Transforming Leadership by Burns

Ref: James Burns (2003). Transforming Leadership. Atlantic Books. ISBN: 978-1843541684.

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Summary­

  • Leaders take the initiative in mobilizing people for participation in the processes of change, encouraging a sense of collective identity and collective efficacy, which in turn brings stronger feelings of self worth and self-efficacy....This is called empowerment. Instead of exercising power over people, transforming leaders champion and inspire followers.

  • Empowering people to pursue happiness for themselves is what it’s all about.

  • Empowering leaders not only take the initiative in engaging with followers, as all leaders must do. They also engage creatively, in a fashion that recognizes, and responds to, the material wants of potential followers and their psychological wants for self-determination and self-development.

  • The wanting person initially suffers not only material but also psychological and spiritual deprivation, feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness, and powerlessness. Nothing seems to work, and nothing can be done about it. But as possibilities appear and are realized, feelings of efficacy are nourished. A sense of empowerment fuels the pursuit of happiness. The “desire for self-fulfillment” is activated, which Abraham maslow described as people's need to develop “to the full stature of which they are capable.” As individuals draw together into action to achieve their needs, their collective efficacy unites them into a transforming force that may surpass the causal role of the original leadership. In this way people make change and eventually make history.

  • At its simplest, creative leadership begins when a person imagines a state of affairs not presently existing. This initial creative insight or spark is elaborated into a broader vision of change, possible ways of accomplishing it are conceived, and- in a fateful act of leadership- the vision is communicated to others. Because most ideas of significant change make some persons followers and others opponents, conflict arises. It is such conflicts that supply powerful motivation for transforming leadership and followership, fusing them into a dynamic force in pursuit of change.

  • It may be simple to ask people: “What would make you happier?”

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Leadership

  • No leader can truly lead if he cannot respond to the wants of his followers, if she fails to elevate and empower them. No leader can truly lead if lacking in the ability to produce intended change through creative innovation. No leader can lead without seeing that conflict is not only inevitable but often desirable; leaders cannot be effective in the long run if they are simply power holders- rulers- and fail to see the moral and ethical implications of their work.

  • Nothing strengthens the motivational power of efficacy like success. Persons with a high feeling of efficacy have great confidence in their ability to make changes, to remain committed to goals, to overcome difficulties and failures, to exercise control. Those with little conviction that they have the capacity to master their fate characteristically lack the motivation to try.

  • A leader not only speaks to immediate wants but elevates people by vesting in them a sense of possibility, a belief that changes can be made and that they can make them.

  • Standards of leadership:

    • Virtue: "Old fashioned" norms of conduct- habits of action- such as chastity, sobriety, cleanliness, honesty in personal relationships, self-control- normally developed early in life, especially in the home.  

    • Ethics: Reflects modes of more formal and transactional conduct- integrity, promise keeping, trustworthiness, reciprocity, accountability- the golden rule. 

    • Values: Lofty public principles such as order, liberty, equality, justice, the pursuit of happiness.

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Political Leadership

  • The first test of an aspiring democracy is the acceptance, by the politicians in power, of an organized opposition.

  • The greatest appeal of rulers is that they will restore and maintain order, safeguard people's security, protect the survival of the state. Continued progress depends on their ability to stay closely attuned to the evolving wants, needs, and expectations of followers- in short, to learn from and be led by followers.

  • As children are exposed to broadening circles of influence, the legitimation of wants and needs falls increasingly to teachers, peers, clergy, media, employers, government, and ultimately society. Needs are social, and the conflicts over their legitimacy, their meaning, their extent, their satisfaction, take political form. More than anything else, wants and needs motivate leaders and followers to struggle for social change. They are the powerhouses of leadership.

  • The test of a democracy is the acceptance of majority rule and minority rights. The majority’s right to govern is matched and validated by the minority’s right to oppose and struggle to replace it.”

  • FDR’s brilliant leadership was decisive in remodeling his constituencies and realigning his followers. He not merely followed public opinion- he came to dominate it by recognizing the dire wants of the population, legitimating them in speech after speech as proper demands on government, and responding to economic and social needs in the transforming legislation.

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Conflict

  • “Conflict begins in the never-ending struggle among individuals and groups for greater shares of scarce resources, that is, for satisfying material wants.  If and when these wants are recognized and satisfied, powerful new social and psychological wants arise, including drives for status and power. These, too, are scarce commodities in a competitive world;  hence the willingness of some to turn to force of arms when they cannot realize their aims through peaceful economic and political action.”

  • Conflict among peoples is not only accepted as inevitable but viewed as essential to the process of change.

  • Conflict is crucial to creativity, as when new insights are tested and refined in the struggle to dislodge habitual patterns of thought.

