David Smith, The Guardian; Interview: 'Trump doesn't measure up': Doris Kearns Goodwin on leadership
"Now she has delivered a book called Leadership in Turbulent Times.
It is not, as the title implies, an opportunistic entry into the
ever-expanding Trump canon. She began work on it five years ago, perhaps
because a historian’s sixth sense told her leadership, or the lack of
it, would become the story behind the story.
The book constructs Goodwin’s own version of Mount Rushmore by
examining four presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. She considers what lessons they
offer for transformational crisis management, turnaround and visionary
leadership, but sugars the pill with telling details and funny
anecdotes...
Having made the study of presidents her life’s work, does she think leaders are born or made?
“I would say mostly made,” Goodwin says. “Does the man make the times or
the times make the man? It’s a mixture. I think you are born with
certain qualities, of intelligence probably, memory and maybe even
empathy. Some people, like Lincoln, were born with empathy. It was just a
natural part of his temperament, and temperament may be inborn too: the
way you look at the world and whether you’re optimistic or you’re
pessimistic."
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