Famous Quotes & Sayings

Warren G. Bennis

A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless ... someone's got to make a wake up call.

Warren G. Bennis

The leader has a clear idea of what he wants to do professionally and personally, and the strength to persist in the face of setbacks, even failures

Warren G. Bennis

Power is the basic energy needed to initiate and sustain action or, to put it another way, the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it. Leadership is the wise use of this power: Transformative leadership.

Warren G. Bennis

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

Warren G. Bennis

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

Warren G. Bennis

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

Warren G. Bennis

I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be.

Warren G. Bennis

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

Warren G. Bennis

The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Warren G. Bennis

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

Warren G. Bennis

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

Warren G. Bennis

The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to the same failure something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic, something that made them feel that desperate sense of hitting bottom-as something they thought was almost a necessity. It's as if at that moment the iron entered their soul; that moment created the resilience that leaders need.

Warren G. Bennis

Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.

Warren G. Bennis

Leaders learn by leading, and they learn bestby leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders.

Warren G. Bennis

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born...

Warren G. Bennis

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

Warren G. Bennis

Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict, but rather see it as an opportunity

Warren G. Bennis

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

Warren G. Bennis

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.

Ronald Reagan

It was leadership here at home that gave us strong American influence abroad, and the collapse of imperial Communism. Great nations have responsibilities to lead, and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile, because they might just wind up lowering our flag.

Ronald Reagan

The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.

Ronald Reagan

Our policy is simple: We are not going to betray our friends, reward the enemies of freedom, or permit fear and retreat to become American policies. ... None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong. It is weakness ... that invites adventurous adversaries to make mistaken judgments.

Vance Packard

Leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done

Robert Reich

A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term.

Richard Bach

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that's why we call it the present. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And If not now, when? A brick alone is nothing but a brick. It takes a collection of bricks to build a house. Instructor, what?? You mean you teach best what you most need to learn

Thomas S. Monson

The power to lead is the power to mislead, and the power to mislead is the power to destroy.

Thomas S. Monson

Some are young people who don't know who they are, what they can be or even want to be. They are afraid, but they don't know of what. They are angry, but they don't know at whom. They are rejected and they don't know why. All they want is to be somebody.

Thomas Sowell

When a highly successful leader retires after a long career, it is very unlikely that his successor will be of comparable caliber. Anyone of similar ability and drive would have gone somewhere else, instead of waiting in the wings for years for a chance to show his own leadership.

Thomas Sowell

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

Thomas Sowell

The kinds of people we need in government are precisely the kinds of people who are most reluctant to go into government -- people who understand the inherent dangers of power and feel a distaste for using it, but who may do so for a few years as a civic duty. The worst kind of people to have in government are those who see it as a golden opportunity to impose their own superior wisdom and virtue on others.

Thomas Reid

It is the invaluable merit of the great Basle mathematician Leonard Euler, to have freed the analytical calculus from all geometric bounds, and thus to have established analysis as an independent science, which from his time on has maintained an unchallenged leadership in the field of mathematics.

Robert McKee

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

Robert Menzies

My headmaster chastised me with a diabolical instrument a leather strap tacked to a piece of wood but he taught me with such villainous success that I am now Prime Minister.