The Practical Drucker

CHAPTER  |  EIGHT

Drucker and Heroic Leadership

In 1978, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author James MacGregor Burns published his now classic book Leadership. In it he placed leadership into two categories: transactional and transformational. Transformational leadership was the preferred process, in that it was more potent and engaged the full person of the follower. Leaders and followers stimulated each other to advance followers into leaders and might even convert leaders into moral agents. The transformational approach clearly has much to recommend it, including significant positive change in people and organizations, changes in perceptions and values, and changes in the expectations and aspirations of those led. In short, transformational leaders ...