Embrace Your Process To Become A Leader By Learning From Top 10 Ranked U.S. Presidents

What can you learn from past Presidents on how to lead good? Russ Ewell and Nathan Schaffernoth sit down to discuss the 2017 Presidential Historians Survey conducted by C-SPAN, which polled 91 historians on presidential leadership, including economic management, international relations, crisis leadership, public persuasion skills and whether they pursued equal justice for all. Join in as they talk about why it is important for every leader to have vision for what you are leading and being able to keep a level head in a crisis. Plus, a bonus point from Russ! 10. Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969) 9. Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) 8. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) 7. Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809) 6. Harry Truman (1945-1953) 5. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) 4. Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt (1901-1909) 3. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) 2. George Washington (1789-1797) 1. Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Eh, not what your country can do for you and what you can do for your country. You are like an entree trade. One word. I have a dream. One day this nation will, has the chains or well, it turns.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Hello, welcome to leading good a podcast hosted by myself and Russell. We don't believe in good leaders since we all have weaknesses and shortcomings and, but we do believe that people can lead others to do good. Today I want to talk about, I want to get a little political on the podcast today and I want to talk about, uh, the top 10 ranked presidents and why? Uh, cause when I was looking at the top 10 rankings of the 2017 c-span presidential historian survey, which pulled 91 historians, they, they had the top 10. And I found it interesting because I found some commonalities amongst the ranked 10 through six and then five through one. So Russ, I want to throw some of these guys at you, throw them at me and then we could talk about it. LBJ, Lebron James, is he on there? LBJ is on here. Okay. Uh, Brian James made it. Lebron James 20, 45 or whatever. So again, just want to focus on the top 10 and uh, also to contextualize it for everybody. So historians evaluated these based on the 10 qualities of a presidential of presidential leadership, including economic management, international relations, uh, citizen leadership of public persuasion skills and whether they pursued equal justice for all. So I found that also interesting and I want to do a podcast on that at a later time. So a little preview, a little teaser for the people out there. Wow. You're going all presidential on me here for sure. I'm going to rank a number 10, uh, through a number six. So number 10, we have Lyndon Johnson, LBJ, number nine, Ronald Reagan. Ooh, I liked the graphics. People who are listening can't see the graphics. I like that graphics. Wait a minute. Who's the guy next to the Truman? Truman. Now I know who trim it is. Who's that guy? A Thomas Jefferson that does not look like Thomas Jefferson, but okay. Google images. I don't go with Google image search. Google it. I've done Google image searches and come up with people, don't look anything like you. All right, let's keep going. That's Thomas Jefferson at a young, uh, young surly age. He looks older. So 10 Lyndon Johnson, nine Ronald Reagan, eight John F. Kennedy, number seven, Thomas Jefferson, and number six, Harry Truman. So we're just going to stay in this zone for the moment. Okay. The thing I want to talk about, and the thing that I noticed that all these guys scored well in his vision, knowing that these guys wanted to create the America that they want or build the America that they wanted or for shape America into what they want it to be. Okay. And then why is it important for a leader to have vision and to know what they want to build? Because I think, for example, Thomas Jefferson, right? Uh, he's kind of the earliest one on that, uh, on that list. And he ranked high and his vision and agenda setting. And he was one of the principal authors for the declaration of independence. Um, and so he was a guy who even from day one, shaped what America was going to become and was an influencer amongst his peers. You liked those jokes? Ah, well I liked him. Uh, I liked watching him on that, uh, John Adams Doc, uh, not Docu sear HBO. Yeah. The HBO series. Yeah. Um, but I found it so interesting that all these guys really had a great vision for it and when they picked up the mantle of president and they wanted to shape America. Okay. Um, so I dunno if you have any thoughts on any of these presidents. So the first, you're, the first thing you're saying is that the thing that attracted you to these particular ones, these leads are the ones that are rank 10 through six is a, is is their vision. Correct. Alright. And you want to know what I think? Well, I want to know what you think about what it means to be a leader that has vision as well as why is it important for people who are in a leadership role, whether in their community, in, at their job, or even in their, in their immediate family or extended family or whatever. Like why is it important for us to have a vision? And when we step into a leadership role, I think we can ex talk about these different presidents and the, and the visions that they also had for the country at the time that took over. But what say you? Well,

