Burns Leadership

How Burns Defines Leadership in Relation to Power
Core Ideas
The core idea of Burns’ Leadership is that leadership is a contract between the leader and the led; the led have a choice when it comes to whom they will follow. It is not as if there is but one option only. There are always alternatives—but the led choose to follow the leader because the leader reflects their values and presents the vision and mission that they are willing to buy into. He provides the tools they need to make it all happen. He recognizes his commitment to them as a leader and that recognition serves as the basis of moral leadership. It is deontological at its core; the concept is derived from duty ethics—i.e., that which is most moral is that which corresponds with one’s duty in life. It is the duty of the leader to serve the led. It is the duty of the led to follow the leader. The contract they take up—that relationship between leader and led—is fundamentally a moral one. There can be no success unless both sides of the contract recognize their responsibilities to the other.
Burns refers to Max Weber for support in describing what is meant by power. Burns identifies it as a relationship between motive and resource. He describes leadership as separate from but also important to power. The key to understanding the difference between those with power (but not necessarily leaders) and those who are leaders is that leaders arouse the motive of the follower (Burns, 1978).
Critical Evaluation
Northouse discusses leadership from a variety of different theories, essentially showing how the concept of leadership has evolved in the 20th century from trait theory on down to servant leadership theory. In studies by Kouzes and Posner, it is suggested that leaders who are most influential are those who empower rather than overpower their followers. This correlates essentially with what Burns says about leadership: leaders arouse the motivation. When leaders step out of the way and allow space for followers to develop themselves, to cultivate their own skills, they are seen as the best type of leaders. Followers appreciate it when they are given consideration. According to Kouzes and Posner, the best leaders accept feedback and are willing to receive criticism because they want to know how they are doing; they recognize that it is not all just about them as leaders but rather about how well they are engaging with their followers and whether their followers are getting anything out of what they are doing. The worst of leaders tend to be close-minded and unable to accept any kind of criticism because they are absorbed with themselves and their own power. They do not see how they are as leaders because they do not see the motivation of others—that is the contribution that Burns makes to the concept of leadership. Burns indicates that leaders who see only their own motives miss out on what their followers bring. Leaders cannot simply be filled with themselves, seeing everyone else as a resource to be used for their own mission. Individual resources may become resources but not without buying into the vision and mission that the leader presents—and to get followers to buy into the leader has to rouse the motive of the follower. And the best leader will do that by getting to understand what the needs of the follower are.
The significance of ideas of Burns are that they reflect the work of others’ particularly when it comes to how leaders are made from a psychosocial perspective. Burns (1978) points out that people with high self-esteem are most likely to be leaders, and this conforms with the model of human motivation put forward by Maslow (1943). Maslow (1943) posits that people become self-starters when they reach a level of self-actualization, which only comes after they have their lower level needs satisfied first—and these include the need for shelter, security, friendship, love and esteem. Esteem comes right before self-actualization, which makes sense because if one does not have confidence in oneself, one is not going to have the motivation to succeed or to accomplish a task on one’s own because one will not believe in oneself. Believing in oneself is what the evolution is all about. False esteem tends to be problematic because it is unfounded confidence—confidence that is misplaced. This usually becomes apparent when a person attempting to lead falls apart under criticism. It turns out that instead of being interested in leading, the person was only really interested in power. Again, that is the difference that Burns highlights between a leader and a person who simply wants to be powerful. This is an important contribution that Burns makes to leadership theory in general—delineating the difference between power and leadership. It is one that often gets ignored in the scholarship.
Leadership Application
Burns’ depiction of leadership is applicable in business because in any organization there is going to be a need for leadership. Applying the principles that Burns discusses can easily be done in business management, because even though management and leadership are two distinct concepts the manager who embraces leadership qualities and principles is one who is more likely to manage most effectively. Burns looks at what happens when a person with low self-esteem becomes a leader and he uses the example of Woodrow Wilson to show it. Wilson’s father was strict and stern and emotionally abusive at times. It had an effect on Wilson’s character. By all outward appearances he was able to engage in a service to his nation, but the question is whether it was a service based in leadership or a service based in power. The assumption of leadership theory as put forward by Burns and supported by Maslow is that leaders should have high esteem. Wilson’s own turn as president shows that the assumption is not ill-founded. Wilson ran for office on the platform of keeping America out of the war and he was elected to office as a result. However, he soon found it incumbent upon him to get America into the war. He betrayed his followers and made excuses for it—but it was still a betrayal. He had used them to gain power. He had roused their motive only to turn around and abandon it.
A manager must never do that to followers in a business organization. He wants their support and their buy-in. He wants them to be motivated to reach for the vision and mission that he presents to them. If he comes across as inauthentic or as a betrayer of the vision and mission, why should they support him? They will rebel or morale will dwindle and the performance of the workplace will diminish. At the end of the day, understanding that the leader is there to serve the vision, mission and follower insofar as the follower is committed to serving the first two—this is what can help a manager in business achieve the ends he seeks to achieve. Without that kind of vision and sense of relationship between the leader and the led, the pursuit of power ends up being the only thing notable. But as Burns shows, the pursuit of power is hardly worth it or efficacious; leadership is what is needed, as leadership is what followers respond to most fervently and with the most committal.
References
Burns, J. (1978). Leadership. Open Road.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370.