Abstract
In Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, Howard Gardner writes: “Leaders achieve their effectiveness chiefly through the stories they relate.” Leaders express stories in the way they live their own lives, and they aim to evoke stories in the lives of those they lead. “The artful creation and articulation of stories constitutes a fundamental part of the leadership vocation,” Gardner claims. Further, “it is stories of identity—narratives that help individuals think about and feel who they are, where they come from, and where they are headed—that constitute the single most powerful weapon in the leader’s literary arsenal.”
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Notes
- 1.
Howard Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 9.
- 2.
Gardner (1995), 43.
- 3.
The argument in this chapter is spelled out in more detail in: Dan P. McAdams, George W. Bush and the Redemptive Dream: A Psychological Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
- 4.
The link between generativity and mental health on the one hand and personal redemptive narratives on the other, and the cultural meaning of these narratives, is the main theme in this book: Dan P. McAdams, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). See also: Dan P. McAdams, Jeffrey Reynolds, Martha Lewis, Allison Patten, and Philip J. Bowman (2001). When bad things turn good and good things turn bad: Sequences of redemption and contamination in life narrative, and their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults and students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 8: 593–603. And also: Dan P. McAdams, Anne Diamond, Ed de St. Aubin, and Elizabeth Mansfield. “Stories of Commitment: The Psychosocial Construction of Generative Lives.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72: 678–694.
- 5.
On the role of narrative in psychoanalysis see especially: Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970). See also Donald P. Spence, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis (New York: Norton, 1982).
- 6.
On the upsurge of interest among behavioral scientists in the topic of narrative see especially: Dan P. McAdams, “The Psychology of Life Stories,” Review of General Psychology 5 (2001): 100–122.
- 7.
McAdams introduced the concept of narrative identity in this book: Dan P. McAdams, Power, Intimacy, and the Life Story: Personological Inquiries into Identity (New York: Guilford Press, 1985). See also: Dan P. McAdams, Ruthellen Josselson, and Amia Lieblich, eds., Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press, 2006). And see: Kate C. McLean, Monisha Pasupathi, and Jennifer L. Pals, “Selves Creating Stories Creating Selves: A Process Model of Self-development,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 11 (2007): 262–278.
- 8.
Although children begin to tell stories about their experiences around the age of 2 or 3 years, it is not until adolescence that individuals have the cognitive wherewithal to understand their entire lives—reconstructed past, experienced present, and anticipated future—as evolving stories. See especially Tilman Habermas and Susan Bluck, “Getting a Life: The Emergence of the Life Story in Adolescence,” Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000): 748–769.
- 9.
For a review of contemporary research on life stories in personality science see: Dan P. McAdams, “Personal narratives and the Life Story,” in Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, eds. Oliver P. John, Richard W. Robins, and Lawrence Pervin (New York: Guilford Press, 2008), 3rd ed., 241–261.
- 10.
See Dan P. McAdams and Bradley D. Olson, “Personality Development: Continuity and Change over the Life Course,” in Annual Review of Psychology, eds. Susan Fiske, Daniel Schacter, and Robert Sternberg, vol. 61 (Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc., 2010), 517–542. See also: Dan P. McAdams and Jennifer L. Pals, “A New Big Five: Fundamental Principles for an Integrative Science of Personality,” American Psychologist 61 (2006): 204–217.
- 11.
Robert R. McCrae and Paul T. Costa, Jr., “The Five-Factor Theory of Personality,” in Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, eds. Oliver P. John, Richard W. Robins, and Lawrence Pervin (New York: Guilford Press, 2008), 3rd. ed., 159–181.
- 12.
Steven J. Rubenzer and Thomas R. Faschingbauer. Personality, Character, and Leadership in the White House: Psychologists Assess the Presidents (Washington, DC: Brassey’s Inc., 2004) See also: Chapter 1 (“The Actor’s Traits”) in McAdams (2011).
- 13.
For Oedipal arguments on George W. Bush and his father, see for example: Justin A. Frank, Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (New York: Harper, 2007).
Oliver Stone (Director) and S. Weiser (Writer), W. [Motion picture] (United States: Liongate, 2008).
Jacob Weissberg, The Bush Tragedy (New York: Random House, 2008).
See also: Stanley A. Renshon, In His Father’s Shadow: The Transformation of George W. Bush (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
- 14.
Quoted in Craig Unger, The Fall of the House of Bush (New York: Scribner, 2007), 264.
- 15.
On the cultural contouring of life narrative, see especially: George C. Rosenwald and Richard L. Ochberg, eds., Storied lives: The Cultural Politics of Self-understanding (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). See also: Dan P. McAdams, “The Problem of Narrative Coherence,” Journal of Constructivist Psychology 19 (2006): 109–125.
- 16.
Erik Erikson introduced the concept of generativity in this landmark volume: Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950). For an overview of contemporary theory and research on generativity, see Dan P. McAdams, “Generativity in Midlife,” in Handbook of Midlife Development, ed. M.E. Lachman (New York: Wiley, 2001), 395–443. See also: Ed de St. Aubin, Dan P. McAdams, and Tae-Chang Kim, eds., The Generative Society: Caring for Future Generations (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press, 2004).
- 17.
For a full discussion of the varieties of redemption to be found in the life stories of highly generative American adults and in a range of American cultural forms, see McAdams, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (2006).
- 18.
Quoted in Christopher Andersen, George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage (New York: William Morrow, 2002), 64.
- 19.
Quoted in Andersen (2002), 106.
- 20.
Unger (2007), 82.
- 21.
The account of Blessitt’s meeting with George W. Bush on 3 April 1984 comes from a number of sources, including especially: Stephen Mansfield, The Faith of George W. Bush (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2003), 61–66.
- 22.
Quoted in David Frum, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Random House, 2003), 283.
- 23.
The story of Pastor Mark Craig’s sermon and its alleged effect on George W. Bush’s decision to run for president is told in many places. Whereas Bush himself argued that the sermon convinced him to make a presidential bid, others have suggested that his mind was made up long before he heard Craig’s sermon. See, for example, Weissberg (2008). See also: David Aikman, Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004).
- 24.
George W. Bush, A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House (New York: Harper, 1999), 1. Although Karen Hughes may have penned most of the words that appear in A Charge to Keep, the sentiments clearly belong to George W. Bush. Hughes developed an astute psychological understanding of Bush, and she was able to convey clearly the contours of his life story and his vision for America. At the same time, Hughes was also cognizant of how a campaign autobiography needs to take advantage of the political moment, for the ultimate goal here is to get her man elected, rather than merely to tell his story for the sake of the telling. Hughes knew that as a politician Bush had everything to gain and nothing to lose by accentuating his small-town, West Texas experiences and downplaying the fact that he was the privileged son of an elite Eastern family. But George W. Bush knew the very same thing, ever since he lost his first election campaign (for Congress, in 1978) to a Texas good old boy. He knew it so well, in fact, that it became an authentic and intrinsically motivating part of his narrative identity. George W. Bush certainly made good use of the nearly limitless social capital with which his eminent family provided him throughout his life. But in the redemptive story that he authored for his own life around the age of 40, he is the redeemed sinner who seeks to recapture the all-American goodness of a wholesome, small-town childhood. The estate on Kennebunkport, the years at Andover and Yale, the Harvard MBA—all of these are mere footnotes. They do not play major roles in the basic arc of his narrative identity.
- 25.
George W. Bush (1999), 159.
- 26.
Dan P. McAdams, and Michelle Albaugh, “What if There Were no God? Politically Conservative and Liberal Christians Imagine Their Lives without Faith,” Journal of Research in Personality 42 (2008): 1668–1672.
- 27.
Dan P. McAdams, Michelle Albaugh, Emily Farber, Jennifer Daniels, Regina L. Logan, and Bradley Olson, “Family Metaphors and Moral Intuitions: How Conservatives and Liberals Narrate Their Lives,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95 (2008): 978–990.
- 28.
Kathrin J. Hanek, Bradley Olson, and Dan P. McAdams, “Political Orientation and the Psychology of Christian Prayer: How Conservatives and Liberals Pray,” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 21 (2011): 30–42.
- 29.
See for example: Andrew Sullivan, The Conservative Soul (New York: Harper, 2006). See also Patrick Allitt, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
- 30.
George W. Bush (1999), 17–18.
- 31.
Stephen Mansfield (2003), 35.
- 32.
George W. Bush (1999), 14–22.
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McAdams, D.P. (2011). Redemptive Narratives in the Life and the Presidency of George W. Bush. In: Strozier, C., Offer, D., Abdyli, O. (eds) The Leader. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8387-9_7
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