The Thomas Jefferson Hour; Leadership

Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with our third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. The Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by High Plains Public Radio and New Enlightenment Radio Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Today's program is the first in the series of leadership programs. Our host today is Janie Quill, the producer of the program. Please join us as our host Janie Quill, speaks with Thomas Jefferson portrayed by Humanity Scholar Clay Jenkinson. Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour. My name is Janie Quill and I'm your host today. Seated across from me is Thomas Jefferson our third president. Good day to you, Mr. Jefferson. Good day to you, citizen. Mr. Jefferson, today we're starting a series of programs on leadership and I'm going to be the host for the series. Normally, Bill Crystal is your host. However, Bill Crystal is an active minister and gets called away frequently and think that this could be a five or six program series on leadership and Thomas Jefferson. Well, I certainly think

that leadership is an important subject in a Republican society because we have inherited concepts of leadership from Europe and particularly from England that we found inadequate. So one of the challenges of inventing America was to create a new definition of leader that would allow us to accomplish things that are best suited to the personality and the strength of character of one individual and yet not somehow undermine the emerging democratic nature of this society. So in a dictatorship like that of Julius Caesar in ancient Rome, leadership is one sort of a problem because once you've accepted the idea of a very strong leader who will take a people in the direction that he thinks is best irrespective of what they want or understand, then one set of leadership qualities is important. But in our system where the people are

sovereign, a leader has a much more delicate challenge and I think that inventing leadership for the United States is one of the key problems of the American Revolution. Mr. Jefferson was leadership as in the form of the president of the United States. Was that defined by the time George Washington became the first president of the United States? No, it had been developed in a certain way by the Constitution, the Constitution envisions a tripartite system of government in which there will be a legislative branch, a judicial branch, and an executive branch. And we were using political theory that went all the way back to Aristotle to try to formulate all of this. And we were indebted to Aristotle's politics. We were indebted to Plutarch's lives of the eminent Greeks and Romans. We were influenced by the the ancient theorist Polybius. And in the modern world, we were influenced by John Locke and Montesquieu and others. And so we had what I would would call a large menu of possibilities. But we knew

that we wanted a tripartite system of government. That much was clear. We wanted a system of checks and balances. We wanted in some sense of the term legislative supremacy. We wanted to lean on the legislative branch because of course under Republican theory, the legislative branch is the one that's closest to the actual sovereign to the people. But we knew that we needed an executive and we had learned through the articles of Confederation that a plural executive does not work. You can't have an executive by committee. That was a very inefficient form. I found that it was an extremely inefficient form in Virginia. When I was the governor and the governor during that period in Virginia was a very weak being and he was surrounded by an executive council. But this actually created conflict within the executive. It slowed down the executive's ability to act under crisis. So we were all learning. You know, we were experimenting. Obviously, ideally, there's no executive at all in a free society. There's just a group of self-governing ideal citizens. But if you have to have an executive, then how do you keep it weak enough so that the

people are still in control and strong enough so that things can be done under certain conditions? We had not really figured this out at the time of the of the Constitution. It took experimentation. And I would say that in the presidencies of George Washington, terms one and two and in the presidency of John Adams, one term and in my two terms as president, we experimented until week. In a sense, we developed the final form of the early presidency of the United States. Mr. Jefferson, did Alexander Hamilton write something in the federalist papers about the executive being the energy behind the government? Yes, Hamilton was a what what I would call a consolidationist and he believed that there's he believed in in a Republican form of government in some sense of the term. In other words, he believed that everyone believed with very few exceptions that the people are sovereign that the people create the state that the state depends upon the goodwill of the people to survive and that

if the people withdraw their consent, then the state collapses that we return to a state of nature, that the people therefore have to be dealt in to all decisions and certainly all major decisions about their destiny. I mean everybody agreed with this in theory. This is natural law theory about the sovereignty of the people, which is quite different say from British theory of absolutism, which said that God directs a king to be the sovereign and the people are his wards or his children and the king has a direct relationship with God and embodies God's will on earth and that the people should be factored in because because they're one's honorable subjects just as one a father would factor in the the health and happiness of his children but that the people aren't in control that the people must not control their destiny. So that's that's absolutism or monarchy in the profoundest sense. So this theory that we were putting forward is a natural law theory which has ancient roots but which

had been largely forgotten in the period between the fall of Rome and the the rise of the of the Enlightenment states are perhaps in the Renaissance and suddenly we're experimenting so everybody understands this even Hamilton understands that the people are sovereign at least in theory but Hamilton wanted them to be acknowledged occasionally and he wanted them to be ignored frequently and he believed that they should mind their own business and stay out of government to which they were not really qualified and he believed that a group of experts would be distilled in any society he sometimes called him the wise the rich and the well-born but a group of an elite would percolate out of a society somehow and that this elite better educated wiser more property with a greater stake he thought in the success of the civilization this elite would govern on behalf of the sovereign and so that it would be a very broad trust relationship between the sovereign and this small elite and in our