Speaker 3: 4:37

I think, um, you know, vision is important to lead good because usually when you're doing good, there isn't a direct profit from it. So if, uh, um, I forget the name of that shoe company that they give portion of our money to Tom's yet at Tom's, um, they're going to make money off their shoes. That's how they make their money. But they didn't necessarily know they were gonna re would be rewarded with greater product sales when they decided to donate a portion of the sales to doing good things. But they were, a lot of people were attracted to the brand because they were like, okay, I got to pair by pair of shoes. I'm going to get a pair of toms because they have this vision of we want to do good. And now they'll either even advocates that say, if you want to run a company, but for profit company, you want to make sure you're doing something good. Because there are like a climate climate good, environmentally good. It attracts those people. So if people are into the environment, they're going to buy your product because you give it to the environment. If they're into saving whales or protecting dolphins or whatever it may be, they're going to come and buy your product. So I think you have to have a vision that goes beyond just making money. Uh, because I think people don't, they, they're not going to give you their money just because, you know, they're like, oh, we just want to give you that. So I think in building an organization, whether it's for profit, not-for-profit, people need to be inspired. I think that's what visions about vision is a tough one to start with though, because I don't know. So for instance, let me take these guys. Uh, linens, Johnson's vision was the great society. Correct? Some people don't like that because they feel like that's what put us on the course of an extraordinary dependence by a lot of people on government instead of them creating opportunities for themselves by hard work. And that's a big political discussion. It's loaded with racism and sexism and all that, but it's way outside my depth. Well, and, but the, but here's this great society. Uh, Ronald Reagan's a shining city on a hill. Uh, John F. Kennedy, great frontier. Uh, I don't know of any vision Harry Truman had. I'm unaware of it. I think it was a great president. I do, but I don't know that he had a vision. Some people may say, well, he had a international relations vision for the world and was part of after dropping the nuclear bomb, which puts him on the, you know, a lot of people's, not good president lists, but, but I don't know about his vision and Thomas Jefferson, but he's a tricky one because you're talking about a guy who said he believed in a less strong president and ruler rule rule by the people. But when he became president, he governed a totally different than that. And it was a slave owner with something like 300 plus slaves. When he wrote the declaration of independence, he said all men are equal and all that. But then he had 300 plus slaves and never said, I'm go George Washington who I believe is ranked number two on this list. He, when he died, he let his slaves go free. So I think when you talk about vision and Thomas Jefferson's vision, and I love Thomas Jefferson, I think there's a lot of skill sets that he had as a leader. But I think his is a vision that's a little compromise by, didn't actually execute it. But he did write it. So the question comes, how important is vision to leadership? I think that it is essential to defining what you're trying to do and getting buy in from other people. So Shining City on a hill, uh, I believe unemployment among blacks and Latins was extraordinarily low under Reagan. So there was a shining city on a hill. But Mario Como speech at the 1984, uh, democratic convention, he said, I know our president talks about a shining city on a hill, but I want to take him to places he's not been. And to see people, he's not seen to know what's going on in these places, which are not as shining city on the hill. So, so I think part of what they did, all of them did. I can't think of Harry Truman's vision, but all of them did. It was great as they had a vision. And then with our, what it is is we try to live for a more perfect union. So I think part of having a vision is saying I may not perfectly live it ina not perfectly execute on it, but I know it's right. I know it's the truth and I think that that is, that attracts people. And so I think each one of them attracted a significant number of people to follow them because they had that vision. I just don't know what Harry Truman's vision was. Do you a not really. He kind of fell into the, uh, the next category of people, which we'll

Speaker 2: 8:56

get to. But I do think the, the, on this continued topic of vision, like it as you said, like people were willing to follow you, but also these guys, he, he, they compelled people to vote for them, which I think at the end of the day, right. Strategically that's what you needed to do, right. To win the presidency. But I think it's so interesting that like I think of, uh, Lyndon Johnson who's ranked number 10 on this, on this list is that he, I would say at the time, right, he didn't think he was naturally going to be president cause he was vice president before JFK got assassinated. But he almost, he picked up the mantle that John F. Kennedy had started. Cause if, if I remember correctly, um, correct me if I'm wrong, cause politics is not my strong suit. That's why I'm deferring to you on someone that thinks, but I've been studying it since I was about 10. You've read a few more books than I ever.

