Obama's lost voice and transformational leadership

by: Jeremy Burton

Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 19:48:12 PM EDT

With everyone and anyone weighing in with post-election analysis, Marshall Ganz, the eminent lecturer at Harvard U has a must read piece in yesterday's LA Times about how Barack Obama went from being a transformational leader in the campaign to a transactional leader as President.  In part:

Abandoning the "transformational" model of his presidential campaign, Obama has tried to govern as a "transactional" leader. These terms were coined by political scientist James MacGregor Burns 30 years ago. "Transformational" leadership engages followers in the risky and often exhilarating work of changing the world, work that often changes the activists themselves. Its sources are shared values that become wellsprings of the courage, creativity and hope needed to open new pathways to success. "Transactional" leadership, on the other hand, is about horse-trading, operating within the routine, and it is practiced to maintain, rather than change, the status quo.

Of course, this is a topic near and dear to us at JFSJ, given our work through the Seasons Fund for Social Transformation to support social change movements that are transforming society through a combination of personal, organziational, and public movement work toward a better nation.

Read the full piece here.