system of government today based upon what you all created the three branches are not all equal well they're not meant to be equal they're meant to be nearly equal because we wanted a system of checks and balances we knew that if any one branch had too much authority it could run away with the government and it could swallow up the rights of man it could become tyrannical and we all understood that a runaway legislative branch can be dangerous just as can a runaway executive or judicial branch so they need to have roughly equal power and they need to be able to check the excesses of each other so the president becomes dictatorial he can be impeached but the impeachment is a very difficult test and so he's usually acquitted but he can be convicted and if so he leaves office Congress can pass legislation funding a new postal road into Ohio but if the executive feels that that's unwise use of money or that it thwarts the will of the people or that it's unconstitutional he can veto it but Congress can

override the veto by a two-thirds majority in both houses then the president if he wants can refuse to spend the money he can impound the funds if he does that then he lays himself open to non-re-election certainly and perhaps impeachment meanwhile the judicial branch of government advises the other two branches about what is and what is not legal and constitutional and but the judicial branch is not supreme if the judicial branch vetoes a whole series of legislative acts that the people really want then the people can go in and amend their constitution to enable that very legislation so each branch has some authority but it can be overridden there is no final arbitration in a free society it's a series of Newtonian balances and that's frankly why I was appalled by the the supremacy of the judicial branch of government during my time because if if you have that small branch finally being supreme then it it effectively undercuts the sovereignty of the other two branches we need a

balance but if you if there is an imbalance it should go to the legislative branch because the legislative branch is that branch of government which is a distillation of the will of the people the people of Virginia the people of New Hampshire the people of Ohio elect their representatives and they indirectly elect their senators and therefore those people are representatives of the will of the populace and and therefore they should have a little extra authority in governmental decisions particularly when there's an impasse of some sort mr. Jefferson as you look at our government today does the legislative branch have that little extra authority no in your time I would say that the executive branch is supreme you know the the executive branch in your time wages war with very little congressional authority that would be counter to the principles of the constitution of the United States which which declare emphatically that wars need to begin in the legislature and in fact in the House of Representatives which is the the branch closest to the people the

executive in your time is much more imperial than I would have found acceptable and the president can sign executive orders of the broadest potency that have no legislative basis whatsoever the president behaves like a king he's surrounded by delivered servants and armed guards like a king he lives in isolation he is the initiator of the of the national enterprise that doesn't discount the legislative branch legislative branch in your time still has enormous amounts of power but it has largely abdicated its checking influence on the executive the only place you see the legislature really checking the executive in your time is on judicial appointments thank you mr. Jefferson I'd like to bring our discussion into some of today's thoughts about leadership one that you have mentioned already but not in these terms is that if you have a team of people and they are in charge of a decision that many times no decision gets made because it gets stalled so if you have three equal branches

of the government and one is not empowered greater than the other then you end up with a problem where maybe not enough energy is going into it in today's terms what we'll say is that a camel is a horse designed by a committee well first of all let me say that in our system inefficiency is intended if nothing gets done that's better than something dangerous being done and so we built in under our constitution a series of checks and balances designed to slow down the process of government particularly a national government so that there is a kind of restraining energy that prevents government from doing sudden wicked selfish whimsical things and I actually at one time this is my more radical streak but I suggested that there be a mandatory one-year waiting period between the first and second readings of any national legislation so that if you propose a new tax bill you introduce it on such and such a day in

183 once it's been introduced into Congress then there's a one-year period of reflection and weight before the second reading of that bill so that we can think again about some of these things something happens in the international arena people become excited and then they wanted to clear war and then if they do declare war war occurs and it's a great havoc and troops are raised and families are shattered and and enormous amounts of money is spent and then at the end of all of this we may feel that the war could have been averted that it was a temporary crisis and so I believe that if you slow down the process of government you will avoid many many dangerous things now that concept of leadership is quite different from one that would be needed in your time and say in in business in the business community where decisions need to be made and and time is of the essence but in government particularly a national government in my era at least delay was a good thing thank you mr. Jefferson you indicated that the presidency or the the role of the president was being

