PART ONE
TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING FOR TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY LEADERS

Setting the Context for Part One

Evolving Thinking about Transformational Leadership

Thinking clearly about leadership in ways relevant to our times and individual situations is essential to success today. This first section of the book begins with the work of James MacGregor Burns, a scholar who revolutionized how we imagine what leaders should be and do by introducing the concept of transformational, as opposed to transactional, leadership. This introduction provides background on his work. The first two essays in this section demonstrate the efficacy of his theories in current practice. The ones that follow explore the work of other scholars and theorists who provide new ways of thinking that enhance our ability to promote various elements of transformational change.

I was privileged to lead the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership before taking my current position at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Through my work at the Burns Academy, I got to know Jim well. He combines the best of forward-looking attitudes with old-school graciousness, and is as thoroughly good and kind a man as he is a tough-minded, rigorous thinker. Being with Jim was a bit like my experience at the Fetzer Institute dialogues—somehow, everything seemed more possible when he was around, just as the dialogues continually opened up possibilities for how to lead with joy and ease even in these difficult times.

Although Burns coined the now widely used term “transformational leadership,” he subsequently preferred the term “transforming leadership” because he thought it better captured the complexity of leadership that transformed the leader, his or her collaborators and followers, the process of leading, and the outcomes it produced. In biographies of great leaders, including his Pulitzer Prize–winning volume about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he observed and then described a transformative quality in the leadership legends he studied. Such leaders as Gandhi and FDR, he argued, achieved structural change in ways designed to advance not only their own self-interest and that of their group, but also the larger common good (Burns, 1970b).

In contrast, transactional leadership, which Burns sees as still the prevailing mode, is motivated by self-interest on the part of both leaders and constituents. (For example, I support a particular leader because it is in my interest to do so. The leader helps me because then I’ll support him or her—tit for tat.) The transactional leader gains cooperation through bargaining, the transforming leader by inspiring others with a larger vision that brings out the best in them and produces positive transformational outcomes (Burns, 1970a).

In a time of enormous uncertainty, I find Burns’s work energizing and hopeful, and I know others do, too. It reminds us that we can work toward a future we believe in and that, to do so, we need to bring our better selves to leadership. Some may find this idealistic, even naive, so it reassures me to know that, being involved in politics himself, Burns understood the rough-and-tumble world he was writing about. Indeed, he formulated his theories by studying political figures who led in difficult times and had to deal realistically with unforeseen events and adversaries who very much wanted them to fail. Such leaders often balance transactional and transformational strategies in working toward transformational ends, and although they prefer to promote change through inspiration, when necessary they also use power, authority, and tough bargaining to get things done.

Transformational leadership ushers in radically positive possibilities so needed today to release the potential within situations and people, including the leader. Much of Burns’s work as a biographer focused on individual leaders. But in recent years, the emphasis on individuals as agents of historic change has been attacked by many who argue the opposite: that leaders are products of the movements and ethos of the time. For a while, there was a standoff between those who emphasize the power of social and cultural movements and those who stress the impact of individuals. More and more, however, the interaction between individuals and their environments is viewed as complex and interdependent. For example, people are socialized by the time and place in which they live and have different advantages and disadvantages based on their station in life, their gender, race, and so on. Yet it is also true that the choices they make and the actions they take change their lives and create ripple effects that change others. They are then resocialized by the new reality they have created. All of this is an ongoing process.

Burns’s work was inspired by his own desire to help people, and the more he explored how this could be done, the more attentive he became to the power of social movements, not just of individual leaders. He also very much saw his work as being within the philosophical tradition of the Enlightenment and credited the thinking of this movement as important to his writing. Burns (2003) began his book Transforming Leadership by citing the American Declaration of Independence, with its focus on “life, liberty, equality, justice, community … and intertwined with them—the pursuit of happiness” (p. 240). Referencing Abraham Maslow’s (1943) “hierarchy of needs,” he argued that to make happiness genuinely possible, we must eradicate poverty. As a witness to not only the civil rights movement but also other progressive movements, he began to stress the role of leadership in all of society and the need to view leadership as a complex, interactive process involving many actors.

Thus, Burns’s Transforming Leadership ends with an appeal to move beyond what any individual leader can do. “In the broadest terms,” Burns (2003) argued, “transformational change flows not so much from the work of a great man who single-handedly makes history, but from the collective achievement of a ‘great people.’” While leadership by individuals is necessary at every stage, beginning with the “first spark that awakens people’s hopes” (p. 240), its vital role is to create and expand the opportunities that empower people to pursue happiness for themselves.

