Warren Bennis Quotes

#1. I've become more and more aware of the promise and struggle to teach the global mind nowadays because I use every chance I get to ask faculty and administrators of management education programs why we don't offer at least one course - not even required, just an elective - on the world's religions.

Warren Bennis

#2. One of the best teaching experiences Ed Schein and I had when we were teaching at MIT in the 1960s was inventing a course on leadership through film.

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

#4. Learning options will indeed mushroom for business students and leaders, but it will take prudence and shrewdness to find and utilize the best option.

Warren Bennis

#5. Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.

Warren Bennis

#6. Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.

Warren Bennis

#7. As my blog editor knows all too well, I wasn't all that keen to enter the blogosphere world.

Warren Bennis

#8. The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon.

Warren Bennis

#9. People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.

Warren Bennis

#10. 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 Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

#12. The primary goal of management education was, as originally conceived, to impart knowledge that could be applied to a variety of real-world business situations.

Warren Bennis

#13. I wanted the influence. In the end I wasn't very good at being a president. I looked out of the window and thought that the man cutting the lawn actually seemed to have more control over what he was doing.

Warren Bennis

#14. A great director or leader knows his people, creates a great team, and then makes a great movie that can influence millions more than the readers of his column.

Warren Bennis

#15. Specialized management courses are useful but should come well after the complexity of management and business are understood.

Warren Bennis

#16. Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.

Warren Bennis

#17. Leadership is the capacity to turn vision into reality.

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

#21. Leadership has become a heavy industry. Concern and interest about leadership development is no longer an American phenomenon. It is truly global. Though I will probably be in less demand, I wanted to move on.

Warren Bennis

#22. The original and brilliant idea of an MBA was the opportunity for students to study the theory and application of business and management principles.

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

#26. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Warren Bennis

#27. Learning in a face-to-face human community, as humans have evolved to do over hundreds of thousands of years, may always be the ideal - especially in an endeavor that is as relationship-driven as business.

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

#30. How can we educators claim credit for understanding, let alone teaching, the 'global mind' without a single course on the impact of religion on every day life?

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

#32. Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

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

Warren Bennis

#35. Most regular, two-year MBA programs provide both experience and the capacity to link together the essential elements of management such as finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and operations.

Warren Bennis