Warren Bennis’ novel, On Becoming a Leader, is the book I was able to read. Bennis worked years on this novel constructing it off of one of his former creations. Finally, in Cambridge, Ma Bennis published his story by Perseus publishing. Throughout this book he centers around the search to understand exactly how leaders are made. Bennis uses a unique approach to portraying his opinion. This is not an ordinary “how to” book on becoming a leader. Nor is it an autobiography of one’s personal experience. Bennis was a teacher and student all his life, he has never run a country or even a company. Bennis is not directly reciting his own experiences as a leader. This paper outlines Bennis’ basic thoughts, theories, and his contributions to the field …show more content…
A leader needs to rely on their gut feeling or as Bennis refers to this as “inner voices.” The leader needs to be confident in themselves. Bennis’ previous points suggest knowing oneself and their world to give them that confidence to make decisions. A true leader relies on everything they have learned to set their vision.
Lastly, the key to successful leadership is getting all of one’s followers on their side. In order to achieve this, leaders must gain all their followers trust. Bennis outlines four key elements to gain this trust. Primarily, constancy must be enforced. Leaders must stay the course. Second, congruity is essential. This is so the leaders can “walk the talk.” Third, reliability is needed so that leaders are present when it matters most. Lastly, leaders honor their commitments through integrity. All of these important, aspects gain the trust of their followers by their side.
As a whole, Warren Bennis defined the values and achievement plan for becoming the most successful leader one can be. He highlighted the link between self knowledge and business. A leader is not just “doing a job” or “running a company,” but it’s finding one’s personal vision. Bennis tries to do as much as he possibly he can to shatter this myth. Today, more people are starting to learn what leadership exactly means and what is expected of a leader. It might be evident that in the future competition will be harder
…show more content…
I really enjoyed diving deep into Bennis’ mind of what it really means to have the qualities of a leader. Bennis strongest points relates a manager to a leader. It was an inspiring comparison that really opened my eyes on what I viewed a leader to be. I felt Bennis made his points clear and I never felt confused or unclear about his writing. In the world that I live in today, the meanings are tossed and turned everywhere leaving everyone confused on what it truly means to be a successful leader. After reading this, I feel encouraged to step up and actually make the most of situations that are tossed my direction. I feel this book gave me a whole new outlook on life and I feel rewarded I had the opportunity to read
The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner (2007) is the result of twenty years of research on the factors that influence and create great leadership. Through studies and stories from leaders with various backgrounds throughout the world, the practices and characteristics that create great leadership are delineated. Leadership is viewed not as a group of inherent characteristics, but as learned behavior that anyone can achieve. The goal of Kouzes and Posner’s book is to inspire and educate leaders through transformational leadership. As such, leadership is about mobilizing others to become and do extraordinary things.
The leadership is a result of a combination of traits, with special emphasis on the personal qualities of the leader, which he should possess certain personality traits that would be special facilitators in leadership performance. This theory shows that leaders are born as such, there is no likelihood of 'making' them later with personal development techniques.
Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge is an organizational management book written by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus for those who aim to become better leaders. The authors emphasize that having executive positions or being a manager does not automatically make one a leader. A leader is one who inspires his staff, help them find purpose in their work, and effectively implement their plans. They separate the book not quite into chapters on different topics, but rather by four strategies that they have determined are vital for any leader to take on. The strategies are effectively concluded as attention through vision, meaning through communication, trust through positioning, and the deployment of self. A prominent feature of Leaders is the various
According to Grossman and Valiga’s Leadership Characteristics and Skills Assessment, the interpretation of scores for perception of what makes a good leader gave me the following results: good perception of a good leader and the scores for perception of your own ability to lead resulted in low perceived leadership ability for myself (Grossman and Valiga, 2013). With these results, I have concluded that I have low confidence in my leadership skills and ability. This would be an area of improvement needing work on my part. Part of being a good leader is being confident in one’s abilities and skills. Who would want to follow a leader who has n...
