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Warren Gamaliel Bennis (March 8, 1925 – July 31, 2014) was an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of Leadership studies. Center for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Fall 2005 Center for Excellence in Teaching , University of Southern California Bennis was University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. USC Experts Directory , University of Southern California
"His work at MIT in the 1960s on group behavior foreshadowed – and helped bring about – today's headlong plunge into less hierarchical, more democratic and adaptive institutions, private and public," management expert Tom Peters wrote in 1993 in the foreword to Bennis' An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change.
Management expert James O'Toole, in a 2005 issue of Compass, published by Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, claimed that Bennis developed "an interest in a then-nonexistent field that he would ultimately make his own—leadership—with the publication of his 'Revisionist Theory of Leadership'Bennis, W.G. (1961), "Revisionist theory of leadership", Harvard Business Review, Vol. 39 in Harvard Business Review in 1961." Center for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Fall 2005 O'Toole observed that Bennis challenged the prevailing wisdom by showing that humanistic, democratic-style leaders are better suited to dealing with the complexity and change that characterize the leadership environment.
Following his military service, Bennis enrolled in Antioch College in 1947, where he earned his BA in 1951. In 1952, Bennis was awarded an Honors Certificate from London School of Economics, and Hicks Fellow from MIT. Antioch president Douglas McGregor, considered one of the founders of the modern democratic management philosophy, would take Bennis on as a protégé, a scholarly relationship that would prove fruitful when both later served as professors at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Bennis earned his PhD from MIT in 1955, majoring in Social Sciences and Economics. There, Bennis would hold the post of chairman of the Organizational Studies Department.Bennis, Warren, "Managing the Dream," Chapter 16, pages 199-211, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000
Bennis chose to return to the life of a teacher, consultant and author following a heart attack in 1979, joining the faculty of the University of Southern California. Most of the best-known of his 27 books followed, including the bestselling Leaders and On Becoming A Leader, both translated into 21 languages.Bennis,, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000 An Invented Life was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. More recent books, Organizing Genius, 1997, Co-Leaders, 1999, and Managing The Dream, 2000, summarize Bennis's interests in leadership, judgment, organizational change and creative collaboration. Geeks & Geezers, 2002, examines the differences and similarities between leaders thirty years and younger and leaders seventy years and older. He was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa in 2002 while at USC.
Bennis spent time as an adviser to four United States presidents and several other public figures, and has also consulted for numerous FORTUNE 500 companies. Center for Excellence in Teaching , University of Southern California
He spent time on the faculties of Harvard and Boston University and taught at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), INSEAD and IMD. In addition to his posts at USC, Bennis served as chairman of the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School. He was a visiting professor of leadership at the University of Exeter (UK) and a senior fellow at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research.
His work On Becoming a Leader, originally published in 1989, lays the foundation that a leader must be authentic, i.e. author of one's own creation;Bennis, W. (2009), On Becoming a Leader, New Youk: Basic Books, p47-48 a combination of experience, self-knowledge, and personal ethics. This need for an effective leader to remain true to their self-invention would be further expanded upon by others into what has become known as the authentic leadership approach.Carpenter, M. (2010), Principles of Management, Irvington: Flat World Knowledge, p273
Bennis created the Warren Bennis Leadership Institute (WBLI) at the University of Cincinnati, where he was the 22nd president. The WBLI teaches core values in becoming a leader, based on the idea that leaders are made.
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