J o s h u a R o a c h ®

Quotes & Personal Notes on „Becoming a Leader“ Joshua Roach® All opinions expressed here are thoughts based on Warren Bennis´s Book „Becoming a Leader“. I have intensely studied this book and have extracted for me the most relevant information for this document. Hope you enjoy.

Warren Bennis „Becoming a Leader“

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STRUCTUREOFTHISDOCUMENT 3

FOREWORD 4

WARREN´STIPSINMYWORDSFORBECOMINGALEADER 5

BESTQUOTES 9

APPENDIX 12INGREDIENTS FOR BECOMING A LEADER 12A LEADERS EDUCATION CONSISTS OF THESE THINGS 12THE FOUR LESSONS OF SELF KNOWLEDGE 13PRINCIPLE COMPONENTS OF INNOVATIVE LEARNING 13LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE MEANS 13THE MEANS OF EXPRESSION ARE THE STEPS TO LEADERSHIP 14THE 4 INGREDIENTS FOR LEADERS TO GENERATE AND SUSTAIN TRUST 14

FAMOUSLASTWORDS 15

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StructureofthisDocument- Foreword - Warren´s tips in my words for Becoming a Leader - Best Quotes - Appendix

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Foreword

Hello everyone, Thank you for taking the time to read my notes on this book. A very clever decision if I say so myself. J Before you begin acquiring all of the knowledge I have written up here for you, I want to thank Warren Bennis for writing this incredible book. He was a true visionary, an innovator and most importantly of all, an original. His book has motivated and informed me in ways I would have never thought possible. Secondly I would like to thank my father for recommending this great book to me and giving me the chance to write this summary. With these things all said and done I still recommend buying the book and having a quick read through it now and again. Or if you like my notes just read through them when you need some good Warren Bennis wisdom. I hope I could reach more people with this and open your eyes maybe even give you a new perspective. Joshua Roach (aged 16) 17. June 2016

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Warren´stipsinmywordsforbecomingaleader

1. Leaders are made not born 2. Adult learning, never cease to learn 3. Adults learn best when they take charge of their own learning 4. Learning is simply remembering what´s important 5. Psychoanalysis is less a form of healing than a form of learning 6. Becoming the kind of person who is a leader is the ultimate act of

free will, and if you have the will, this is the way 7. Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself 8. Our quality of life depends on the quality of our leaders 9. Our basic needs are economic not political 10. Todays leaders often reinvent themselves periodically in order to

scale new mountains 11. The first step in becoming a leader is to recognize the context for

what it is – a breaker not a maker, a trap, not a landing pad, an end not a beginning – and declare your independence

12. A leader without a vision of where he wants to take his

organization is not a leader 13. Norman Lears success steps:

a) Becoming self expressed b) Listening to the inner voice c) Learning from the right mentors d) Giving oneself over to a guiding vision

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14. Listening and trusting the inner voice against all odds 15. Find out what you are about. Be what you are 16. If we are creatures of our own context, prisoners of habits,

practices, and rules we will be made ineffectual. But we must learn from the people who do not only challenge and conquer the context but who change it in fundamental ways. The first step toward change is to refuse to be deployed by others and to choose to deploy yourself.

17. Leaders never lie to themselves, especially about themselves,

know their faults as well as their assets, and deal with them directly

18. Never trim your principles or ideas to please 19. Leaders have to have learnt to be:

- dedicated - observant - capable of working with and learning from others - never servile - always truthful

20. Leaders are willing to take risks, experiment, try new things. They

embrace errors, knowing they will learn from them. 21. Leaders invent themselves through developing character and

vision 22. Don´t dwell on your limitations, focus on your possibilities 23. Good leaders engage the world. Bad leaders entrap it 24. They fully engage and deploy themselves

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25. A leader innovates and is a original 26. A leader has a long range perspective 27. A Leader asks: “What and Why ?” 28. Writing is the most profound way of codifying your thoughts.

