We need Transformational Leadership

We need in this country what James Macgregor Burns has called "transformational leadership" -- leadership that responds to fundamental needs and hopes by transcending, innovating and reconstructing the system it works in, and raises the ability of the people to help themselves.

We must distinguish this from "transactional leadership", which is mainly engaged in bargaining, accomodating, manipulating and compromising within the prevailing system.

For much of our history, we have had an abundance of transactional leaders and precious few transformational leaders. And we cannot transact our way through the 21st century.

Transactional leadership is what we know hereabouts as "cash-sunduan leadership" -- which infects our politics and government like cancer.

PHILIPPINE FREE PRESS
22 November 1997