Leadership by James MacGregor Burns
James
MacGregor Burns [born August 3, 1918] is a two times Pulitzer Prize-winning Presidential
biographer, political scientist, and a pioneer in the study of leadership.
Author of more than a dozen books, he has devoted his professional life to the
study of leadership in American political life. He received his doctorate in
political science from Harvard University, attended the London School of
Economics, and taught at Williams College. Burns was a Democratic nominee for
the 1st Congressional District of Massachusetts in 1958 and also served as a
delegate to four Democratic National Conventions. He is a former president of
both the American Political Science Association and the International Society
of Political Psychology.[1]
Burns’s key
innovation in leadership theory was shifting away from studying the traits of great
leaders and transactional management to focus on the interaction of leaders and
led as collaborators working toward mutual benefit. Burns’s theory on
transformational leadership has been the basis of more than 400 doctoral
dissertations. His most recent book, with Susan Dunn, is The Three Roosevelt:
Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (Grove Atlantic, 2001). Prior to
this book, he published, with Georgia Sorenson, Dead Center: Clinton-Gore
Leadership and the Perils of Moderation (Scribner, 1999). Burns won
the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his biographies, Roosevelt:
The Lion and the Fox (1956) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom
(1970). His book, Leadership, published in 1978, is still considered the
seminal work in the field of leadership studies.[2]
The book is
divided into five main parts such as (1) leadership: power and purpose, (2)
origins of leadership, (3) transforming leadership, (4) transactional
leadership, and (5) implications: theory and practice. As Burns clearly
mentions in his introduction, the main focus of this book is to define two
basic types of leadership: the transactional
and transforming. The former type
of leadership approaches followers with “an eye to exchanging one thing for
another,” whereas the latter type of leadership is more potent. The
transforming leader “looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy
higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower,” which converts
followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agent. This leads Burns toward the interest of
focusing on the nature of moral
leadership, which “emerges from, and always returns to, the fundamental
wants and needs, aspirations, and values of the followers.”[3]
Based on this initial statement laid out by the author, this review aims at
tracing Burns’s major themes of leadership [instead of attempting to look at the
book in details].
The first
theme is power and purpose in relation to leadership. Burns
defines leadership as a relationship of power for a specific
purpose that is consistent with the motives, needs, and values of both the
leader and the led. He states, “We must see power—and leadership—as not things
but as relationships. We must analyze power in a context of human
motives and physical constraints.”[4]
In order to understand fully the elements of power, purpose, and relationship,
Burns relies heavily on the notions of motives and values and their impact on
purpose and behavior. He uses Maslow’s theory on hierarchy of needs[5]
and Kohlberg’s theory on moral stages of development[6]
to refine his ideas about the interplay between motives and values in the
leader-follower relationship. Burns argues that leadership elevates people from
lower to higher levels of needs and moral development, and that true leaders
come from self-actualizing individuals who are motivated to grow, to be
efficacious, and to achieve.[7]
From this, Burns distinguishes between leaders and mere power-wielders. He
states, “Leadership mobilizes, naked
power coerces. To be sure, leaders,
unlike power holders, will have to adjust their purposes in advance to the
motive bases of followers.”[8]
Burns discovers that power, purpose, relationship, motives and values are
essential to leadership because the leader is engaged ultimately in lifting the
morals of the follower. In other words, it is to help develop others to become
moral leaders in the cause of achieving a collective purpose. This moral
component to leadership concerns Burns the most.[9]
It is a vital theme throughout the entire book.
Burns explains
the relationship between motives and values, which become the essential theme
of his leadership concept. According to Burns, motives are human beings’ inner
drives, desires, inclinations, and wants. They are personal, individual, and
powerful; they are the source of action and determination that move us in
certain directions and the source of meaning for our behavior. For Burns,
motives and values are somehow related. The distinction between the two may
depend upon whether or not the inner drive is merely an expression of need,
want or desire, or whether the inner drive becomes a standard and guide to
action toward a desired end-state. In a sense, motives are those drives that
are acted upon to be satisfied or deprived, while values are
those inner drives and commitments that shape or enable us to act in
certain ways or towards certain end-states. Values indicate desirable or
preferred end-states or collective goals or explicit purposes, and
values are standards in terms of which specific criteria may be
established and choices made among alternatives. In this case, values serve as
goals and standards, modes of behavior, and a representation of instrumental base
for means and ends, and these are a formidable arsenal for any leader who can
command them.[10]
Another theme is
transforming leadership and transactional leadership. The transforming
leadership, as opposed to the transactional leadership, focuses on the more
personal aspect of organizational interactions. Burns describes transforming
leadership this way:
Such leadership occurs when one or more persons engage
with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to
higher levels of motivation and morality. Their purposes . . . become fused.
Power bases are linked not as counterweights but as mutual support for common
purpose. . . . But transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it
raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and
led, and thus it has transforming effect on both.[11]
Following
Burns’s definition, Northouse explains that this type of leader is attentive to
the needs and motives of followers and tries to help them reach their fullest
potential. Northouse calls transformational leadership as “a socialized
leadership, which is concerned with the collective good” of followers.[12]
Burns points to Lenin, Mao, and Gandhi as examples of transforming leaders,
because they met their people’s initial needs, purposes, and wants; they served
to not only inform those purposes, needs, and wants, but also to bring their
people closer to achieving their potential.[13]
This type of leadership can shape and elevate the motives and values and goals
of followers through the teaching role of leadership.