defined not just by the constitution but also during the first two terms of George Washington's presidency your two terms John Adams is one term and do you feel like the leadership of the presidency that it is constantly in transformation or is it stable did you all bring some stability to it we've provided a temporary settlement but but things change and in your time you may need a stronger executive than we required in my time the worst thing you can do is become doctrinaire and lock yourself into a kind of fossilized system of government and then live according to that system even if it if it fails to be useful or efficient so I'm for tearing up the constitution from time to time and amending it frequently I'm not for a great deal of metaphysical interpretation of the constitution I think we should have a relatively literal reading of the constitution and then revise it from time to time but the presidency is a very interesting subject because nobody really knew what it was to be we didn't want a monarchy we knew that we didn't want a committee we

wanted a president but it wasn't quite clear how much authority he should have and how the people should regard him and what his role with the other branches of government should be in Washington thank God we had Washington as our first president because he defined out kingship he he was a much beloved figure and we probably would have made him president for life or king but he he did not want that he chose the path of virtue and therefore he ruled out forever that the president could take on dictatorial or monarchical energies now some presidents have have done some of that in tone if not in substance but Washington saved the country in my view by ruling out once and for all that the presidency would become a kind of a kingship but he was also what I would call a high-toned president he had levies he didn't shake hands with the American people he was an aloof sort of a father figure a patriot king sort of president I didn't think that that was right on two counts I don't think that the president should have these sort of aloof tendencies to keep himself away to

distance himself from the people and I don't think that the the president should be somebody who's afraid of the popular touch and so the the revolution that I think that I brought about in the presidency was to take some of that what I would call stuffiness or pomposity out of it I show cans with the people I corresponded freely with people I allowed average citizens to come into the White House at least two times a year and more times if they made an appointment and I tried to tone down the presidency to make it first citizen rather than a kind of patriot prince so I think that that was an evolution that that stayed I think that all presidents in the first half at least of the 19th century had to follow my lead of being more popular more populist than Washington and more available to the people and that they had to even if they didn't believe it they had to accept that they were not exalted figures I think that's changed it actually changed in the 20th century with your president Theodore Roosevelt and since then there's been quite a difference but let me

give you another example of this Washington didn't know when the president should go to Congress so the Congress was planning a treaty with Indians in the West and they invited Washington this was when the when the government was in New York they'd invited Washington to come up and advise them about this and he went up and he was kept waiting for two or three hours in the halls of the temporary Congress in New York City and he became so angry that he said he would never go to Congress again except to deliver a state of the Union message but he would never be at the call of the legislative branch because it was so undignified for them to keep him waiting so that settled it once and for all the president does not go to Congress on a routine basis because Washington became annoyed by the congressional delay on that occasion that's how the presidency has been defined in American history by a series of experiments and accidents so there was no huge well thought out strategy behind this now he was as miffed in the Washington it was a was a man who had perfect Republican virtue but he was also naturally a high-toned angry arrogant exalted sort of figure so

he had to work against his natural personality in order to be a great president of the United States another example is that when I was Secretary of State and during the Washington administration I wanted the Supreme Court to advise me about some international treaty situations regarding Spain and Britain and I I wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court saying would you advise us and he said no that's not what we do and so that ended almost forever the idea that the judicial branch of government would work like the Attorney General and provide legal or constitutional advice on a proactive basis to the president or the legislature that he John Jay determined once and for all that the judicial branch of government would be passive and would receive legal crises but it would never initiate legal action and that defined in a way that was not written in the Constitution how our system would work Mr. Jefferson thank you very much we have to pause and go for a one-minute break before we do so I'd like to say that when we come back I'd like for you to talk

more about how the government was formed and the way that policies or rights of passage are now interpreted we may have thought they were strategic and they might have been accidents like what just happened with Washington but we'll get to that when we return thank you very much thank you you are listening to the Thomas Jefferson arrow with humanity scholar Clay Jenkins in portraying Thomas Jefferson in honor of the Jeffersonian leadership series Clay Jenkins and his producer Janie Quill have been selecting leadership tools from today's marketplace the first recommended tool is a single CD entitled little voice management systems for a $40 donation you will receive the first of the modern day Jeffersonian leadership tools the CD entitled little voice management systems please call 1-888-458-803 1-888-458-803 to order yours today please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour my name is Janie Quill and I'm the

host of today's program Mr. Jefferson today we are speaking about leadership and this will be the first in a series of programs on leadership some of them will be dealing directly with our government and how it was formed other programs will be dealing with your leadership style and the leadership style of various founding fathers we will compare them to today's leadership books some of the classics on leadership from Tom Peters and then even some of the more recent books such as Good to Great by Jim Collins so that's just a kind of set the tone but let's go back you were talking about the forming of the presidency in the United States and I understand that there was actually a challenge with what to title the executive branch it's true not the executive branch but the but the executive officer because we certainly didn't want to call him the king you have to remember that what we're essentially doing is

