Warren Bennis

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' in Harvard Business Review in 1961." 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.

Warren Bennis studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Antioch University and Antioch College. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and University of Southern California. Distinctions recorded are Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart.

• Name — Warren Bennis • Birth Name — Warren Gamaliel Bennis • Born — 8 March 1925 • Birthplace — New York City, New York, U.S. • Died — 31 July 2014 • Place of death — Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Occupation — * University Professor, Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, Founding Chairman, The Leadership Institute, University of Southern California • Provost, SUNY-Buffalo • President Emeritus, University of Cincinnati • Consultant, various Fortune 500 Companies • Chairman, BOD, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government Center for Public Leadership • Spouse — Clurie Williams Bennis, (m. 1962, div. 1980), Grace Gabe (m. November 29, 1992) • Children — Katharine Bennis, John Leslie Bennis, Will Martin Bennis

Bennis was born in The Bronx and grew up within a working-class Jewish family in Westwood, New Jersey, before enlisting in the United States Army in 1943. He would go on to serve as one of the Army's youngest infantry officers in the European theater of operations, and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. 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.

Within the area of management, Bennis sought to move from theory to practice in 1967, taking the post of provost of the State University of New York at Buffalo and the presidency of the University of Cincinnati in 1971. He authored two books on leadership during his presidency: The Leaning Ivory Tower, 1973, and The Unconscious Conspiracy: Why Leaders Can't Lead, 1976. 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. 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. 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.

The Wall Street Journal named him one of the top ten most sought speakers on management in 1993; Forbes magazine referred to him as the "dean of leadership gurus" in 1996. The Financial Times referred to him in 2000 as "the professor who established leadership as a respectable academic field." In August, 2007, Business Week ranked him as one of the top ten thought leaders in business. 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; 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. 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.

He was employed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, University of Southern California, MIT Sloan School of Management and University of Cincinnati.

Warren Bennis is recorded as having received Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart.