Why Leaders Can't Lead

WARREN G. BENNIS is Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California. He is coauthor of the best-selling book Leaders (over 200,000 copies sold) and other seminal works. Bennis has been a university president and adviser to four U.S. presidents. He is now a leading corporate consultant.

"Warren Bennis is one of the most perceptive and experienced writers on leadership and management....The book is full of lively insights expressed in vivid terms." --John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare "Only Warren Bennis has the unique combination of thirty years' study of leaders and leadership and twenty years' practical experience as COO and CEO of large and difficult organizations that makes Why Leaders Can't Lead the best book on how leaders can lead." --Peter Drucker "Warren Bennis is one of the most perceptive and experienced writers on leadership and management. . . . He knows a lot about why our common efforts don't work and how they might be made to work. The book is full of lively insights expressed in vivid terms." --John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and founding chairman of Common Cause "This is vintage Bennis! Bennis at his best!" --Robert TownsAnd, author of Up the Organization and Further Up the Organization

• Preface xiThe Author xviiPart One: The Unconscious Conspiracy and How to Confound It 11 One Job, One Year, One Life 32 Learning Some Basic Truisms About Leadership 143 The New Metaphysics of Our Age 25Part Two: A Society Without Dreams 314 The Long Slide from True Leadership 335 Back to the Future 426 The age of Unreality 507 Where Have All the Leaders Gone? 59Part Three: Parts of the Problem 678 Bosses as Heroes and Celebrities 699 When There Are Too Many Chiefs 7610 Bottom-Line Obsessions 8111 Untapped Human Capital 8612 The Perils of Accord 9013 The Pornography of Leadership 9414 When Winning Is Losing 9815 The Name of the Game is Greed 102Part Four: Parts of the Solution 10516 Leading to Make a Difference 10717 A Bright Future for Complexity 11218 Letting Virtues Shine Through 11619 Quitting on Principle 12120 Canceling the Doppelganger Effect 13721 Leader Power That No One Has 14222 Avoiding Disaster During Periods of Change 14723 Dealing with the Way Things Are 152Postscript 160Index 161