reacting to British monarchical tyranny that we felt that the parliament of Britain and the king of Britain had betrayed the the English Constitution we were English citizens and that we therefore wanted to create a new kind of government and the last thing we wanted to do was to have a homegrown king who might take on the same indifference and haughtiness that George the third had done and so we needed an executive but we didn't want that kind of executive at least most of us I think Mr. Hamilton did and a few others but most of us wanted something better something more tied to the will of the people so given that we created the presidency you know it's an ancient term president it we had exalted it somewhat from its ancient significance but that's what this being was to be called it's an ancient term and it's a Latin term and it means to sit in front of pray in front of sitio to sit in front of and so it's just a term that we exalted into a higher status than it had held in the ancient

world so I was not at the constitutional convention in 1787 but that's what happened there and the constitution calls this person the president of the United States but once the constitution had been ratified in the first Congress of the United States met there were some well-meaning people including John Adams who believed that the president was an inadequate title for this person and he believed that in order for our government to work and for people to have a deep reverence for the rule of law there needed to be a majesty in the constitution that we needed to exalt the president that he needed a better title that we needed to create a kind of almost a kind of house of lords sort of feel but that there needed to be more than just this sort of mere constitutional epithet for this being and he believed this because he thought this is what the people wanted or what was what was in John Adams's

thought process that he would think that we needed something that was more along the lines of a king well I think that he met and I don't speak for Adams and I disagreed with this I think the president is a perfectly adequate title as did James Madison and finally as did the the first legislature of the United States but I think that Adams felt that law is very elusive people have an anarchic streak people tend to disobey the law that the law if you pass legislation requiring people to pay their taxes that doesn't mean they pay them there has to be there has to be an enforcement power and there has to be a kind of awe that people feel towards government and towards statesmen and if they don't feel that then they will be more likely to spin out into anti-social behavior and so Adams believed that if the president was called something like his excellency or his majesty or the protector of American liberties or something like that that there would be an automatic structural

reverence that would set in and people would look to this being as the embodiment of the law and that therefore they would have a personal devotion a personal stake in being good because they would revere this being who had been exalted into a semi-magestic state do you believe that in John Adams's view that the title would have invoked fear in people also fear and reverence but more reverence than fear because no one feared George Washington and we have a different system from the European system but some fear but great reverence and he felt God bless him that if you just call this person the president that people will shrug their shoulders and do whatever they feel like doing wow mr. Jefferson even though the title his majesty didn't come into being there were several titles given to founding fathers that took off on the English version of his majesty for instance wasn't mr. Madison known as

his little miss well it's true you know people some of this is just the sarcasm and irreverence of political life name calling and Madison was a diminutive person a very tiny man and one of the sarcasts called him a little apple John of a man and even Mrs. Madison dolly Madison called him the great little Madison because she was aware of what a small fellow he was but some of this is just the play of political tension but John Adams was often called his rotundity or the Duke of brain tree because he was the one who was pushing for titles he wasted a couple of weeks of the first Congress of the United States insisting on titles of nobility for our national officers and people just found Adams to be pompous and self-serving and that he wanted to title you know the letter to his wife Abigail when Washington declared that he would retire after two terms Adams called himself quote the heir apparent which is a

kingly statement he meant this of course in a facetious way but people held this against Adams they felt that he was a crypto monocrat and that titles were just one way that he wanted to insert into our republican constitution certain kingly ceremonies and and events he also wore ceremonial sword all of his presidential life he held levees you know he he played a stiff aloof character when he really wasn't he was actually a very convivial man but he felt the dignity of office required all this and so people gave him this this title his rotundity because he was not only pompous but but also fat Mr. Jefferson thank you let's move this back towards your leadership style for just a moment if you had to describe yourself as a leader you are a natural leader what qualities do you feel were important in a leader well first of all let me say that I would not call myself a natural leader I would call myself a

reluctant leader and I would furthermore I know this will sound quaint to your listeners but I would say that to the extent that I was a leader I was an expression of the will of the people and really the father of the party that I represent the republican party was James Madison and for a time it was called Madison's party and Madison was the energy of that party he created the opposition to the to the Adams and Washington administration because he felt as as do I that they were taking the country in the wrong direction and I was very reluctant to get involved because I'm a gentleman and I don't like fighting and I don't like party and I don't like being disloyal to Washington and Adams and I didn't want conflict in my life harmony is my obsession so I'm not born to be a leader I'm a behind the scenes kind of a man if you say that you need a new constitution I will make this bargain with you I will write it if