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Founding Fathers

  • Many Americans’ favored checks on officeholders and popular majorities for a simple reason: they fervently believed in liberty and they fervently believed that government was the main threat to it.

  • “Give us our bread” vs. Boston tea Party: The people of America and France did almost the exact same thing at the same time. In France there was no constitution, no checks/balances. The National Assembly was left unchecked.

  • “How to allot power on the one hand to kings and dictators, presidents and premiers, and, on the other, to the people, the citizens, the voters?” The Answer to Kings and Monarchs and Dictators and internal strife is presidential terms, checks and balances, and a party systems to peacefully dispute and argue issues. Rather than different people fighting over an issue with bloodshed, they take it to the parties.

  • Thomas Jefferson

    • Jefferson consulted no book or pamphlet in drafting the declaration of independence, but sought only to "place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”

    • "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

    • Jefferson's idea of human nature was not so dark; he believed in the possibility of a republic of virtue and so foresaw and welcomed majority rule. "After all," he had written Madison from Paris. "it is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.”

  • James Madison

    • Virginia Plan (Madison): Called for a strong federal government with a new Congress empowered to veto acts of state legislatures.

    • Madison blends together the profound politician, with the scholar.-Unk Delegate.

    • Ambition must be made to counteract ambition...It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.-Madison in the Federalist.

    • "If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure." But Madison saw that "society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and in little danger from interested combinations of the majority." And in the "extended republic" of the United States, the "multiplicity of interest"- and the conflict of ambitions- would be greater, and rampant majorities therefore less likely, than in any single state. So man's fundamental nature- his ambitions and passions- would be the ultimate barrier to curb both tyrants and the tyranny of popular majorities.-Madison (genius).

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Misc Quotes

  • On Humanitarian Aid: The central strategic failure of past approaches rose from the assumption that money and technology were the essential and even total keys to overcoming poverty. Developmental aid has had relatively little global impact despite decades of effort and innovation, not only because the money was never nearly sufficient but because outside aid alone- filtered through, and often diverted by, numerous aid agencies and financial institutions with their own agendas and bureaucracies, national and local governments with their own agendas and bureaucracies, trickling down eventually in some form or other to some of the poor- could not shatter the vicious circle of intertwined poverties.

  • On Education: Schools suppress creativity; after children have attended school for a while, most become more cautious and less innovative. Teachers simply lack the time or skill or patience or desire, or the freedom within the formal environment of the classroom, to encourage students to experiment or create.-Dacey & Lennon.

  • “It is the fewness of his needs that make a man really good, while the multiplicity of needs breeds the hateful and angry passions that spring from selfishness and make reasoned and moral choice among needs impossible.”-Rousseau.

  • The most perilous moment for a bad government  is one when it seeks to mend its ways,” noting that a grievance “patiently endured so long as it seemed beyond redress…comes to appear intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses mens minds.-Tocqueville.

  • No personal liberty can exist without economic security and independence. Men in Need are not free men.”-Eleanor Roosevelt.

  • Greek society is endangered by the madness of the multitude that threatens the very small remnant of champions of justice.-Plato.

  • They wish for what is morally right. But the inferior classes aim only to grab something selfishly so that faction is their normal condition.-Aristotle.

  • Humans are inherently conflict ridden with fierce drives to control others and to gain material goods and sexual satisfaction (St. Augustine).

  • As men's reasoning powers expanded, conflict will diminish (Thomas Aquinas).

  • Oppression is defined as a power dynamic based on monologue rather than dialogue (Augusto Boal).

  • Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number- Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many- they are few.-Shelley (1819).

  • Any member that resorts to war in violation of its covenants, shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all other members of the league (League of Nations Art. 16).

  • The Rebellion gave melancholy proof that mankind when left to themselves are unfit for their own government.-George Washington to Henry Lee.

  • The aim of peace should be to secure for all people the four freedoms- of speech and religion, from want and fear.-FDR (1941).

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Chronology

  • 1904: Panama gains independence from Columbia; construction of the Panama Canal begins.-Transforming Leadership by Burns.

  • 1903: Panama- Columbia War; Panamanian rebels, supported by US President TR with US Naval Gun support, take Panama City. Three days later, Panama is recognized as an independent nation by the USA and guaranteed that status in exchange for near sovereign control over the isthmus of Panama.-Transforming Leadership by Burns.

  • 1890: “The Influence of Sea-Power on History is published by Alfred Thayer Mahan, asserting that military and economic power depend largely on control of the seas.-Transforming Leadership by Burns.

  • 15 Aug, 1869: The Suez Canal, built by De Lesseps, begins operating.-Transforming Leadership by Burns.

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