Warren BennisWarren Bennis

Warren Bennis

One of the world’s leading authorities on leadership.

Warren Bennis was an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of Leadership studies. Bennis was University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California.

“His work at MIT in the 1960s on group behavior foreshadowed — and helped bring about — today’s headlong plunge into less hierarchical, more democratic and adaptive institutions, private and public,” management expert Tom Peters wrote in 1993 in the foreword to Bennis’ An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change.

Philosopher's Notes on Warren Bennis's Books

On Becoming a Leader
LockedPhilosopher's Notes

On Becoming a Leader

by Warren Bennis

Warren Bennis is one of the world’s leading authorities on leadership. This is, as Peter Drucker puts it, his “most important book.” Big Ideas we explore include the basic ingredients of leadership (#1 = Guiding Vision!), the importance of self-invention (hint: write your own story!), the power of trusting ourselves, choosing to express ourselves rather than prove ourselves, how to cultivate trust, and becoming a world-class leader.

Quotes by Warren Bennis

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Vision animates, inspires, and transforms purpose into action.
Warren Bennis
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Ernest Hemingway said that the world breaks all of us, and we grow stronger in the broken places. That’s certainly true of leaders. Their capability to rebound permits them to achieve, to realize their vision.
Warren Bennis
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Knowing yourself, then, means separating who you are and who you want to be from what the world thinks you are and wants you to be.
Warren Bennis
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As John Gardner once said, talent is one thing, while its triumphant expression is another. Only when we are fully deployed are we capable of that triumphant expression. Full deployment, engagement, hone and sharpen all of one’s gifts, and ensure that one will be an original, not a copy.
Warren Bennis
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To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life.
Warren Bennis
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Ideologically charged approaches rarely solve complex problems. Great leaders do not try to impose an ideological template, rightor left-leaning, on problems. First-rate leaders know that every problem is thorny in its own way and inclusively and collaboratively find solutions that reflect the unique realities at hand.
Warren Bennis
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