you will agree to defend it in Congress I don't want to be I don't want to be in the public sphere I don't ever want to be in a dispute with anybody I don't ever want to debate I don't ever want to raise my voice I don't ever want to feel that terrible feeling in one stomach when there's ranker in the air and aggression and hate and and and deliberate mischaracterization of another person's point of view I'm a behind the scenes sort of scholarly man a student of of the history of civilization I'll get my get out my books and put them on the carpet and and quote from them and build an ideal constitution or at least one that I consider ideal and hand it to you but if you expect me to go into the room and defend it I can't do it. Mr. Jefferson this is true also of Mr. Madison who was the head of the party is it not isn't it true that the majority or that many of the policies that Madison put into effect he did

covertly well yes he was a shy he was maybe more shy than I was and he felt he was a hypercontract which I was not and he felt all of his life that he had he was he was prone to epileptic seizures although I never saw one but he had this sort of anxiety that I never had I was shy and and retired and scholarly and a harmony lover but I was not a hypercontract and I was not afraid in the way that he was he was a fearful sort of man but on the other hand he was much more pugnacious than I was he was a fighter and I'm not and he when I would ask him to go into the public arena to defend something he would do it and do it brilliantly and he did it in a great way never repeated himself there was no declamation there was no striving for effect it was just massive air edition and intelligence and forcefulness and he would say something and say it well and then stop talking unlike most of the members of Congress but you know Madison had some political skills that I simply didn't have we made a

great partnership because he brought something that I didn't to our style of leadership and I brought something that he didn't and together we were more than one plus one I would say but you know he almost was like one of those badgers that Lewis discovered out in the American West he had that kind of that animal tenaciousness which I simply don't have and I'm sure I disappointed Mr. Madison frequently by not having political staying power that was his role so together great team so that's one that's one concept I would say of great leadership great leaders know their strengths and know their weaknesses and they don't try to overcome their weaknesses they try to compliment their weaknesses so there was no chance that I was ever going to be a floor manager of legislation or a brilliant debater or somebody who went to taverns and slapped other men on the back and bought a round of drinks these are qualities that I simply didn't have and frankly didn't want so instead of trying to do things that I wasn't good at I found people who were good at those things and they were my partners and they then made me a better

leader than I otherwise would have been and so knowing your weaknesses and knowing how to find the right people to surround yourself with and to use terms from your own time not being threatened by them to being accepting the fact that your leadership depends upon another person's excellence and that you can only thrive if he too is thriving and that his mastery is no threat to your primacy this is a very essential quality I would say of good leadership Mr. Jefferson that's very interesting there is a business pokeout on the market right now that's very popular and it's by the Gallup poll people and the title of it is now know your strengths and in it what they're talking about is finding out what your strengths are and then when you recognize your weakness don't try to correct your weakness what has happened in the business world at least in the 21st century 20th and 21st century when you find your weakness

you get sent to seminars to try and improve that weakness to try and bring it up and the book now is saying what you are saying the book now says don't try and show up your weakness unless it's making you fail instead team with somebody else who has what your weakness is that they have that as you're as a strength I accept that now in the other hand there are some weaknesses that we can overcome if I'm lazy if I sleep too late in the morning if I procrastinate you know there are weaknesses which which a person can can improve upon by discipline and by by resolution but there's no way that I was ever going to be a good debater so I would then find a good debater to supplement to complement me in a leadership style I think that's that's critically important and I don't think that any one person has the full complement of leadership skills except possibly George Washington but even with Washington I would say that he was a little rigid in his thinking and that he didn't have a sufficient education to

be a very flexible thinker and that he was not quick on his feet and so he got the best possible person to serve as his compliment and Alexander Hamilton Hamilton was brilliant in a way that Washington was plotting and Hamilton was fierce in a way that Washington could not let himself be because of his stature and so by teaming up with Hamilton he did he made the best of his administration I would say I can tell you what my own strengths as a leader were I mean first of all I am brilliantly prepared I am always the most the best prepared person in any situation if we're going to talk about the tobacco tonnage that we send into European circles I know when I walk into the room that there can be nobody in that room who is as well informed about how many types of tobacco we grow what sort of barrels they go in what ships come what the tariffs are what kinds of captains where these ships are originated what kind of trade winds they will they will encounter in the Atlantic what the

port problems are in Europe what kinds of protective tariffs European countries have what the the nature of the leadership is in each of those countries I'm as well prepared with the possible exception of Madison as anybody who ever walks into any room that I think is incredibly important as a leadership skill and secondly I don't have to be the center of attention I don't mind sitting back and letting others do the talking and the debating even if I if I've developed a plan to to get tobacco into France and when it comes into the legislative process it turns out that Patrick Henry gets the glory for it that doesn't upset me as long as the mission is accomplished as long as the the goal is met I don't care who gets the credit for it in fact I would rather have somebody else get the credit for it because if I get credit for ABC and D people will start to envy me and try to undermine my leadership but if I spread it around and show that I have no ego attachment to my success this

