By James MacGregor Burns
So, you want to know about leadership? James MacGregor Burns says, "Pull up a chair, we're going to be here awhile!"
About the author:
James MacGregor Burns (1918-2014) was a historian and political scientist, a Pulitzer-Prize presidential biographer (FDR:Soldier of Freedom, 1970), and prolific author. Burns earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard. He was a decorated combat historian in WWII. Burns taught at Williams College his entire 40-year career. His book, Leadership, is credited with launching the popular study of the subject.
The book in a sentence (or two):
Don’t be quick to call someone “a leader.” It is not a title, but a complex interchange between leaders and followers, often rooted (exposed and invigorated) in conflict, that seeks change that meets enduring needs.
Why did Burns write Leadership?
Leadership is a lot more complex (and complicated) than most people think. Folks need to grasp the breadth and complexity of this important topic. In his book, Burns writes, "Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth. Leadership begins earlier, operates more widely, takes more forms, pervades more sectors of society, and lasts longer in the lives of most persons than has been generally recognized." These words, penned at the beginning and conclusion of his mammoth work, provide an apt introduction to this classic, Leadership. 19, 427
The author's central purpose
The author's central purpose is to generalize about leadership processes across cultures and across time. He does not ignore the "great man" theory, he moves past it; past pithy sayings, and one-theory experts, past just power and coercion. Burns writes:
I hope to demonstrate that the processes of leadership must be seen as part of the dynamics of conflict and power: that leadership is nothing if not linked to collective purpose; that the effectiveness of leaders must be judged not by their pressing clippings but by actual social change measured by intent and by the satisfaction of human needs and expectations; that political leadership depends on a long chain of biological and social processes, of interaction with structures of political opportunity and closures, of interplay between the calls of moral principles and the recognized necessities of power . . .
I think John Gardner's work, On Leadership is one of the most insightful, but Burns is without comparison (in my study), the most thorough.
My quick take on Leadership:
Burns is a master. His work is broad and deep. Unlike most popular works, the author will take us to different times, different cultures, examining leadership from differing perspectives. In doing so, Burns helps us better understand this phenomena we call leadership
Overview: Burns divides Leadership into five parts:
Part 1: Leadership: Power and Purpose: We must see power--and leadership—not as things but as relationships. We must analyze power in a context of human motives and physical constraints. (11)
Part 2 - Origins of Leadership: Burns dives into the psychological aspects of leaders and leadership. Leadership is psychological, social, and forged in the crucible of contextual factors.
Part 3 - Transformational Leadership: An interesting treatment of reform vs revolutionary leadership and an analysis of some of the "great men" who pursued both.
Part 4 - Transactional Leadership: This theory “conceives of leader and follower as exchanging gratifications in political marketplace. They are bargainers seeking to maximize their political and psychic profits” (258). Burns sees these exchanges as often superficial and temporary. He examines the transactional nature of politics, bureaucracies, parties, and executive Leadership.
Part 5 - Implications: Theory and Practice: This is the “practical side” of Leadership. Burns provides the “how to” for exerting influence as a leader. We must ask four questions of ourselves: (1) “Why Am I leading?” Clarify your personal goal, i.e. What’s your purpose in this? (2) "Who am I seeking to lead?" You must understand your potential followers. (3) Where are we going? The ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended, real change that meets people's enduring needs. (4) How will we overcome obstacles to our goals? Keep an eye on one's motivations and own propensity to go sideways (460-461).
Analysis and Review:
Let’s start with leadership. What is leadership?
"Leadership is leaders influencing followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the motivations -- the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations -- of both leaders and followers" (19, 51). Burns will devote much time to differentiating between transactional leadership, a leadership of exchange (a vote for a job), and transformational leadership, a leadership that speaks to the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations -- of both leaders and followers (Gandhi, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr). Transformational leaders look to lift their followers to a higher level by meeting the needs of both leaders and followers and by engaging the whole person.
Burns will also address moral leadership. This is the leadership that concerns him the most. "Moral leadership is not mere preaching, or the uttering of pieties, or the insistence on social conformity. Moral leadership emerges from, and always returns to, the fundamental wants and needs, aspirations, and values of the followers. I mean the kind of leadership that can produce social change that will satisfy followers' authentic needs" (4).
The author devotes significant time to analyzing leadership psychologically, socially, even morally but perhaps the portion that was most insightful for me was the emphasis he places on the importance of conflict in leadership.
Conflict--disagreement over goals with an array of followers, fear of outsiders, competition for scarce resources--immensely invigorates the mobilization of consensus and dissensus. But the fundamental process is a more elusive one; it is, in large part, to make conscious what lies unconscious among followers (40).