Writing is the best way of learning from yourself who you are and what you believe

29. Applauding yourself for the small successes, and taking the small

bow, are good ways of learning to experience life each moment that you live it. And that’s part of inventing yourself, of creating your own destiny.

30. People begin to become leaders at that moment when they

decide themselves how to be. 31. Leaders learn from others, but they are not made by others 32. True learning begins with unlearning 33. Those who travel farther from home learn even more 34. Real leadership has more to do with recognizing your own

uniqueness than it does with identifying your similarities 35. Leaders learn to lead by leading 36. When everything is working well, that is the moment where you

should reflect 37. As a company we are responsible towards our employees, our

customers, and the community at large. Not only to our shareholders

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38. Having learned from the past, leaders live in the present, with one eye on the future

39. Vision is dynamic, not static, and must be renewed, adapted and

adjusted 40. Think strategically and invest in the future – but keep the numbers

up 41. Be entrepreneurial and take risks – but don’t cost the business

anything by failing 42. Continue to do everything you´re currently doing even better and

spend more time communicating with employees, serving on teams, and launching new projects

43. Know every detail of your business but delegate more

responsibility to others 44. Become passionately dedicated to “visions” and fanatically

committed to carrying them out but be flexible, responsive, and able to change direction quickly

45. Speak up, be a leader, set the direction but be participative, listen

well, cooperate 46. Throw yourself wholeheartedly into the entrepreneurial game and

the long hours it takes and stay fit

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BestQuotes

1. Warren Bennis: “Today there are 304 million Americans and we

wonder every four years, why we can´t find at least two superb candidates for the nations highest office.”

2. Calvin Coolidge: “The business of America is business.” 3. Abigail Adams: “ Great suffering often engenders great

leadership, but pain does not guarantee it.” 4. Richard Ferry: “ Corporate America may talk, on an intellectual

level, about what it´ll take to succeed in the twenty-first century, but when it gets right down to decision making, all that matters is the next quarterly earnings report. That’s what’s driving much of the system. With that mind-set, everything else becomes secondary to the ability to deliver the next quarterly earnings push up. We´re on a treadmill. The reward system in this country is geared on short term.”

5. Warren Bennis: “ Some in America are still addicted to the quick

fix and the fast buck. They haven´t yet realized that the new bottom line is that there is no bottom line – there aren’t any lines, much less limits or logic. Life on this turbulent, complex planet is no longer linear and sequential, one thing logically leading to another. It is spontaneous, contrary, unexpected and ambiguous. Things do not happen according to plan, and they are not reducible to tidy models. We persist in grasping at neat, simple answers, when we should be questioning everything.”

6. Warren Bennis: “Today, the opportunities for leaders are

boundless, but so are the challenges.” 7. Norman Lear: “ First and foremost, find out what it is you are

about, and be that. Be what you are, and don´t lose it … It´s very

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hard to be who we are, because it doesn´t seem to be what anyone wants.”

8. Warren Bennis: “ The leader who communicates passion gives

hope and inspiration to other people.” 9. Warren Bennis: “ 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. “

10. Warren Bennis: “ It is one of the paradoxes of life that good

leaders rise to the top in spite of their weaknesses, while bad leaders rise because of their weaknesses. “

11. Norman Lear: “ The goal isn’t worth arriving at unless you enjoy

the journey.” 12. Warren Bennis: “ If you go on doing what you´ve always done,

you’ll go one getting what you’ve always got.” 13. Gib Akin: “To learn is not to have it is to be.” 14. Warren Bennis: “ The unexamined life is impossible to live

successfully. Like oarsmen, we generally move forward while looking backward, but not until we truly see the past and understand it can we successfully navigate the future.”

15. John Gardner: “ The maturing of any complex talent requires a

happy combination of motivation, character and opportunity.” 16. Warren Bennis: “ Strike hard, try everything, do everything,

render everything, and become the person you are capable of being.”