is a very disarming quality and the third level that I of leadership that I brought was what one of your recent presidents cynically called the vision thing you know I'm a visionary I like to envision a future I can I can envision a society I have a clear articulate and poetic picture of the world that I want to live in and I keep that vision in my mind's eye and so if we're talking about a bridge or a political squabble in the in the Republican caucus or what we're going to do about Colonel Burr or whether we should fire at British ships that are impressing our sailors I never get bogged down in that detail I I'm practical and I pay attention to that that local issue but I see beyond the crisis to the vision I see the long-term vision that I'm trying to fulfill and I never let short-term crises or short-term obsessions get in the way of the greater vision and when you do when you do let them get in the way you fail I

think is a leader mr. Jefferson we're going to have to take a break in just a moment are there any other strengths that you can identify that were key to your success as a leader I'll give you one more well certainly modesty even if it's false modesty is a very important leadership skill I think my modesty was genuine but finally I would say articulate writing if you are an articulate writer of English prose from the polite letter of thanks to a long letter of persuasion to a state paper or a manifesto if you are a clear and lucid writer you will succeed in the world beyond your wildest dreams mr. Jefferson thank you very much it's time for us to take a break we'll be back in just a moment with the scholar behind Thomas Jefferson Clay Jenkinson you are listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour with humanity scholar Clay Jenkinson portraying Thomas Jefferson and his host today is his producer Janie Quill please

visit our website www.thifenjefferson.org www.thifenjefferson.org for information about Clay's upcoming performances today's program is the first in a series of leadership programs about the founding fathers and in particular about Thomas Jefferson in honor of the Jeffersonian leadership series Clay Jenkinson and his producer Janie Quill have been selecting leadership tools from today's marketplace the first recommended tool is a single CD entitled little voice management systems by Blair Singers a rich dad advisor for a $40 donation you will receive this CD a single CD entitled little voice management systems please call 1-888-458-1803 1-888-458-1803 to order your copy today to ask Mr. Jefferson a question or to donate $9 and receive a copy of today's program please call 1-888-458-1803 again to ask

Mr. Jefferson a question or to donate $9 and receive a copy of today's program please call 1-888-458-1803 please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment you welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour my name is Janie Quill and I'm the host

of today's program seated across from me as the scholar behind Thomas Jefferson Clay Jenkinson good day Clay welcome Janie now Bill crystal sometimes is otherwise engaged and he's also visually working on his characterization of citizen John Adams so for this occasion and on some others you're the host of the program and you you bring interest to it that perhaps Bill and I don't have which is leadership theory and Jefferson clearly was a leader although that's not a that's not one of the categories that he would have wanted to tick off as the top five things that he was in the world now in fact Jefferson identifies himself as being a very modest type of person and as far as being a leader he certainly doesn't brag his ego isn't standing right out there like a John Adams who would have said hey look at me or or Bill Clinton look what I do look what I do you know that's not Jefferson's style Jefferson I mean I think you know every leader has to pretend to be certain things there's a lot of play acting in leadership but Jefferson I think

and I know not everyone agrees with me but I think Jefferson actually meant what he said that he was not a natural leader he did not like leadership he really envisioned a leaderless society that he saw himself as the first citizen that he didn't take himself that seriously as a pivotal figure that Madison probably would have been better that he'd rather be on the farm that he'd rather be reading classical texts that he loves harmony that he hates conflict I think that all those things are true you know in spite of all that Jefferson was a leader and I think what drove him was vision I don't think that Jefferson had a leader's ego I think Bill Clinton has a leader's ego I think John Kennedy had a leader's ego certainly theater Roosevelt had one I don't think Jefferson had that I think what I think Jefferson was was activated and inspired by the vision thing and that he believed that this sounds quaint but he believed that a

break had occurred in 1776 that would be seen in history as the most important line of demarcation and that before that was bad and failed government and tyranny and despotism and the grinding of human beings into powder by bad systems institutions governments and leaders and that the future was going to be a move towards utopia but certainly something infinitely better than what had occurred before and that this was a critical moment in the history of humankind and certainly a critical moment in the history of human dignity and happiness and that we couldn't fail we could not fail to do this right because if we did it would be such a great setback for the cause of humanity and therefore because he felt that he knew what was at stake and that he knew what we were heading towards or should head towards and he knew what pitfalls there might be and saw them all around him and people like Hamilton and Adams and even George Washington Jefferson I think reluctantly

