Transforming Leadership: The Pursuit of Happiness

With not a lot of political background but a love for reading leadership, I thought this book was excellent. I came away from the book understanding political leadership and the dynamics that are at play. I was really inspired by the call to creative leadership but more so reading the development of the American documents and the leadership that went into it. Great foundational book for political leadership.

Does anyone know who the woman pictured on the cover of this book, directly above the picture of George Washington, and to the left of Woodrow Wilson? Someone really curious. PS. By the way, this is an excellent book on leadership and well worth the time it takes to read it.

Burns has a unique way of weaving the events of History and Leadership Theory by presenting a logical praxis. It is in this unique capability that the reader will find him or herself finding not only a fair and balanced articulation of the events as they occurred but the leadership ramifications incurred as a result. Not shy being a professed liberal he makes the strong argument that the Democratic Party has drastically missed the leadership boat due to the party representative's purpsoseful diluting the message of the liberal stance by having Presidential Leadership for the Democratic Party run alone, basically severing ties with party affiliation while maintaining a clear centrist positon not only through the campaign cycle but throughout the President's Administration. This should come as no surprise as many Americans sense a leadership void in our country which is the result of nothing less than centrist politicians attempting to appease all parties simply in an effort to clinch their respective nominations. Still Burns makes the compelling argument in this volume that transactional leadership (Leading by Dealing: the phrase being mine) is simply not enough to carry through the transformation so needed in our current political landscape. The book is dead on and exposes the dangers involved in this practice while Burns argues the essentiality of leading at a higher level and how these changes take place only through transformational leadership. A caveat pre-emptor is in order here: For those of you seekig a formula for leading at this higher level you simply will not find it. Perhaps this is because Burns believes in the empowerment of people by providing hard core examples throughout the entire landscape of history and perhaps it is for other reasons. However, the end result is the reader comes away with the clear distinctions between transactional and transformation leadership, those in power who utilized such a leaderhip style and the net effect of such leadership. Finally, I found Burns'insistence on conflict being an essential component to real lasting change coupled with this transformational leadership to be quite persuasive and helpful. In addition, Burns consistent focus on the essential interplay berween leaders and followers demonstrates how one as a leader can supercede simplistic and standardized methodologies all pointing to the clear difference between transactional and transformational leadership. One final thought: Be prepared to make a change if your main operating belief is to be a simple broker, horesetrader, or anything of the sort and be prepared to become acquainted with the path least travelled which is longer lasting and influenttial in leader-follower dyadic interactions. Mark Bear

Edit of 22 Dec 07 to add links. This is quite a fine book. It will be especially valuable to that very rare breed of all-source intelligence analyst, those responsible for analyzing foreign leaders, and completely fed up with the sterile "biographic" analysis that lists job titles and honors. The author expands substantially on the very immature but promising field leadership analysis by discussing in detail the concepts and practices of "traits-based" or "value" leadership. The author, himself already established as one of the best writers about leaders and leadership, breaks new ground in exploring the psychology of leadership, and creating a new inter-disciplinary and psychologically-rooted approach to understanding leadership at the national, organizational, and personal levels. He concludes that transformative leadership is all too rare; that it can redirect the fate of nations (Ghandi stands out as an exemplar), and that nurturing true transformative leadership rather than mere industrial-era task-mandating and monitoring leadership, is the core competency for navigating into the 21st Century. The author is especially brutal when his idea are applied to the charismatic or ideologically-purified forms of leadership that pass for Presidential politics today. "At best, charisma is a confusing and undemocratic form of leadership. At worst, it is a form of tyranny." He spends a great deal of time examining the founding fathers of America and the process by which they defined both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitute, and his findings are quite remarkable (especially in light of recent attempts by Republicans in Texas and in the House of Representives to totally silence Democrats and override dissenting votes without voice): 1) The minority is an absolutely essential part of collective learning and the great dialog that leads to sound decisions. Repressing the minority is a prescription for disaster. 2) The pursuit of happiness, rather than property, was very deliberately selected by the founding fathers in order to focus on human values and collective learning, rather than property rights. 3) Rebellion from time to time is a feature, not a fault. "...the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" per John Adams. He specifically focuses on the importance of the loyal opposition as a means of enabling principled change by the majority in the cauldron of informed debate. 4) The right to abolish the U.S. Government is specifically reserved to the American people. The author notes that absolutist ideas inspire revolt, crowds have immeasurable power, and narrow ideologies with ritual tests of orthodoxy are an invitation to popular revolution. After reviewing a number of leaders across history, the author quotes Roosevelt, who said "Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob" and then sets the stage for his concluding section, whi