“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.”
A revista The Economist continua com a publicação de sua série sobre os pensadores em gestão mais influentes do mundo. No dia 25 de julho foi a vez de Warren Bennis. Confira alguns trechos:
“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.
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).
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.”
In ‘Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge’, Bennis lists four competencies that leaders need to develop:
• forming a vision which provides people with a bridge to the future;
• giving meaning to that vision through communication;
• building trust, “the lubrication that makes it possible for organisations to work”;
• searching for self-knowledge and self-regard.”
Veja Também: Série "Os pensadores em gestão mais influentes do mundo" em The Economist: Igor Ansoff