stepped up and said I'd rather that this had just happened organically I'd rather that somebody else did this but in the absence of those two things I will reluctantly agree to do this. Clay that's very interesting I know that you're not a business person and I also know that many of our listeners are not business people in this strictest sense. I happen to read business books all the time this is part of my joy and misery with you. One of the books that I just finished was Jim Collins Good to Grey. I read that you did read that. Okay so now what I'd like to do for our listening audience is to just give them a briefing on this what Jim Collins and his research team did they looked at 1400 companies looking for the companies that had managed to go from being just a good company to a great company and they looked at American public companies because of the amount of data that's out there on them. So let me just

up you're going to transfer company success to institutional success here and to personal success. Okay in this of the 1400 companies that they looked at which were Fortune 500 companies they found 11 companies that made the transition from being just good to being great and being able to sustain being great which they classified or identified as having stock earnings three times the industry average. So if your industry went up and you went up with it that was tough it didn't count. Okay so you had to have three times the industry average of growth and prosperity and prosperity and you had to sustain that for 15 years. So out of 1425 corporations that they looked at 11 companies made the cut that's it. Now what they did was they took these 11 companies and they compared them to companies that had made the transformation from good to great but had not been able to sustain it for 15 years and they also looked at

it against companies that had never made the transformation. Okay now of the 11 companies what one of the things they found out they looked at the leadership style of the 11 companies and they found something very significant. We all have been led to believe through. We think we think Donald Trump and Leia Coker that's our that's our popular idea of what a business leader is. That's exactly it. They're very out there in your face ego-driven men or women. Charismatics who come in and shake up a company and based on their own enormous energies and capacities lead a company into better success. And what Jim Collins found out is that the 11 leaders of these corporations they were very shining. They were all Jefferson. They were all Jefferson. That's right. They were modest. When something went wrong they blamed themselves. When something went right they said it was the people. They had the people around them. The people around them right. But they had a dogged determination to get to a vision. They were they were masters of what they do. They had vision. They had

leadership capacities of inspiring other people but they it wasn't about them. It was about the mission and it and they deliberately or naturally played themselves down and did not make their personalities the center of the success. That's correct. Their egos truly were put aside and they always went for what was best for the corporation not necessarily best for them. Of these 11 several of them could have become multi-multimillionaires if they had gone ahead and sold the corporation and they didn't do it. And the biggest problem with the Liayakoka model which has its its place as I understand the book is that when the Iakokas leave they seldom have been generous in creating a successor who can lead the company to that they it's a one it's a it's a it's a bottle rocket that is incredibly attractive while it's there but when it goes the company goes into a collapse mode. That's correct. And in Jefferson's

case he left successors. Tell us about that. That's I mean that's where I mean look I think basically all this is just gobbledy gook and I'm and I'm not fond of this kind of stuff and I don't you know my natural I have a natural revulsion to business books. I'm I spend about half of my life in airports and you walk into a bookstore thinking mecca and it turns out to be something like Eleanor Roosevelt on leadership or you know you too can be a billionaire or you know chicken soup for the billionaire and I hate that stuff you know I just think we should be reading war and peace we should be reading the classics we should be reading Jane Eyre we should be reading Emily Dickinson we should be reading Will a cather we should be reading nonfiction books about the the Middle East and about the future of Africa and so the idea that the people who are already actuated mostly by greed then go buy books to make them even better at it I find naturally repulsive so there's my prejudice I'll just start with that but you know I know you love this stuff and so that makes me at least

willing to try and when I read this book good to great I found lots in it that was very interesting but I'm not about business it was all all what I could apply somewhere else which I think is fair enough but what I what really convinced me was when Collins says that great leaders are generous in building their successor and boy was Jefferson generous that way I mean he put he was a great man in some regards he put an even greater man into the presidency and it was James Madison and and here's the deal Jefferson could be president without help but Madison couldn't be president without Jefferson in other words Madison could never I think have been president in his own right he had to be the successor he had to be tagged by Jefferson so Jefferson hands the baton deliberately to Madison Madison is a very great man and a very fine president although a greater man than president I think and then and Jefferson sorted out a succession crisis between Madison and Monroe before it could get out of

hand and once Madison had had his two terms Monroe takes two terms so the Jefferson Jefferson Madison and Monroe get 24 years in the presidency and they were all fine presidents and Jefferson made this happen and and neither one of them probably could have made it happen it was Jefferson it was maybe his greatest gift of leadership let's just take it back to Jim Collins good to great they sustained the greatness they made it more than 15 years which is beyond what one CEO would make so with Leia Coco what happened to Chrysler after he left is it basically went downhill after Jefferson left the United States did not go downhill that is correct and Jefferson was I mean Jefferson was president for two terms and I'm sure he had a will and I'm sure he had an ego although it is hard to see them it is hard I mean if you if you comb Jefferson for his ego it is hard to find it whereas if you comb Adams for his ego your comb gets stuck on day one because it's so clogged with ego so there's a difference