Speaker 3: 9:48

I think presidents are some of the best people to learn from because of the massive organizational challenge because they have to be able to select people in an extraordinary way. And one thing you can say about all these people including Truman is that I think Truman had a vision for, for, for, for getting America through, um, World War II. And I think that is probably what would be his vision as we've got to win this war and then we've got to move it ahead. I also think he was a plain-spoken guy who's he? You know, he started out as like a city commissioner and so I think, yeah, in Kansas actually in the political machine that got him in the elections and one of the things that was thrown against him is he was owned by that political machine and didn't have any opinions of his own very tough guy. But I think part of Truman's vision I would say, and again I'm not a presidential expert, you got to go to Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin and people like that to get the the, and I, I forgot David McAuliffe I think wrote the biography of Truman. That's probably the preeminent biography, but I think what we've said is he was extraordinary in his vision for the everyday person, making sure the everyday person was going to get something from government that they needed. And he also I think had a discipline in restraining power. He was the guy who was like, I'm not into my charisma and I'm, I'm, I'm plain-spoken guy and I've got to, I've got a deal that's gonna take care of everyday life. So I think what you're trying to do and, and get into is, is you have to have a vision. I think the difficulty with a lot of these guys is Reagan and Kennedy were probably two of the most charismatic people. So there's a difference between charisma and vision. Vision is, I know where I'm trying to take us. Truman, I know I'm trying to get us out of World War II, save as many lives as we can, and then rebuild America and restart it so that America, on his watch and beyond became like the dominant nation in though in the world. And He, and then Jefferson, when I see a vision of a country that I'm not necessarily able to make happen, but it's a country where people are equal and there's freedom for people. People can be who they are, they can believe what they want. I definitely think he, he envisioned that he took that from a lot of other people. I think Kennedy caught us at a time after, after, uh, uh, after the war was completely over when people were like, okay, what are we going to do now? Where do we go now? How do we handle this cold war with Russia? And so I think he had, and I think you can go down the line. Uh, I think Reagan, I, I grew up, I was a big sort of Democrat guy when I was a kid. And then after going through some Democratic candidates that disappointed me, that didn't, I did not think I have vision. I don't want to be negative. I think these are good guys. The govern and Carter, I felt like they did not have a vision for the country and the country got depressed. Uh, Carter gave a speech on the malaise of America. And what Reagan did is he showed up and he said, let me tell you something. America's not got malaise. We're a shining city on a hill. We, you know, we are the, we are the bright beacon of freedom. He had all these things and it made you feel good about being an American. And I think Johnson came through at a time after Kennedy died. Everybody was like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen now? And he came through and grabbed this agenda, drove through civil rights, uh, made sure people had all kinds of programs. Uh, I don't even know them all. Enhancing unemployment, all that. So I think each guy made people go, you know what? The world is gonna be better because these guys are in power. And I believe, I think they believe, and I think that's what vision is about, is can you convince people that you have a vision that's not about your advancement? Because I think each of them had a vision. It was not about their advancement, but about the advancement of the country. So that's why I took a long time to get there. But I think that's probably what visions about. Do you have a vision that's bigger than about you and your ambition and what you want to accomplish? And I know that's what I've learned in my life when I've been a good, a good leader or leading good. It's been when I've been about other people seeing the dreams of their lives come true. When I've been about me, I've been, I've not been, I've been, I've not led good, great. I don't know how good that was, but hopefully people enjoy that. No, I think that was great. That was on the nose, I think. A and where we wanted to get move on number two. Yeah. Well I was going to say, let's go the next, the top five. Let's go to the top five. Top. We're skipping the top five. Okay. Now we're going, we're going to, uh, the top five on the 2017 c-span presidential historian survey. Oh, I got it. Top Five is a Dwight d Eisenhower, uh, Theodore Teddy Roosevelt at number four, number three, Franklin d Roosevelt. I love these graphics, man. I could watch these all day. Hey man, we're just trying to prepare a little bit for us. You did a number to George Washington and the number one, Abraham Lincoln. Again, I'll run through that to id Eisenhower, five for Theodore, Teddy Roosevelt, three Franklin d Roosevelt to George Washington and one Abraham Lincoln. And so the thing, the commonality that adds, I was looking through these things through these rankings and I saw all these guys scored well or historian scored them well in[inaudible] in the category of quote crisis leadership. Yeah. That means war. Well, yeah, war specific. Yeah. A lot of were going on, uh,

