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 crisis of the Depression and WWII, he certainly was a Charismatic Leader emphasizing his personal inspirational traits of charm, optimism, dynamism, self-confidence and personal courage and providing an idealized vision and goals for success.  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 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 Leader both in Depression and War.

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