Role of Leaders is Focus of New Book by Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author James MacGregor Burns
March 10, 2003
Put leadership to work to solve the most dire needs of humanity - hunger and poverty - says James MacGregor Burns in his new book, "Transforming Leadership: A New Pursuit of Happiness."
Burns, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, is senior fellow at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond and Woodrow Wilson Professor of Political Science emeritus at Williams College. He laid the foundation for the burgeoning field of leadership studies 25 years ago in "Leadership," his first book on the subject. "Transforming Leadership," his first major reexamination of the subject, focuses on leadership in the political arena, while also looking at science, the arts and industry. Rather than revisiting familiar territory, Burns looks at leadership in the context of issues leaders face today.
"Leadership must be tested by results," he states. Burns calls for leaders to "emerge from being transactional deal-makers to become dynamic agents of major social change who empower their followers."
Burns estimates that two billion people, or one-third of all humanity, live in poverty. Their most dire need is food. "Past approaches assumed money and technology were the keys to overcoming poverty," he says. By the 1990s, countries were experiencing "aid fatigue." He says there was no leadership involved in relief efforts.
His strategy calls for recruiting paid "freedom leaders" who will live near the poor, listen to them, mobilize local leadership and operate in thousands of communities over a long period of time. His core strategy is to form partnerships between local "followers" and leaders from the outside to raise people to their highest potential. Local leaders would eventually supplant the outside "freedom leaders," he says.
The undertaking could be financed by all nations and sponsored by the United Nations.
It is change "from the ground up," Burns says. "Transforming change flows not from the work of 'the great man' who single-handedly makes history, but from the collective achievement of a 'great people.'"
Ultimately, leadership's vital role is "to create and expand the opportunities that empower people to pursue happiness for themselves."
Burns will discuss his book and ideas on leadership at four talks in three cities this spring: March 27 at the Library of Virginia in Richmond; April 1 at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Center for Public Leadership; April 8 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.; and April 25 at the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies. All except the Harvard talk, which is by invitation only, are free and open to the public. For more information, call Atlantic Monthly Press at (212) 614-7868.