During my recent trip to Korea my good friend and business partner, Dr. Edward Choi—CEO of CMOE, the most prominent coaching and training company in South Korea—challenged me to take on an Impossible Future of my own: coaching presidents. (See blog @ RobertHargrove.com)
He wasn’t talking about coaching presidents of companies, but of entire countries. He said that presidents need coaches with a big vision and practical know-how drawn from outside their inner circle.
While Dr Edward Choi said I was uniquely qualified to do this work, I decided to reach out to James Macgregor Burns, the renowned presidential scholar and Pulitzer Prize Winner for his work The Lion and the Fox (on FDR) for help.
James Macgregor Burns has written over 24 books on leadership and the presidency, and has been asked by almost every president, since JFK to go to the White House and give advice. I was thrilled when he was gracious enough to agree.
I had read Jim Burns’classic book Leadership (1973) years ago and found it to be an intellectual tour de force. I had adopted in my own book, Masterful Coaching, his brilliant distinction between “transactional” and “transformational” leadership.
FDR used transactional leadership during his First 100 Days, wheeling and dealing with members of Congress to pass relief programs during the Great Depression. He used transformational leadership to arouse the nation’s higher aspirations during what is called his Second 100 Days to enact an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans.
I had the good fortune to bump into James McGregor Burns at a Renaissance Conference a few years ago at Hilton Head, North Carolina. I was completely inspired by his brilliant talks on presidential leadership, and at the same time, his humble down-to-earth manner.
When I got Jim Burns on the phone, he told me that he was now in his 80’s and “retired without a deadline” He also said he was very familiar with me and my work, and asked me to explain more about what I thought he could bring to the project.
I told him that I thought his participation in this project would be a way to make a distinct contribution, bridging the divide between leadership theory and actual practice, between talking about how leaders shaped history and interacting with leaders in a way that creates our future history.
Jim chuckled and asked me to supply him with a list of questions for him to ponder and to get back to me on. More to come…
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