Leadership for Intelligence Professionals   

An Example of a Leader Being Several Different Types of Leader to Different Followers

A good example of how one Leader must be a different “type”, when addressing different constituencies for different major tasks is Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

To get elected and gain and hold the Leadership of the people of the United States and inspire them to rise to the occasion and overcome the crises of the epression and WWII, he certainly was a Charismatic Leader.  He emphasized his personal inspirational traits of charm, optimism, dynamism, self-confidence and personal courage and provided an idealized vision and goals for success. 

From the time of his first election, H.W. Brands writes:

Roosevelt’s listeners responded with surprising enthusiasm.  The twenty-eight year old candidate had no special qualifications for office; he brought no compelling new ideas to the campaign; he had little in common with most of the voters of his district; he utterly lacked elective experience.  But, he had that certain something---that sincerity, that charisma---that caused people to respond.

Yet, to get the laws and resources to meet the challenges of the Depression and the pre-WWII isolationism, when dealing with Congress, which was not all of his Party or always willing to give its support,  he had to be a Transactional Leader, offering something in return for their support. Likewise, he had to do the same with key businessmen and financiers who controlled the Depression-era economy and, during WWII, with Churchill, DeGaulle and their staffs.  As James McGregor Burns says, his “bold moves” had to be achieved by “...expedient, high level brokerage. The best word for this practical, give and take leadership was ‘transactional’”.  Thus, Burns says “to reflect his doublesideness, I decided to subtitle my 1956 book,…The Lion and the Fox.”

But, even further, to actually get the Depression-era economy back on track and win WWII, Roosevelt needed to be a Transformational Leader articulating a practical vision and setting goals—i.e., a strategy—that the government or military had to meet.  As Burns documents in his 1956 biography of Roosevelt and summarizes in his 2004 book, “Roosevelt was most intent on producing change—from the campaign days of 1932 and throughout his years in the White House.”   Thus, as Burns says, “It was only later, when I came to study FDR’s war presidency for a second volume of my biography, that I found “transactional” leadership an inadequate tool of analysis for the broader and deeper dimensions of his actions….…It was not simply a souped-up version of transactional leadership….He had become what his example inspired me to call a transforming leader….” 

Thus, Roosevelt, by being the “type” of Leader to which each constituency would respond best, he was ultimately a successful national Leader both in Depression and War.

With regard to his own staff, however, H.W. Brands provides evidence that Roosevelt’s leadership “style” was that which is often found among Charismatic Leaders.  He points out that “Like many other men who aspire to greatness, Franklin Roosevelt could be incredibly self-centered. Men seldom become great without believing the world revolves around them.”  Thus, Secretary of War Stimson wrote that Roosevelt was “the poorest administrator I have ever worked under…He wants to do it all himself.”   To insure that he was always involved, he  “…constituted an almost innumerable number of new administrative posts, putting at the head of them a lot of inexperienced men appointed largely for personal grounds who report on their duties directly to the President and have constant and easy access to him.”  Brands points out “There was of course a method to Roosevelt’s madness….he insisted that he not become a prisoner of the bureaucracy, which, if given its preferences, might have handed him decisions ready made.”

Sources:

James MacGregor Burns in Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox.  For a summary, see Burns in Transforming Leadership.

H.W. Brands Traitor to His Class: the Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.