Top 80 Warren G. Bennis Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

— Warren G. Bennis

2. “In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital.”

— Warren G. Bennis

3. “Leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential.”

— Warren G. Bennis

4. “Leadership is like beauty – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.”

— Warren G. Bennis

5. “Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

8. “Leaders are people who do the right thing: managers are people who do things right. Both roles are crucial, but they differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing wrong things well.”

— Warren G. Bennis

9. “In order to serve its purpose, a vision has to be a shared vision.”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

11. “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.”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

13. “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

15. “Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.”

— Warren G. Bennis

16. “It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.”

— Warren G. Bennis

17. “Innovation- any new idea-by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.”

— Warren G. Bennis

18. “Don’t over-react to the trouble makers.”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

20. “More leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit, or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together.”

— Warren G. Bennis

21. “Trust resides squarely between faith and doubt.”

— Warren G. Bennis

22. “You are your own raw material. When you know what you consist of and what you want to make of it, then you can invent yourself.”

— Warren G. Bennis

23. “Trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leaders together.”

— Warren G. Bennis

24. “The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.”

— Warren G. Bennis

25. “Leaders wonder about everything, want to learn as much as they can, are willing to take risks, experiment, try new things. They do not worry about failure but embrace errors, knowing they will learn from them.”

— Warren G. Bennis

26. “While great leaders may be as rare as great runners, great actors, or great painters, everyone has leadership potential, just as everyone has some ability at running, acting, and painting.”

— Warren G. Bennis

27. “Without a terrific leader, you’re not going to have a Great Group. But it is also true that you’re not going to have a great leader without a Great Group.”

— Warren G. Bennis

28. “Who succeeds in forming and leading a Great Group? He or she is almost always a pragmatic dreamer. They are people who get things done, but they are people with immortal longings. Often, they are scientifically minded people with poetry in their souls.”

— Warren G. Bennis

29. “Successful leadership is not about being tough or soft, sensitive or assertive, but about a set of attributes. First and foremost is character.”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

31. “Listening to the inner voice – trusting the inner voice – is one of the most important lessons of leadership.”

— Warren G. Bennis

32. “If I had to reduce the responsibilities of a good follower to a single rule, it would be to speak truth to power.”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

34. “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born...”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

36. “There is a profound difference between information and meaning.”

— Warren G. Bennis

37. “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 G. Bennis

38. “Recognize the skills and traits you don’t possess, and hire the people who have them.”

— Warren G. Bennis

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

— Warren G. Bennis

40. “Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity.”

— Warren G. Bennis

41. “Servant leadership teaches us that you have to lay your cards on the table.”

— Warren G. Bennis

42. “The learning person looks forward to failure or mistakes. The worst problem in leadership is basically early success.”

— Warren G. Bennis

43. “If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn’t be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.”

— Warren G. Bennis

44. “Learning to be an effective leader is no different than learning to be an effective person. And that’s the hard part.”

— Warren G. Bennis

45. “In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

— Warren G. Bennis

46. “Trust is difficult to define, but we know when it’s present and when it’s not.”

— Warren G. Bennis

47. “The first step in becoming a leader, then, is to recognize the context for what it is – a breaker, not a maker; a trap, not a launching pad; an end, not a beginning – and declare your independence.”

— Warren G. Bennis

48. “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

49. “Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.”

— Warren G. Bennis

50. “The opposite of hope is despair, and when we despair, it is because we feel there are no choices.”

— Warren G. Bennis