Burns work is masterful. He is “deep and wide.” The fault line in Leadership as I see it, is his evaluative "go-to," i.e. psychological analysis. I found this treatment helpful, but lacking a theological perspective (usually) Burns misses a very significant influence, THE significance influence -- God. At times leadership is not something one pursues, but something SOMEONE conveys on “the leader.” I think of David getting pulled from a sheep pen to be the leader of God's people.
I felt Burns “under the sun approach” in his treatment of the reformer, Martin Luther.
Some of the Luther's early years has been crucial to his leader development. There is some, as it evidenced discipline in the family was harsh …; was his later rebellion against the holy father in Rome simply a projection of early hostility against the stern, overworked father at home? . . . do early Oedipal relations explain later Luther? Or is the rebellious Luther to be traced back to even more fundamental psychological factors, such as those Erik Erikson has explored so brilliantly in his study of the young men? Marxist historians stress . . . . And philosophers and theologians stress . . .(204)
My second pushback on Leadership is that it felt for me -- at times -- too theoretical. Burns is such a towering intellect that his theory needed a little more "praxis" at times. It was refreshing when he utilized a historical figure whether President or world leader or unknown to make his point, and such illustrative examples helped his argument.
If I set aside his preference for the psychological over all else, and give myself the time to absorb his theory, this work is marvelous.
My Takeaways/Lessons Learned:
1. Can leadership be taught? Yes, when both education and leadership "are defined as the reciprocal raising of levels of motivation rather than indoctrination or coercion" (448).
2. Embrace the important role of conflict in leadership: "Leaders, whatever their professions of harmony, do not shun conflict; the confront it, exploit it, ultimately embody it. . . . shape as well as express and mediate conflict." (39, 351, 428) "The sharper the conflict, the larger the role of leaders will tend to be" (429, cf 431).
3. The first task of leadership: Like Max De Pree (a business contemporary of Burns) said, the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. Burns calls this "bringing to consciousness" the follower's sense of their own needs, values, and purposes (41). Leaders practice conscious raising.
4. The most potent force in leadership development: "Learning from experience, learning from people, learning from successes and failures, learning from leaders and followers: personality is formed in these reactions to stimuli in social environments" (63).
5. Patience with late bloomers: "Tommy did not learn the written alphabet until he was nice, enter school until ten, or learn to read easily until eleven--all this despite the Doctor's (his father) intensive effort to teach the boy at home and to inspire him in church" (102). About Thomas Woodrow Wilson.
6. The best leaders have this in common: "I suggest that the most marked characteristic of self-actualizers as potential leaders...is their capacity to learn from others and from the environment--the capacity to be taught. Self-actualization ultimately means the ability to lead by being led" (117).
7. Leaders set goals! While this may seem obvious, Burns notes that not setting goals is a sign of "faltering leadership" because "all leadership is goal oriented," successful leadership points in a direction " 455. Without goals, a leader is a manager. "All leadership is goal-oriented. The failure to set goals is a sign of faltering leadership" 455.
8. Before the immortals: I appreciate the credit Burns gives (and his awareness of) the people who wrote a generation or two before "the immortals of 1776 and 1787." He notes, "the immortals count not have done without them." (154) This is a truism of life. See also pages 218-219 on "what history neglects."
9. Negative and Positive Liberty: Negative liberty: Liberty from oppressive government. It attacks "the elites" for the sake of protecting the masses. Positive liberty: Harnesses government for the people, not to build their own fiefdom. (164ff)
10. The challenge of reform movements: "Of all the kinds of leadership that require exceptional political skill, the leadership of reform movement must be among the most exacting. Revolutionary leadership demands commitment, persistence, courage, perhaps selflessness and even self-abnegation (the ultimate sacrifice for solipsistic leadership). Pragmatic, transactional leadership requires a shrewd eye for opportunity, a good hand a bargaining, persuading, reciprocating. Reform may needs these qualities, but it demands much more. Since reform efforts usually require the participation of a large number of allies with various reform and nonreform goals of their own, reform leaders must deal with endless divisions within their own ranks. While revolutionaries usually recognize the need for leadership, an anti-leadership doctrine often characterizes and taunts reform programs." (169, see also 202ff, 217) I appreciate this especially in light of the challenge of "the tenacious inertia of existing institutions." (200; see 239 on revolutionary leadership).
11. Look to great principles, not great men. (178)
12. Leadership: Foxes and hedgehogs. Some leaders are like a fox who knows "many things," some are like the hedgehog "who knows one big thing." A rare few are both. (228) He said this in reference to Lenin.
