218 pages. $17.50.This month’s book summary is a letter to my son, Sam, currently a freshman theatre student at the University of Northern Colorado. While he was in high school, he was often challenged by a failure to manage his schoolwork. (That’s a nice way of saying he didn’t pay attention to deadlines, and too often decided to reinterpret his assignments.) However, he also attended the annual meeting of the International Thespian Society in Lincoln, Nebraska, as the sole representative of his high school, and was elected chairman of the national student organization. In that capacity, he traveled extensively across the country to participate in meetings and present at conferences, choosing to focus much of his efforts on fund- and friends-raising for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
My dear Sam:
As I read Warren Bennis’On Becoming A Leader, I found myself thinking of you. At first, I thought his ideas were ones I would simply like to share with you. Bennis, a former university president, professor, and author of many books, writes thoughtfully and intelligently about leadership, not only from a business perspective, but also from the perspective of leaders in the arts and politics. As I continued reading, I came to better understand and appreciate your gifts. I realized that your life experiences (as much as any 18-year-old’s can be) are those shared by leaders, and that you already have many of the traits that make a leader. I think you will find that Bennis still has a lot to offer you, as you begin to navigate your way through the adult world.
After telling us why leaders are important (responsibility for effectiveness, serving as anchors, providing integrity) and reminding us that leaders are not managers, Bennis discusses the importance of knowing oneself and being responsible for oneself in terms of education, actions, and reflection. Bennis then launches into a chapter on “Knowing the World” in which he discusses the importance of a broad education, coupled with a native curiosity. (He also mentions dominating mothers, but we won’t go there, right?) Bennis discusses the importance of an intellectual life, travel, friends and mentors, and adversity. Sam, you’ll like this quote Bennis includes from John Cleese: “It’s self-evident that if we can’t take the risk of saying or doing something wrong, our creativity goes right out the window. . . . The essence of creativity is not the possession of some special talent, it is much more the ability to play.”
The central chapters in Bennis’ book outline key tools that a leader needs: good instincts, a willingness to try everything, an ability to deal with change, and a capacity to working with people. Although Bennis identifies lots of troubling elements in our world today, his words reverberate with a sense of hope, along with the importance of integrity and ethics. In his introduction, he outlines four essential competencies that a leader must have. First, there’s that vision thing. If you don’t have the big idea (or better yet, ideas), why do you want to be the leader anyway? Then, he says, leaders must have a distinctive voice. I struggled to understand what Bennis meant by this for a while. Did this mean a big personality, I wondered? Further in the book, he explains that leading from voice requires trust, which is built by consistency, congruity, reliability, and integrity. Third, Bennis writes that leaders must have integrity (seems like this reinforces the voice business, but I appreciate also acknowledging this issue separately). Finally, Bennis writes that leaders must have adaptive capacity. Here is where Bennis requires leaders to deal with change, both quickly and intelligently.
Toward the end of the book, Bennis outlines his advice to young executives. He says: 1) Take advantage of every opportunity; 2) Aggressively search for meaning; and 3) Know yourself. I could only wish that mothers gave such sage advice.
Love you,
Mom
About the Author: Warren Bennis is a Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is a former university professor, consultant to multinational corporations, and the author of more othan 30 books on leadership.
Questions:
1. Are you willing to wear a sombrero?
2. Do you agree that life is no longer linear? Was it ever?
3. Bennis names four characteristics of leaders: vision, voice, integrity and adaptive capacity. Would you add anything else?
4. What does it mean to you when Bennis says that trust resides between doubt and faith?
5. Former CBS executive Barbara Corday tells Bennis that gender matters in terms of empathy, and in the way leaders see power (p. 146). Do you think there is a gender difference?
6. In Chapter 9, "Organizations Can Help -- or Hinder," Bennis lists a number of pivotal forces: technology, global interdependence, mergers and acquisitions, deregulation and regulation; and demographics and values. Which of these pertain to libraries? How should library leaders be addressing them?
7. How much of a leader is the personality, and how much is the vision? Bennis acknowledges that sometimes leaders need to leave an organization, if they are not able to lead ethically, and if their vision is no longer relevant. If a person is to be a leader, are they ultimately tied to to the vision, the organization, or to themselves?
A Short Webography:
Summaries and Reviews
www.bizsum.com/OnBecomingALeader.htm
The BusinessSummaries website is a pretty good of the first edition of the book. Andrew Gibbons, a management developer from Gloucester, UK, wrote the summary. It is available on his website at:
www.andrewgibbons.co.uk/documents/BECOMING_002.doc.
www.butler-bowdon.com/onbecoming.html
This is the website, 50 Classics, which has another summary of the first edition.
Here’s a review on Epinions:
www99.epinions.com/content_182715190916
www.amazon.com/Becoming-Leader-Leadership-Classic-Updated-Expanded/dp/0738208175
This Amazon entry has lots of info on recent edition, including 22 consumer reviews, as well as several book list summaries.
Biographical Info on Bennis
Basic resume info on Bennis can be found at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Bennis.
From the USC Trojan Family Magazine, a collection of articles printed in 2000 on Waren Bennis. You can begin with “Leading Man: A Festschrift for Warren Bennis” and find additional links at
www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family/autumn00/Bennis/Bennis.html.
A Little More Bennis
Here’s an essay by Bennis, “The Leadership Advantage.” It is not from the book, but has lots of good food for thought: www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/L2L/spring99/bennis.html