Destiny, brought the book True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership into my life and I want to bring it into the lives of others. More specifically those who may believe they weren’t born with the characteristics or traits to become a leader or those who have not found their passion or purpose in life; their “True North.” The book, written by Bill George and co-author Peter Sims, compiles a series of interviews with 125 managers from Howard Schultz of Starbuck’s to Dan Vasella of Novartis. The interviewees guide readers through their journey to become the leaders they are today; discussing their failures, successes, obstacles, personal tragedies and triumphs. The stories of each manager prove the True North’s thesis, which is no one person is born a leader and there isn’t one path to becoming a leader. The book is separated into three sections: 1) Leadership is a Journey 2) Discover Your Authentic Leadership 3) Empowering People to Lead. Before giving overviews of each section, it is important to define an authentic leader.
The same thing can be applied for organization perspective. A leader must be clear on his higher values. He has to have an accurate view on his weakness and strengths. He must know when to push the button, when to calm down, be decisive and be pro active rather than react to the situation. He has to act as the situation demands, keeping goals in mind.
In this book, the authors Tom Rath and Barry Conchie examine the question “What are the keys to being an effective leader?” To answer this question they had a team that reviewed data collected from Gallup polls. The data came from interviews from 20,000 senior leaders, over a million teams and more than fifty years of Gallup Polls of the most admired leaders in the world. The authors then had the team do a study of more than 10,000 followers to find out why they follow the influential leaders in their life.
Warren Bennis’s leadership theories from On Becoming a Leader serve as a guide to understanding the qualities sand strategies that great leaders often exemplify. Classic leaders like Hillary Clinton have vision, passion, and integrity. These three things are the basic ingredients that Bennis proposes that most great leaders have in common. These are all aspects of leadership that allow people to better understand themselves and the world around them. In Hillary’s case, it is because of her determination to take the lead on different social issues around the world as a prominent figurehead that has allow me to take a closer...
to lead you must know yourself completely, your strengths and weaknesses and when to ask for help from others. If one cannot achieve this than they will fail at leading because they will not understand how to pick people to fill the roles that the person once did successfully. It is also stated that in order to progress you have to experience things on your own without any help and essentially self-teach. He also argues that you must reflect on good and bad experiences and learn how to grow from the bad and figure out how you accomplished
A leader needs to “believe” in oneself and have the confidence that whatever you say will excite and what you do can motivate others. You must be optimistic about what you do, do have some relevance for being in existence. Believe it or not, “leadership begins with you”.
“On leadership” was written by John W. Gardner (The Free Press, New York, 1990). He used seventeen chapters to explain and describe essential components for the leadership should be in a successful organization. This book not only has significant influence now, but also for the future. Below are my understanding about this book, which was divided into two parts. For the first part, I will pick up some perspectives which influence me most from this book. For the second part, which is my comments and critique about this book.
I have been fortunate to work with several heads of departments within a couple years of graduating college. During this time, I have worked with quality leaders and not so great ones. The quality leaders were competent, skillful and endowed with people skills. These leaders gave me the opportunity to grow and a sense of purpose. After reading The Leadership Advantage by Warren Bennis, I was quickly reminded about a former superior of mine that lacked the understanding and knowledge of what qualities a leader should have. The company also did not entertain a culture that promotes employee satisfaction.
Leaders can have a powerful impact on the futures of many, and the way in which one approaches leadership is paramount to the type of impact one will have. Continual growth in the areas of knowledge I have and seek to acquire, as well as recognizing my leadership style and utilizing my personal strengths to the fullest, is vital to the successful implementation of my personal philosophy of leadership.
As Yukl (2010) indicates, such factors (e.g. personality, values and capacities) attributed to a leader. Normally it is widespread acknowledged that someone is born to be a lead...
Self-confidence is one of the most important qualities that determine a good leader. Self-confidence is the belief in oneself and of one’s powers and abilities. It is the attitude that people possess that allows them to have positive views and to trust their own abilities. Self-confidence is an extremely important attribute to have. Leadership is all about having the confidence to make decisions. If they are afraid to make and commit to their decisions, all of the communication and authority they have will make no difference. They need to guts to motivate others, and if they waver even slightly, their followers will start to doubt them. An example of leaders having self-confidence is the students at school who organized their own clubs. They have the courage to pitch new ideas, and are not afraid to talk to other students about it. Teachers are natural born leaders. Everyday, they have to face hundreds of students to lead them onto the correct path through learning. Without self-confidence, they will not be able to do their job.