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. BennisRead
Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True leadership involves self-discovery and authenticity.
Warren G. Bennis emphasizes that effective leadership is rooted in personal authenticity and self-awareness. The journey to becoming a leader isn't merely about acquiring skills or titles; instead, it is fundamentally about realizing and embracing one's true self. This process can be both straightforward in concept and profoundly challenging in practice, as it requires deep introspection and courage to be genuine in a leadership role.
Themes
LeadershipAuthenticitySelf-DiscoveryGrowthPersonal Development
In practice
Example use cases
During a leadership workshop, a facilitator can use this quote to highlight the importance of self-awareness in effective leadership.
More from Warren G. Bennis
All quotes →Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
Warren G. BennisRead
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.
Warren G. BennisRead
The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
Warren G. BennisRead
Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.
Warren G. BennisRead
People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.
Warren G. BennisRead
Similar quotes
We need to stop telling [women], "Get a mentor and you will excel." Instead, we need to tell them, "Excel and you will get a mentor.
Sheryl SandbergRead
If the head man in a company is not working 12 hours a day, doing things, taking risks, but also standing with his people in the trenches at the most difficult of times, then the company loses something.
Rupert MurdochRead
It will be disastrous when a leader or manager shows up with one attitude one day and treats people with a different attitude the next day.
Zig ZiglarRead
The key to the Toyota Way and what makes Toyota stand out is not any of the individual elements…But what is important is having all the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner, not in spurts.
Taiichi OhnoRead
Underrepresented employees already have to overcome discriminatory barriers in their careers; they shouldn't be expected to volunteer their time to help their companies do the same.
Susan WojcickiRead
When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.
George S. PattonRead