Warren G. Bennis

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.

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

To be authentic is literally to be your own author... to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them.

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

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

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

The leader has a clear idea of what he wants to do professionally and personally, _x000D_ _x000D_ and the strength to persist in the face of setbacks, even failures

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.

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.

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

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.

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

Learning to be an effective leader is no different than learning to be an effective person. And that's the hard part

Charisma is the result of effective leadership, not the other way around.

Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions.

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

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.

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

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

The ability to plan for what has not yet happened, for a future that has only been imagined, is one of the hallmarks of leadership.

The leader...is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.