Speaker 2: 14:52

during these guys' presidency. But I think the crisis leadership topic made me think about staying calm, being able to make the tough decisions when, when, when necessary. Yeah. But as well, um, you know, for me, I'm a little bit of like a nervous Nellie, a, uh, an anxious individual. So I worry, and so when I see these guys and I see how they responded, you know, during their president presidency and throughout history is there was a level of calmness, of love, of Poise, um, when there's turmoil around them, right. Specifically to these different wars that were going on. Um, but I think the, the question that Kinda came into my, into my head was, you know, why is a calming presence important to, for for someone who's a leader, eh, we can't just respond to the, to the change of the wind, you know, as, as someone who's leading a nonprofit or for profit or, or what have you is, um, is a level of calmness and then even, cause I don't know if that's a question, if that's something, a calmness, is that something like I can think that that's, I'm not born with that so then I can't do that. You know what I mean? I kind of get to go out. These guys weren't born with it either. Okay. Then that's a good thing for us to talk about. Cause I think there's the, I can get a little down on myself. I'm like, oh I wasn't born born with that. But I think people could maybe develop that or develop that part of them to be able to have a calmness in the middle of crisis. Um, yeah. So like as you're talking about them, cause I'm getting my head around it. So

Speaker 3: 16:17

this is a challenging topic in some ways. I know about all these presidents, I've read about him for a long time. Um, the rankings are interesting because I cannot, I cannot see Harry Truman at number six. Okay. Um, um, and I would definitely put Lyndon Johnson up there a little further than number 10. Um, but I know they had their categories. Uh, it's amazing. John F. Kennedy makes it because he wasn't president very long and there a lot of people said he didn't do that much. I have a view on that. But let me just address your, your crisis leadership thing. So, you know, Dwight d Eisenhower basically manage the World War II victory. And then I think he was, you know, I think loaded to go into office as president, but I don't know, I don't, I don't know what crisis, like the crisis he dealt with, he[inaudible] century desegregated the u s armed forces and he obtained a truce after years of war in Korea. Well, even two, like if he's leading the, the, he oversaw, you know, the American armed forces right. During this presidency. Correct. But he, he showed the, the people that he could be calm and oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think during the years of his presidency, things were extraordinarily calm. Yeah. I think he, I think he, you know, what people want today that you hear a lot people criticizing is where's the calmness? Where's the president? Who Calms us down? Who shows us the way, who helps us understand? Cause I think a lot of the we experienced today and a lot of that sort of angst is, is because you need a president who can steer you through that. Yeah. You can sort of by example and by his words, get you through it. I think the thing you're hitting on here is, okay, there's, it seems like you got two key things you want to look at. Vision and crisis leadership, right? Yeah. Um, I want to add something. Um, I wanna I want to add, I want to add the journey of leadership because I think if you look at each of these guys, one of the reasons they had vision and one of the reasons that they manage well in crisis is it's well recorded. The Lincoln lost just about every election possible before he became president. George Washington. I think only one, two battles in the revolutionary war. Maybe through prior to that in the French, in any war, he'd lost. He lost far more battles than he ever won. A and the one, the ones that counted though, right? I would argue that he did. I'm just saying that the development of a leader, a lot of times people go, well, the leader, it wins all the time. Uh, the leader never loses. Well, the top two guys lost a lot, didn't win all the time. But like you said, they won the important ones or it was their losses that made them able to get the big wins. So you say what was the most important thing? Lincoln managed this through the civil war, which most people would say defined us as a nation. Washington led us to have a country that did not have a king or a dictator by saying, I could be, I don't want to be. And so that choice changed the presidency and what it could be a, when you look at FDR, he got polio and he spent a trip. He was a brilliant guy, awesome in personality dynamic. Then he got polio and it wrecked his life. And yet he came through that. A totally different person. Some great biographies on that. I wish I had the list of the biographies. And so he was transformed by that theater. Roosevelt was like, uh, he was