there I mean Jefferson had no discernible ego I'm sure he had one but he somehow had mastered it in almost a kind of Zen way so that it was not on the table so when you walked into into a room you were not going to deal with Jefferson's ego when you walked into a room you were going to deal with Adams ego you were going to deal with Hamilton's ego you were going to deal with Washington's ego you would later deal with president Johnson's ego and president Kennedy's ego and and theater Roosevelt's ego but Jefferson didn't have an ego in the room that's incredibly important I think and then Jefferson so that allowed Jefferson to keep focused on the thing that he was trying to accomplish so it's not how can we move forward through me it's how can we move forward and I'll be a facilitator Clay in another program I'd like to look at Jim Collins's hedgehog concept which is basically sounds like Adams to me I mean well the concept is that a good leader an effective leader a level five leader which is what Jim Collins calls these leaders has a single concept

vision of where the company has to go or where the country has to go and they stay with that concept under all circumstances I see that in Jefferson division the long-term vision of an emerging agrarian democracy and I'd like to explore that but I'd like to do that in another program if our leaders would like to read the book good to great by Jim Collins that would probably help if you're not a business person we'll be giving enough information on the program that you don't have to I'll be your advocate listeners who hate this kind of thing I'll make sure we don't get lost in this nonsense okay but let me just go quickly I believe that there's 700 historians that vote on the best leaders of the presidents of all the presidents each year or every five years and my understanding is that the three presidents that came out on top were Washington Lincoln and FDR in fact FDR was voted to be the number one leader of all the presidents so I would not be my list but those people would all be in there certainly Washington one of the great presidents Lincoln of course I mean you

Lincoln gets an automatic place and he is the in my opinion he is the great president of the United States if you could only keep one you'd have to keep him FDR you know I'm a great admirer of the New Deal and and and FDR I'd put Theodore Roosevelt in this list before before FDR I think but these look at what all these men shared they were not Jefferson these were men of ego of power of these were men with testosterone these were these were men who were outgoing they were this Jefferson is a feline sly shy leader these were all overt outgoing leaders Clay I almost think that we need to change the words that we used to describe Jefferson because when you read good to great you suddenly realize that the quiet leader the shy leader the modest man the humble humble man is now a strength and is not a weakness in the CEO category

here's 11 men also I need to it would be nice to explain that these 11 men ten of them came up through the ranks we don't even know their names if I gave you the names of those CEOs you wouldn't even know who they were and yet they have led corporations from being good to great anyway I do think that that there are many different types of leadership and I think that my own opinion is and I come at this merely intuitively since I don't have I don't even understand business but I think that we have run the course of the Donald Trump's not that they will go away but I think that that paradigm you Lucy's S. Grant theodore Roosevelt Donald Trump that that paradigm is over and that the new paradigm that will emerge will be a more Jeffersonian paradigm of leadership that will be more intuitive more sensitive more flexible less ecotistical more nuanced and I think that that's what the world needs and I think frankly that that's why the world is so angry at us at the moment is because we put one of the last bullies into the presidency and the

world does not want we may like this but the world doesn't find it even slightly enchanting well thank you very much Clay we have to wrap up for the day before we finish though I want to say that some of the books that will be referencing during this leadership program series which will extend over probably a year that will be doing various programs there will be some healthy breaks of actual human history yes some of the books that we will be reviewing would be set will be the seven habits of highly effective people I couldn't get through it I got to have it to go ahead that was begin with the end in mind good to great by Jim Collins also the book now discover your strengths in fact on the next program what I would like to do is take Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton's book now discover your strengths and have Jefferson go through in this book they have distilled all the strengths of from 8 million people down into 34 categories I'd like for you to look at the 34 categories and say what really in today's terms would you classify as Jefferson's strengths so you're

gonna have Thomas Jefferson the third president of the United States taking a quiz by some nitwits from the 21st century on know your strengths is that your plan that's exactly it and with that with that we need to close out for the day help said money thank you very much music for the Thomas Jefferson hour was provided by Steven Swinford a Reno Nevada you can visit mr. Jefferson's homepage on the world wide web at www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org to ask mr. Jefferson a question or to donate nine dollars and receive a copy of today's program please call 1 888 458 1803 again the number is 1 888 458 1803 we apologize but we do not do transcripts of our programs the Thomas Jefferson hours produced by high plains public radio and new enlightenment radio network a

nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson thank you for listening and we hope you join us again next week for another entertaining historically accurate and thought-provoking commentary through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson