Lead Like Reagan: Strategies to Motivate, Communicate, and Inspire

4Leading by ExampleUsing Emotional Intelligence to Model Excellence

A leader, once convinced a particular course of action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets tough.

—Ronald Reagan¹

President Reagan strategically and wisely took great strides to develop personal relationships with other world leaders, which would help manage the complexities of his foreign policy and build a unified front against aggressors. He was a staunch believer in face-to-face diplomacy and believed that alliances could be forged, or differences could be resolved, if two leaders sat down face-to-face and talked to each other.

Despite initial differences and even overt confrontation, Ronald Reagan's eventual personal, warm relationship with the Soviet Union's General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev was a prime example of what could be accomplished if two people, originally suspicious and skeptical of each other, were willing to talk—in person. Ronald Reagan pushed for this because he honestly believed, and was right to assume, that even among the vast differences that marked them politically and personally, there had to be a few small areas on which agreement could be reached.

Rather than focusing solely on extensive disagreements, Ronald Reagan reached out to Gorbachev with the few elements on which they could agree—that nuclear war was a war in which there could be no winner and the reality that increasing the Soviet military would also dramatically ...