the police commissioner for New York. I think he was a governor of New York. Like there's this whole process he went through. He was a, a naturalist who went all around protecting nature. He did a lot of that. Like he was a writer. He did all these things. I think that made him who he was. And so I think there's a process. Eisenhower, he, uh, he, you know, he, he, he never, he never led troops in battle. You know, even when he was low grade, he was a frankly administrative guy and he was incredibly good at management. And I've read a couple of biographies and I may, I may have forgotten the times he thought, but I don't, I don't remember him actually physically being like, he wasn't like Patton actually was in war. Uh, Bradley was in war. Eisenhower was not like it. And He, I'm not saying, couldn't handle a gun and wouldn't, was willing to fight, but his greatest skill was not as a general on the ground. His greatest skill was diplomatically getting Britain and all those people to come through. But when you watch his life was, um, I think it was a, it was George Marshall who was the head of all, all, all the u s forces at the time who picked Dwight Eisenhower out as a, as a young officer and said, I want to pull this guy in and develop him and called him in his offset. I want you to develop a plan for us, uh, entering World War II, where we're, we're going to enter, are we going to enter from a main mainland sort of mainland Europe or we gonna come from North Africa. I think that was it. And he developed that. So he had this whole process of being a young officer than being found in the crowd, literally in the crowd and then being brought up. It's a really incredible story. So it's a process. Uh, when you look at Truman, he didn't even want to be vice president. It was a fluke. Really? Yeah. He wasn't like he, he, they grabbed him and, and FDR didn't include him in any meetings when he became president. He didn't even know what was going on the, he walked[inaudible] I'm not sure all we'd been doing here cause FDR was like, Nah, I don't want him in the room. I don't, I don't, I don't need him. He had his own team and no vice president will need when like it is today. And so Truman came up, like I said, I think it was like a city commissioner. And all these things in Kansas, and it was a whole process. Jefferson, he failed as governor of Virginia. When the British came into Virginia, he ran away and he was criticized throughout his whole career for running away when the British were coming in to take Richmond or whatever it was, instead of staying in fighting. And so he had, anyway, like I said, he was a slave owner. So he had this extraordinary process of becoming a leader. And you look at Kennedy, you know, Kennedy was actually the, the, the goof off, uh, not serious, real reader, real thinker, but not like serious about being a leader party guy. And then his brother dies in a, in a, in a plane mission in World War II. And after he dies in that plane mission, Joseph Kennedy, the father says, you're now the guy's gotta be president. So he had to suddenly go from being this, not, not, you know, party guy, hang out with his friends, all that to being a very serious guy. Not a war made him that way in part, but I think he had to really like go, okay. I don't get fooled around. I get, so yeah, if you watch it and people are going to look at the bad things they say he did. And certainly each guy has, I have all of us have problems, but his process of development was extraordinary. When you look at Reagan, Reagan was an actor. Yeah. His own, he's one of the most famous actors in Hollywood yelling about famous. I mean he was known he wasn't a major actor. Now it's a B actor. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But he, I knew was no Clark Gable or nothing. No, not even close. Not even close. Um, but, but he was, he was a legit actor. I'm not trying to taking that away from him to be actor, but he was president of the actor's guild. Oh. And that's where he got his first experience in leadership. And then he worked for GE as a spokesman and that's where he honed his conservative ideas. He started out as a Democrat and he honed his conservative ideas. Now, some people will point at some of these guys. Well yeah, his conservative ideas didn't include minorities and all that. I'm not debating all the policy things. What I'm saying is there's a process he went through to become who he became Lyndon Johnson. Now that guy wanted to be a politician and powerful from day one, but can you guess what his first job was and what he studied in school? I think it was his first job. I mean, first significant job. Is he a janitor or something? After College. After College. Okay. Okay. Um, police department teacher, a teacher and I believe he taught underprivileged kids were African American kids, which when you look at that and you, you look at that, that role as a teacher and you see what he later on did. A guy who used the n word is a guy that was him, is