When I was in grade school, our
school library had a series of books that told the stories of famous people—everyone
from Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Edison and beyond. Each provided information about the subjects’
formative years, their adult lives, and their impact on other people and
society. Although published in the
1950s, the series was not limited to white American men, but also featured
women, Native Americans, and African-Americans.
For the most part these were morality tales that promised if you worked
hard and helped others, you would be successful in life. The perspective might have been rather narrow,
but such reading did introduce me to the joy of learning about leaders through
reading.
Reading biography and
autobiography provides significant insight about those who have gone before us--the
famous, the infamous, and the obscure. Such
reading gives a ground-level perspective on great national and international
movements and often helps us to gain a better understanding of why certain
actions were taken and others avoided.
We are also given the opportunity to reflect on the consequences of the
subject’s action or inaction.
Of course, one could argue that
the autobiography or memoir is a biased narrative. We have come to accept that the politician
who has left office or the person who has been a leader in business, industry,
or other public position may use their book to “settle accounts” or provide
their “spin” on events. Although I have
not read his book, I would imagine that Dick Cheney’s new book, “In My Time:
A Personal and Political Memoir” falls into the category. Those aspiring to office also usually write
(or get help writing) their “back story” in order to introduce themselves to
the public—Barack Obama, Sara Palin, and Rick Perry come to mind.
Even so, the personal memoir gives us a sense of
the person as he or she wants us to perceive him or her—formative experiences, defining
moments of life, and values embraced. This is their life narrative and explains to
us how they perceive leadership and the way they exercise it.
Biography, the story of a person’s
life written by someone else, is by no means objective or impartial, but it very
often is more balanced. Most reputable
biographers try to get a 360 degree view of their subject by getting input from
others. Interviews and research provide the
writer with the viewpoints of other observers or participants and often places
the person’s life in the political, international, cultural, or economic
context of the time in which they lived.
I realize that some biographies are “authorized” by the subject, so we
must take that into consideration as we attempt to learn more about the person
and their leadership style and choices.
Those books who promise to give
us “leadership lessons” from the life of a particular individual should be read
with caution. Most of the time, the
author begins with his or her own point of view on leadership and imposes it on
the life story of the subject. If some
incident in the subject’s life does not fit the author’s pattern, it is
rejected. Such books tend to take a
narrow rather than a broad view of a person’s life.
As we read about the lives of the
great and small, we not only learn from their experiences, but we are also
challenged to reflect on our own lives.
How do we make choices? Who and
what do we value? What is the legacy we
leave to others? All are good leadership
questions.
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