Warren Bennis: Q & A on Today's Leadership.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.
• Position: Leadership - Interview

Following October's joint virtual chapter meeting of FEI and the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), FE caught up with Warren Bennis to ask some of the questions that didn't get asked.

Dr. Bennis is internationally known as a guru on leadership. In what he calls his 25-year "lifelong odyssey," he's interviewed in depth 150 of the world's greatest leaders. From the research, he's developed insights that he shares in publications (articles and more than 25 books), with students (as Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California) and as a consultant to multinational clients in all industries.

Q: Talk about leadership for different times. How different is leadership -- leading our country in the new war, or leading the growth of business organizations through the stages they go through?

Bennis: It's like playing chords on a piano. There are certain contextual or cultural things, or things about the arc of an organization that would pull from a good leader a different set of chords or keys that [in] another time wouldn't be played. During a time of crisis, for example, New York City's Mayor Rudy Giuliani is a good example of someone who rose to the occasion -- while at other times during his course as mayor he wouldn't have been that way.

Besides that, there are five traits I believe all leaders have -- under all conditions. [Like] the basic chords or basic notes, these factors have to be there at all times:

1. Leaders must provide direction and meaning to their staff.

2. Leaders have to convey some sense of optimism and hope.

3. Leaders have to generate and sustain trust.

4. Leaders have to engage followers in shared meaning.

5. Leaders have to show results.

Those five things -- regardless of context, or the arc of where the organization is at any given time -- are the "givens." Certain things are quite different when leading a team; a group of creative or research types; a major league football, basketball or baseball team. And, while the five points above are essential, they're not [the only] sufficient requirements, characteristics and qualities of terrific leadership.

Q: What, then, would you say it takes to sustain leadership to make it last though the environment changes?

Bennis: The main thing is to develop terrific leaders. In other words, leaders have to be leaders of leaders. You primarily sustain this by developing leaders within the organization who can carry on. Every organization...