary leaders, whatever their age, gender, ethnicity, or race.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Integrity, Ethnicity, Voice

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Think of successful creative collaborations are dreams with deadlines.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Dream, Successful, Thinking

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• Great groups deliver great results. And for everyone involved in a great group, great work is its own reward.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Rewards, Groups, Great Work

  Source: bobmorris.biz

• 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 G. Bennis

  Giving, Perfect, People

  Source: bobmorris.biz