On the other
hand, transactional leadership focuses mainly on rewards or punishments in
exchange for performance. This in many ways defines the essence of management. Burns
defines it this way:
Such leadership occurs when one person takes the
initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of
valued things. The exchange could be economic or political or psychological in
nature: a swap of goods or of one good for money; a trading of votes between
candidate and citizen or between legislators; hospitality to another person in
exchange for willingness to listen to one’s troubles. . . . A leadership act
took place, but it was not one that binds leader and follower together in a
mutual and continuing pursuit of a higher purpose.[14]
This type of
leadership is what Burns calls the “reciprocal process of mobilizing, by
persons with certain motives and values, various economic and political
competitions and conflicts, in order to realize goals held by both leaders and
followers.”[15]
Burns observes
that both forms of leadership can bring contributions to human purpose. The transactional leadership is interested
in modal values [honesty,
responsibility, courage, and fairness, etc.], whereas transforming leadership is more concerned with end-values [liberty, justice, and equality, etc.].[16]
Burns’s observations regarding the two forms of leadership serve to support his
general theory of leadership and the structure of moral leadership. Burns says that “leaders with relevant motives
and goals of their own respond to the followers’ needs and wants and goals in
such a way as to meet those motivations and bring changes consonant with those
of both leaders and followers, and with the values of both.”[17]
To make the point more clearly, Burns says that to control things is an
act of power, not leadership, for things have no motives. Power wielders may
treat people as things. But the nature of true leadership is that leaders induce
followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and motivations–the
wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations–of both leaders and
followers. And the genius of leadership lies in the manner in which leaders
see and act on their follower’s [as well as their own] values and motivations.[18]
It is
appropriate to conclude this review by saying that Burns’s conception of
leadership goes beyond the political theory and historical biographies. Burns’s
drawing on many of his leadership theories from psychology in this book has
earned more credits. As he consistently describes throughout the book,
leadership involves a relationship of engagement between the leader and
follower based on common purpose and collective needs. Hence, the key to
leadership is the discerning of key values and motives of both the leader and
follower and, in accordance to them, elevating others to a higher sense of
performance, fulfillment, autonomy, and purpose.
Obviously,
Burns points a way to clear up the confusion that sometimes exists as usually focused
on traits, behaviors, roles or situations. He defines the distinct nature of
leadership from that of management. Hence, he makes a significant shift in
leadership studies in such a way as to departing away from talking about leaders
to talking about leadership. In fact, this shift makes people view leadership
in more philosophical ways instead of mechanistic. More importantly, Burns’s
general theory of moral leadership brings a new understanding of what it is
that makes a leader different from
great managers and why leadership is
a significant force in society.
Burns’s
transformational leadership can be applied to missional leadership in different
ways. To mention among many, the transformational
leadership has a genuine concern for the needs, wants, and motives, and
values of followers. In other words, transformational leadership pays careful
attention to those elements in the followers, looking for a point of contact where
meanings and purposes can be realized. In fact, the main emphasis of
transformational leadership is not necessarily on the mechanism of an
organization. Rather, it focuses on the common good of society. Similar to
Burns’s transformational leadership, missional leadership pays careful
attention to particular context and culture, where God is already at work. A
missional church with transformational leadership mind focuses on people with
different spiritual gifts and always attempts to find a way to help them
discern the values and purpose of their spiritual gifts.
Appendix[19]
1918 - James
MacGregor Burns is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Presidential biographer; he is a
pioneer in the study of leadership was born on 3, August, an American historian
and political scientist.
1943-1946 -
Burns served as combat historian in the Pacific Theater; he was awarded the
Bronze Star and four Battle Stars.
1952 - He
co-wrote Government by the People: The
Dynamics of American National Government and Government by the People: The Dynamics of American State and Local
Government.
1956 - Burns
won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his biography, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox.
1958 - Burns
was a Democratic nominee for the 1st Congressional District of Massachusetts
and also served as a delegate to four Democratic National Conventions.
1970 - Burns
won another Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his biography, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom.
1978 - His
book, Leadership, was published and
is still considered the seminal work in the field of leadership studies.
1982 - He
wrote the 3-volume The American
Experiment.
1997 - He
was also the co-chair, with Georgia Sorenson, of the Salzburg Leadership
Seminar in Salzburg, Austria.
2001 - His
most recent book, with Susan Dunn, is The
Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (Grove
Atlantic)
[2]
Ibid.
[3] James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Perennial, 1978),
4, 20.
[4]
Ibid., 11.
[5]
Ibid., 73, 79. Maslow’s theory on hierarchy of needs is: (1) physical needs,
(2) safety needs, (3) belonging needs, (4) esteem needs, and (5)
self-actualization. See http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/maslow.html
(accessed March 11, 2010).
[6]
Ibid., 73, 79. Kohlberg’s six moral stages of development are: (1) obedience
and punishment orientation, (2) individualism and exchange, (3) good
interpersonal relationship, (4) maintaining the social order, (5) social
contracts and individual rights, (6) universal principles. See http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.html
(accessed March 11, 2010).
[7]
Burns, 41-43.
[8]
Ibid., 439.
[9]
Ibid., 4.
[10]
Ibid., 74-75.
[11]
Ibid., 20.
[12]
Peter G. Northouse, Leadership: Theory
and Practice, 5th ed. (Los Angeles: Sage, 2010), 172.
[13]
Burns, 129-130, 137, 252-254.
[14]
Ibid., 19-20.
[15]
Ibid., 425.
[16]
Ibid., 75, 426.
[17]
Ibid., 41.
[18]
Ibid., 18-19.
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