13. "Be a pupil before you become a teacher; learn from cadres at lower levels before you issue orders."Mao, 238
14. Second generation leadership: Revolutions seems to produce first generations of leaders who not only represent but embody the higher ends of the cause; who else could have led their revolutions than Lenin, Mao, Bolivar, Castro, Ho Chi Minh? The test is the second generation of leadership--the Jeffersons, Nehrus---and the extent to which the original human purposes of revolution have been perverted in the drive for power." (240)
15. The most difficult problem faced by leaders: Reconciling divergent groups of which the same person may in effect be leader. As a result conflict takes place within such leaders as well as among the groups, classes, or constituencies sustaining them." 261 (LBC)
16. The paradox of leadership: Leaders are followers and as such must distinguish the leadership of opinion from leadership by opinion." (265); "We are reminded once again that leadership and followership are inseparable and that neither role can be imputed to a politician on the basis of outward appearance alone or of a single episode." 357
17. Planning for structural change: "Planning for structural change, whether of the system or in the system, is the ultimate moral test of decision-making leadership inspired by certain goals and values and intent on achieving real social change; it is also the leader's most potent weapon." (419) The most difficult task leaders face is changing institutions. "For institution are encapsulated within social structures that are themselves responses to earlier needs, values , and goals. In seeking to change social structures in order to realize new values and purposes, leaders go far beyond the politicians who merely cater to surface attitudes. To elevate the goals of humankind, to achieve high moral purpose, to realize major intended change, leaders must thrust themselves into the most intractable processes and structures of history and ultimately master them." 421
18. When leaders fail to act like leaders: Leaders who appeal to followers with simplistic slogans such as Equality, Progress, Liberty, Justice, Order are neither offering a guide to followers on where leaders really stand nor mobilizing followers to seek explicit objectives; they are seeking the widest possible consensus on the basis of the thinnest--or least thoughtful consensus. They are not acting as leaders as we have defined leadership." 432
Quotes worth quoting:
1. Conflict: Conflict is at least as crucial to politics as consensus." (85) "The catalyst that converts . . . generalized needs into specific intellectual leadership is " (142)
2. Government: If men were angels, no government would be necessary." James Madison (156)
3. Reform vs Revolution: "The very nature of reform narrows the strategic choices. 'The reformer operates on parts where the revolutionist operates on wholes."H.M. Kallen (170)
4. The leader's ultimate success: "The ultimate success of the leaders is tested not by people delight in a performance or personality but by actual social change measured by the ideologists' purposes, programs, and values." 249
5. Leadership, an affair of the group: "Leadership is not an affair of the individual leader. It is fundamentally an affair of the group." Arthur Bentley 303
6. Definition of a liberal: Liberalism is "the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has every resounded in the planet. It announced the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak." Ortega Gasset, 311
7. Leaders inspire people when: "Whatever the source of the leader's ideas, he cannot inspire his people unless he expresses vivid goals which in some sense they want. Of course, the more closely he meets their needs, the less 'persuasive' he has to be; but in no case does it make sense to speak as if his role is to force submission. Rather it is to strengthen and uplift, to make people feel that they are origins, not the pawns, of the social-political system." 437
8. Leadership vs Naked Power: "Paradoxically, it is the exercise of leadership rather than that of "naked power" that can have the most comprehensive and lasting causal influence as measured by real change. . . . There is nothing so power-full, nothing so effective, nothing so causal as common purpose if that purpose informs all levels of a political system. Leadership mobilizes, naked power coerces. . . . Nothing can substitute for common purpose, focused by competition and combat, and aided by time.
Conclusion:
So how does this leadership discussion impact me, average Joe? Burns writes, "The most lasting and pervasive leadership of all is intangible and noninstitutional. It is the leadership of influence fostered by ideas embodied in social or religious or artistic movements, in books, in great seminal documents, in the memory of great lives greatly lived." 455
Burns is, for me, one of those lives greatly lived. His grasp of history, of cultural influences, the breadth of his study, and the scope of his examination is impressive. He helped me see the need to add power (not coercive but relational) and conflict to my own leadership frame. He sees leadership, as Joseph Rost does in Leadership For The 21st Century as that which brings real change that represents the "values and the motivations . . . of both leaders and followers." (19)
I appreciate his narrow focus, but broad contextual approach. This is a long and complicated read, but a thorough treatment of an important topic. Burns says, "In no society are there leaders without followers or followers without leaders," and "leaders and followers exchange roles over time (134). Then both leaders and followers would benefit from a careful look at his masterful assessment.
Traditional notions of leadership are so dominated by presidents, prime ministers, sports figures, and Hollywood "influencers" that "we may forget the vast preponderance of personal influence is exerted quietly and subtly in everyday relationships." 442
The author piqued my curiosity about these books:
1. On Liberty by John Stewart Mill (160)
1. Southern Politics by V.O. Key, Jr. 1949