This edited volume builds on the notion that individual leaders and leadership teams have a power to shape history, and that leaders also are riding the waves of enormous changes in an organization or society that they help steer but do not actually control. We see this illustrated in Betty Sue Flowers’s essay later in this section, in the way personal leadership qualities and historic social movements came together to achieve the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The massive cultural revolution begun by the civil rights movement, and the changes in attitudes it produced, led in turn to the election of Barack Obama as the first African American U.S. president. Whatever history concludes about the Obama presidency, his personal qualities and his inspiring message helped a majority of American voters get behind the idea that an African American could lead the country. But without the historic achievements of the abolitionist and civil rights movements, the election of an African American president would have been unthinkable.

A similar interactive process takes place between individual leaders and the groups they lead. In a very practical way, we need to realize that we cannot lead successfully unless people want to follow or collaborate with us. Groups choose leaders based on a match with their own values and priorities: politicians are nominated by their party and elected by the public. Organizational leaders are selected by boards, search committees, or managers who, if they are smart, consider the needs of the group to be led. Citizens emerge as community and organizational leaders because of the faith others have in them. In all such cases, we, as leaders, are expected to achieve the ends the citizens or stakeholders desire. And, generally, we are deposed if those who chose us lose faith in our ability to deliver on our promises.

But leadership requires more than just acting to implement the will of the group. Leaders who become slaves to market forces, opinion polls, focus groups, or the self-interest of their constituents are not truly transformational. For transformation to occur, leaders need to educate, inspire, and motivate groups to have higher aspirations. This means that whether or not we have positional power, we have the responsibility to use whatever power we do have in the service of a positive vision of the greater good. Finding the right balance between truly listening to others, even those who disagree with us, and actually fulfilling the hefty responsibility to speak and act courageously to bring about such a vision is a challenge. Several of the essays in this book suggest specific strategies that can help us get this balance right.

Burns (2003) stressed the need to find this balance, saying that leaders should create “the links that allow communication and exchange to take place … and … address ourselves to followers’ wants, needs, and other motivations.” At the same time, leaders also must “serve as an independent force in changing the makeup of the follower’s motive base.” He saw that this balance can shift, based on what is required by particular situations. There are times, he noted, that require very strong, assertive leadership, and times when leaders are so attuned to their followers, and they to them, that the two become “virtually interdependent” (Burns, 2003, pp. 20–21).

Historically, ways of leading have evolved rather slowly. In ancient Rome, emperors rewarded their friends and cruelly punished anyone who got in their way (remember crucifixion). Transactional leadership is an improvement on this, but it is failing us now because it is based on a trust in self-interest that the world no longer can afford. Its single-minded focus on the self-interest of businesses and individuals leads to environmental devastation and economic crises. Adam Smith’s (1759) idea that an “unseen hand” will make everything work out if we follow our individual interests does not appear to be working today. Both coercive and transactional modes of leadership remain in evidence around the world. The coercive mode, where it still exists, is horribly reductive, pulling people back into anachronistic ways of being with one another and themselves, while the transactional mode takes away our power by reinforcing an immature level of self-involvement and shrinking our sense of options.

Transformational leadership as Burns defines it has long been accessible to human consciousness (e.g., King Arthur legends). Now, because of twenty-first-century challenges, it needs to become common practice. Becoming conscious of what we want our leadership to be like, rather than just unconsciously enacting old patterns, can speed up our participation in a paradigm shift that is taking place in virtually all fields today.

Thinking in more transformative ways can free us from being freaked out by continuous change and the impact of global interdependence and allow us to recognize these realities as opportunities. Yet, in the process, we are forced to let go of many old beliefs, which is why deconstructionism has been a major focus of academic thought. Still, older paradigms often continue to be enacted long after new, more effective ones come into use. Sometimes this is because an older paradigm remains functional in practice. For example, quantum physics augments, but does not replace, Newtonian physics. Unfortunately, people are inclined to continue in old ways even when they no longer work well, which is the case today with the continued expectation that our leaders can save us single-handedly. If ever it were true, it is not true now.

On a personal level, we can better accept the necessary losses of our time if we recognize that new situations demand new capacities, just like when we let go of being children to take on adult responsibilities. Burns is, himself, a wonderful example of someone who is always learning and growing. Perhaps for this reason, while Burns has always been appreciative of followers who apply his ideas, he has the greatest enthusiasm for work that breaks new ground. Motivated by a powerful passion for justice and a sharp, insightful mind, he has little or no interest in adulation. After I left as director, the University of Maryland School of Public Policy phased out the Burns Academy of Leadership as a separate unit, but kept its many externally and self-funded programs. Burns accepted this change graciously, saying he cared only about the good work, not the recognition of having a prestigious institute named for him.

The essays in this section focus first on transformational leadership theory and then augment this theory with emerging ideas in positive psychology, organizational development, social networking theory, and contemporary science. This developmental sequence is designed to help you experience greater ease and mastery in leading today. If, at the end of this section, you would like to apply what you have learned to specific leadership situations, visit the Application Exercises for Part One included in Appendix A.