the guy who did more to give African-Americans rights in the country. And I'm not saying he did it all willingly and all that, but got it done with Martin Luther King. Got He got the political part done. Martin Luther King had the cultural part. Yeah, he had to have Linda Johnson do the political part. Um, so interesting cause I that's, I might, I need to go probably read up on that cause that's super interesting cause you know that kind of reveals a little bit about him as a person and like tough guy that you read about him. Man. You want to talk about like if he, if he was in the Senate right now he would be president. Cause when he was in the Senate it was like he was president and he would run the show. Oh my gosh. Oh you should read about it. There's a whole series called the master of the Senate. Extraordinary, extraordinary education with the Senate is how the Senate works. The bottom line is, and I'm going to get political here for a minute. The bottom line is there's nobody in the Senate that can run the Senate the way Lyndon Johnson did. Mitch McConnell's a nice guy. I mean, I mean I don't want to say anything negative about anybody but he doesn't even belong to the same sins. Lynn Johnson. So my position would be this though you said vision and crisis leadership, but I think the thing that's often neglected about leadership is no one ever talks about the process. No one ever talks about all that people have to go through in life to arrive at a point where they're useful. Winston Churchill was the same. He liked becomes prime minister, something he longed to do from very early in his life at in his sixties his Mitts, I think he's 66 and people just ignore the whole process and I think that's the part of the problem we have in leadership is that we want these finished products, but I give me this finished product. Why can't this guy do this right now as a country and organization, you have to have the patients to say, I'm going to let a guy do all this stuff. That is dumb. It's a not serious why people are looking on Twitter and other places and finding stuff. Say, well, this person said this once and they're now evil and I'm not going to have them, you know, lead anything or be in charge. Okay, here's the problem. None of these guys would have been president if we took the approach we took. We take now a little bit of microscopic examination of their life. None of them, and somebody said, well maybe good writtens Thomas Jefferson should have never been president. Okay, let's say Thomas Jefferson was never president. Okay, lets say Thomas Jefferson was banished immediately because he wouldn't give up his slaves. Okay, let's say that you know you don't have the declaration of independence. Now he did that before he's president. Okay. Louisiana purchase Bingo. I know that. That's like Bingo one third of the United States basically. Right? Bingo. You got no California, you got no Texas.[inaudible] America is basically the 1820 colonies. Hmm. There's a lot of implications for when you look and you say, well this person was evil and wicked and they should've never been president and there's just a lot of things. If Reagan doesn't become president, I'm not being a Democrat or Republican. I'm in event. If Reagan doesn't become president, does America ever lift itself out of the deep, deep, deep discouragement of Watergate? The Vietnam War, Carter couldn't pull us out of it. Do they ever do it? And he said, well, he was, he was not. He was a racist. Some of those, he's a racist. He hurt blacks. I think there's an argument for, for him, this policy's not doing a lot for African Americans, but a lot of people don't know when he was a governor of loss, a governor of California, he would oftentimes go to dinner in inner city Los Angeles with an African American family and eat dinner. Some of them he'd been, he never talked about it. So there's, there's a process and I think you're never going to get perfect. And I think one of the challenges we face in America in the 21st century is that as a country, we don't understand that. If you really want great leaders, all of them are going to have something wrong with them. Yeah. And, and the real challenges can the people look at that and admire that process. And I'm not saying that we should have them be president when there are criminals or something. I'm saying that'd be interesting. Well, I'm just saying that when we, when we look at their past, we need to be able to look at it with the perspective of not what did they do, but who have they become? Hmm. I think that's a good place for me to stop. I totally agree. Well, everybody trust the process. Embrace it. Love it. Thank you for listening. Make sure to check out breasts, fuel.com for more leading good content. And also please subscribe. Check out the latest episodes, leave a five star, five star only rating and review for us, and we'll see you next time. You're going to do the advertiser's next, maybe leading good where we have cool graphics or out.