Biographical Information

Warren Bennis

Bennis has devoted more than six decades to understanding and sharing the effective practice of the art of leadership, authoring or co-authoring 27 books on leadership, change and management including the best sellers, Leaders and On Becoming a Leader. Bennis is also well known for his distinction between managers and leaders from the management classic, On Becoming a Leader: “Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing.”

Warren Bennis is a distinguished professor and founding chairman of The Leadership Institute at The Marshall School of Business at The University of Southern California and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.

In the 1950s at the Sloan School of Management, Bennis was a protégé of Douglas McGregor and later became Chairman of the Organizations Studies Department at M.I.T. He also has taught at Harvard and Boston Universities. Later he was Executive Vice President of the State University of New York-Buffalo and President of the University of Cincinnati. He has published over 900 articles and two of his books earned the coveted McKinsey Award for The Best Book on Management. He has served in an advisory capacity for the past six U.S. presidents and consulted to many corporations and agencies in the United Nations.

Awarded 11 honorary degrees, Bennis has also received numerous awards including the Distinguished Service Award of the American Board of Professional Psychologists and the Perry L. Rohrer Consulting Practice Award of the American Psychological Association.

Now over eighty, Warren Bennis still runs most mornings before work. His intellectual energy and output remain formidable. He is a humanist with high hopes for humanity. “I think that every person has to make a genuine contribution in their lives and the institution of work is one of the main vehicles to achieving this,” he has said. “I'm more and more convinced that individual leaders can create a human community that will, in the long run, lead to the best organizations.”

Believed by many to be the world's most influential, brilliant and creative thinker in the subject of leadership, Bennis is a soft spoken but powerful teacher and coach-his humility, candor, humor, and storytelling talents remain unmatched.

Speaking softly while sharing insights through stories-Warren Bennis continues to keep hundreds in an audience riveted to his every word.

The Groh Productions, Real People Real Stories™ new film series of his life's work will capture the genuine warmth, intimacy and depth of Warren Bennis' unique personality and character-blending it with theories and outlines of his timeless time-tested leadership competencies.

Click here for an excerpt from Learning to Lead by Dr. Warren Bennis

George Kohlrieser
George Kohlrieser is an organizational and clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IMD-International in Switzerland and consultant to global organizations around the world. He specializes in organizational development, conflict management, team building, and stress management. He is also a Police Psychologist and Hostage Negotiator focusing on aggression management and hostage negotiations.

Professor Kohlrieser is founder and director of Shiloah International, a consultancy offering integrated programs to a wide range of organizations. He has worked in some eighty-five countries in North and South America, Eastern and Western Europe, Middle East, Asia, India, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Kohlrieser completed his doctorate at Ohio State University. He is past president of the International Transactional Analysis Association, San Francisco, California. In addition, George is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, adjunct faculty member of Union Graduate School, Antioch, Ohio, adjunct faculty member of Fielding Institute San Francisco, California, adjunct faculty member of Zagreb University, Croatia. He has consulted for the BBC, CNN, ABC, and CBS and appeared on many radio programs. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and other leading newspapers and magazines. Among the many global organizations for whom he has presented programs and provided on going consultation: Accenture, Cisco, Coca-Cola, HP, IBM, IFC, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, Nestlé, Nokia, Roche, Tetra Pak, Toyota.

He currently resides in Basel, Switzerland.

His book, Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance, is being published by Jossey Bass in June 2006.