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Warren Bennis

核心提示: Warren Bennis Warren Bennis (born 1925) is a laid-back silver-haired professor at the University of Southern California who ha

Warren Bennis
Warren Bennis (born 1925) is a laid-back silver-haired professor at the University of Southern California who has been an influential authority on leadership for decades. He has been consulted on the subject by at least four American presidents and by some of the best-known occupants of corporate boardrooms around the world.
[size=1.5]His fundamental tenet is that leaders are made, not born. The worst problem they can face, says Bennis, is “early success. There's no opportunity to learn from adversity and problems”. Other myths about leadership that he dismisses are that it is a rare skill; that leaders are charismatic (most of them are quite ordinary people); and that leaders control and manipulate (they do not; they align the energies of others behind an attractive goal).
[size=1.5]Being a leader is very different from being a manager, says Bennis. So being a manager in an organisation is not necessarily the best training for being the leader of that organisation. But it is the only training that most CEOs get for the job. Managers, however, can learn to be leaders. “I believe in ‘possible selves',” Bennis has written, “the capacity to adapt and change.”
[size=1.8]“I think a lot of the leaders I've spoken to give expression to their feminine side. Many male leaders are almost bisexual in their ability to be open and reflective...Gender is not the determining factor.”
[size=1.3]Related items
In “Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge”, Bennis lists four competencies that leaders need to develop:
[size=1.5]• forming a vision which provides people with a bridge to the future;
[size=1.5]• giving meaning to that vision through communication;
[size=1.5]• building trust, “the lubrication that makes it possible for organisations to work”;
[size=1.5]• searching for self-knowledge and self-regard.
[size=1.5]Bennis argues that to become a good leader, a person first has to develop as an individual. In particular that means learning not to be afraid of being seen as vulnerable. Leadership qualities, he maintains, can only emerge from an “integrated self”. Howard Schultz, the founder and chairman of the Starbucks chain of coffee shops, says that Bennis once told him that to become a great leader you have to develop “your ability to leave your own ego at the door, and to recognise the skills and traits that you need in order to build a world-class organisation”.
[size=1.5]Bennis has also argued that leaders take a different attitude to failure from run-of-the-mill managers, thinking of it not so much as the end of a phase, but rather the beginning of one imbued with knowledge gained from the failure.
[size=1.5]Bennis was greatly influenced by Douglas McGregor. In the late 1960s he tried to run the college where he was provost along the lines of McGregor's Theory Y. But he found that, in practice, it was not possible to leave all staff to their own self-motivating devices. Many people seemed to need more structure and direction than McGregor's scheme would allow.
Notable publications
[size=1.5]With Nanus, B., “Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge”, Harper & Row, 1985; 2nd ed, HarperBusiness, 1997
Why Leaders Can't Lead”, Jossey-Bass, 1989
With Thomas, R., “Geeks and Geezers”, Harvard Business School Press, 2002
[img=75,119]http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/cf_images/books/Gurus_Small.jpg[/img] More management gurus
This profile is adapted from “The Economist Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus”, by Tim Hindle (Profile Books; 322 pages; £20). The guide has the low-down on more than 50 of the world's most influential management thinkers past and present and over 100 of the most influential business-management ideas. To buy this book, please visit our online shop.
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