17. Warren Bennis: “ A thousand things happen in a week to each of

us, but most of us remember the few lapses rather than our triumphs, because we don’t reflect. We merely react.”

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18. Jamie Raskin: “ One of my heroes is a professor at Harvard Law

School named Derek Bell. He told me that it´s more important to have ambitions in terms of the way you want to live your life, and then the other things will flow out of that.”

19. Warren Bennis: “ Whatever it is you want to do, you shouldn’t let

fear get in your way.” 20. Carlos Casteneda: “ The basic difference between an ordinary

man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”

21. Kurt Lewin: “ If you want to truly understand something, try to

change it.” 22. Jacob Bronowski: “ We have to understand that the world can

only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better.”

23. Barbara Corday: “ It´s time to change your life or your work the

moment you stop having butterflies in your stomach.” 24. Norman Lear: “ Everywhere you trip is where the treasure lies.”

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Appendix

Ingredients for becoming a leader

1. Guiding vision (Know what you want to do) 2. Passion (Leaders love what they do !) 3. Integrity (self-knowledge, candour and maturity) 4. Trust ( product of leadership has to be earned) 5. curiosity and daring ( taking risks, learning as much as you can)

A leaders education consists of these things (Which means these are the words most used to describe a real leader) - inductive - tentative - dynamic - understanding - ideas - broad - deep - experiential - active - questions - process - strategy - alternative - exploration - discovery - active - initiative - whole brain - life - long term - change - content

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- flexible - risk - synthesis - open - imagination

The four lessons of self knowledge

1. You are your own best teacher. 2. Accept responsibility. Blame no one. 3. You can learn anything you want to learn. 4. True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience.

Principle components of innovative learning Anticipation = active and imaginative Learning by listening to others Participation = shaping events rather then being shaped by them

Learning from experience means - Looking back at your childhood and adolescence and using what

happened to you then to enable you to make things happen now, so that you become the master of your own life rather than it´s servant.

- Consciously seeking the kinds of experiences in the present that will improve and enlarge you.

- Taking risks as a matter of course, with the knowledge that failure is as vital as it is inevitable.

- Seeing the future – yours and the worlds – as an opportunity to do all those things you have not done and those things that need to be done, rather than as a trial or test.

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Conflicts: Resolution: Blind trust vs. Suspicion Hope Independence vs. Dependence Autonomy Initiative vs. Imitation Purpose Industry vs. Inferiority Competence Identity vs. Confusion Integrity Intimacy vs. Isolation Empathy Generosity vs. Selfishness Maturity Illusion vs. Delusion Wisdom

The means of expression are the steps to leadership 1. Reflection leading to resolution 2. Resolution leading to perspective 3. Perspective leading to point of view 4. Point of view leading to tests and measures 5. Tests and measures leading to desire 6. Desire leading to mastery 7. Mastery leading to strategic thinking 8. Strategic thinking leading to full self-expression 9. The synthesis of full self expression = leadership

The 4 ingredients for leaders to generate and sustain trust 1. Constancy. Whatever surprises leaders themselves may face,

they don’t create any for the group. Leaders are all of a piece, they stay the course.

2. Congruity. Leaders walk their talk. In true leaders, there is no gap between the theories they espouse and the life they practice.

3. Reliability. Leaders are there when it counts, they are ready to support their co-workers in the moments that matter.

4. Integrity. Leaders honour their commitments and promises.

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FamousLastWordsCongratulations on making it to the end of this document. The more experience you get, the more you will I think agree with what Warren Bennis is teaching us. Personally I read through these notes many times to remind myself of their wisdom. As I said at the beginning of this document, this book has inspired and motivated me and I hope you can now see why. And don’t forget, never stop reflecting! Even if that means taking a walk at 2 am in the morning - I mean why not !? Don’t be conquered by fear or society. That´s all I have to say. - Joshua -