Still Surprised

An intimate look at the founding father of the modern leadership movement Warren Bennis is an acclaimed American scholar, successful organizational consultant and author, and an expert in the field of leadership. His much awaited memoir is filled with insights about the successes and failures from his long and storied life and career. Bennis' life and career have traversed eight decades of first-hand experience with tumultuous episodes of recent history-from Jewish child in a gentile town in the 30's, a young army recruit in the Battle of the Bulge to a college student in the one of the first progressive precursors to the civil rights movement to a patient undergoing daily psychoanalysis for five years, and later a university provost during the Vietnam protests.

• Reveals the triumphs and struggles of the man who is considered the pioneer in the contemporary field of leadership studies
• Bennis is the author of 27 books including the bestseller On Becoming a Leader

This is first book to examine the extraordinary life of Warren Bennis by the man himself.

PRELUDE IX

1 The Crucible of War 1

2 Launch 23

3 Rites of Passage 51

4 Great Groups 83

5 Fighting the Bull 111

6 Going State 135

7 A Year at Sea 153

8 Coming Home 173

9 The Crucible of Age 199

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 215

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 221

INDEX 223

"As a wonderfully honest reporter, Warren does not hesitate to discuss his disappointments and his mistakes, personal as well as professional. Yet this book has an excitement, an energy, a joie de vivre that is inspiring. As an essentialist, I suspect that Warren was born with an ebullient temperament. And yet at the same time, I must acknowledge that Warren is at the happiest point in his life right now, because the roles that he assumed in the last twenty years-- master teacher, mentor, writer, pundit, and, yes, guru--are the ones into which he has grown. And they have made him what he is, just as surely as he excelled in them because of who he is." (Howard Gardner, The Washington Post, August 11, 2010)

Warren Bennis is distinguished professor of business administration at the University of Southern California. He is chairman of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School. He has also served as president of the University of Cincinnati and provost of SUNY-Buffalo. He lives happily in Santa Monica with his wife, Dr. Grace Gabe.

"The guru of leadership studies, Warren Bennis, has written a delightful memoir that appeals to both mind and soul." —David Gergen, professor and director of the Center for Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School

Still Surprised

IF MANY OF OUR ORGANIZATIONS have become more democratic, more resilient, more adaptable, and more transparent, it is because Warren Bennis has provided much of the intellectual and ethical fuel over the past half-century to our most influential and successful leadership experts and practitioners.

Still Surprised illuminates how the world-changing ideas of Bennis and his colleagues resulted from the searing crucible of their own encounters, events, and experiences—not within a sterile laboratory of ideas. It demonstrates how students of leadership are formed by what they discover about themselves on roads that are opened to them by circumstances—and by the roles they choose to carve out for themselves as a result.

The memoir begins, appropriately, with the surprise of an awkward and confused teenage Warren Bennis being prodded into his first leadership position, in vicious combat during the latter stages of World War II. This child of the depression is then surprised by the opportunity to attend college, thanks to the GI Bill, at the raucous and revolutionary Antioch College. Next come a number of breathtaking roles: working alongside some of the world's most intriguing and celebrated figures, from Cambridge to Calcutta, to reshape organizational life; successfully putting his own theories into practice as a university provost and president; and coaching not only U.S. presidents and top corporate CEOs but successive waves of ambitious young women and men.

This is also a memoir of our times, seen through the prism of Bennis's own development during crucial inflection points of recent decades. His own medley of insecurity, hard work, determination to invent a new life, and growing capacity to engage others all came into play amidst transformations within our society.

The art of leading well is not based on quick formulas for moving people, Bennis has noted; it flows from becoming an integrated person, one who is able to discover and define—and redefine—oneself in the face of surprises and challenges. The annals of modern leadership would be incomplete if our foremost authority on leadership had not detailed his own journey of self-discovery, as he finally does here—to the delight of devotees and admirers around the globe.