Leadership in Turbulent Times: Lessons from the Presidents Paperback – June 6, 2019

I’ve read several of Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s books and found them very informative on topics and leaders that go beyond the history books. This book uses four US presidents to represent four different leadership styles and yet how those styles serve them and their country. Very good reading.

I just finished reading the Leadership book by Doris Kerns Goodwin. What an outstanding book! The book is about the leadership styles of Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. The last chapter is about each of their deaths and how they are remembered - truly heartbreaking. This is a book everyone should read, especially those in roles of leadership, or thinking about leadership positions. I wish President Trump had read it and I certainly hope Joe Biden has read it. The steps taken in the leadership roles are certainly ones that could be imitated and many programs might be worth revisiting to get the economy moving again.There are many quotes that are applicable particularly now. One example, especially for Senator Lindsey Graham from his fellow Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, “The people think my word is good, and I should be mighty sorry to have them think anything else.” or Lyndon Johnson’s quote concerning "the plight of being “Black in a White society”.” " It must be our goal “to assure that all Americans play by the same rules and all Americans play against the same odds.” ." How far have we really come since 1972?Or think about how things could have been different if President Trump had read about Franklin Roosevelt’s belief that “if the people “were taken into the confidence of their government and received a full and truthful statement of what was happening, they would generally choose the right response”."And, of course, we all would benefit from studying the life of Abraham Lincoln, who “considered history, an understanding of how we came to be, the best vehicle for understanding who we are and where we are going.” and “singled out education “as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in,...”.”Are we at the point Teddy Roosevelt predicted was “the greatest and most dangerous rock in the course of any republic, when “two sections, or two classes (in our case, parties) are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other’s passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view.”? Did his intention of restoring the Republican party to the progressive party of Lincoln, where “the fellow feeling, mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate for a common object” die when a blood clot reached his lungs on January 6, 1919?It is such a thought provoking book. I am so glad I read it as part of my goal to read about all the U.S. Presidents.

The best way to study leadership is to study leaders. How they exercised influence in their contexts provides examples of how we can do so in ours. For this reason, it is paramount for leaders to be well-versed in biography and history, the knowledge of people and their times.Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times provides case studies of the leadership of four U.S. presidents at critical junctures in their administrations:• Abraham Lincoln exemplifies transformational leadership as he expanded the North’s war aims from union to emancipation through the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.• Theodore Roosevelt provides a model of crisis management by how he brought labor and management to the table during the Great Coal Strike of 1902.• Exuding optimism and executing a plan to respond to the Great Depression in his first 100 days, Franklin Delano Roosevelt offers a master class in turnaround leadership.• And Lyndon Johnson demonstrates visionary leadership by using all the forces at his disposal — including persuasion and hardball politics — to pass the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965), fundamentally altering the legal terms under which whites and blacks related to one another.Goodwin presents these case studies in Part III of her book, “The Leader and the Times: How They Led.” Of each president’s White House years, she writes: “There, at their formidable best, when guided by a sense of moral purpose, they were able to channel their ambitions and summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others.”But those ambitions and talents didn’t emerge de novo or ex nihilo. The four presidents were influenced by circumstances just as much as they in turn influenced them. Part I, “Ambition and the Recognition of Leadership,” narrates the burgeoning sense of possibility each president experienced in his 20s especially, along with the recognition by their peers that they were destined for greater things. Part II, “Adversity and Growth,” shows how each one faced a test or series of tests that forced them to ask deeper questions of their life’s meaning — questions that, once answered, steeled their commitment to lead. Finally, an Epilogue examines how each man reflected on his enduring reputation, a fame that would last beyond both his administration and his death. How would they be remembered by posterity?As with Goodwin’s previous works on these four presidents, Leadership in Turbulent Times is a gripping read, combining biographical detail and historical context. It is the addition of shrewd insights about leadership throughout the book that marks a departure from her earlier biographies. Those insights are well-grounded and explicit.One of the great dangers of drawing lessons from biography or history is that such lessons smooth over differences, whether among the subjects of biographical inquiry, or between their times and our own. Doris Kearns Goodwin is well aware of this danger and largely avoids it. The leadership principles she draws organically arise from the events she narrates. Here’s how she explains the matter in the book’s Foreword:"These four extended examples show how their leadership fit the historical moment as a key fits a lock. No key is exactly the same; each has a different line of ridges and notches along its blade. While there is neither a master key to leadership nor a common lock of historical circumstance, we can detect a certain family resemblance of leadership traits as we trace the alignment of leadership capacity within its historical context."That “family resemblance of leadership traits,” the book’s explicit lesson, is what leaders will most appreciate about Leadership in Turbulent Times. Its implicit lesson is that leaders must know themselves and their own times if they want to change them. Leadership never occurs in a vacuum where principles can be applied automatically. Rather, it requires wisdom. Like the biblical men of Issachar, leaders understand the times and know just what to do (1 Chronicles 12:32).