Excellence in Leadership; Then and Now: Lessons from Two Leaders

Benjamin Franklin and Walter Isaacson

By Laura Biddle-Bruckman

Walter Isaacson, a celebrated leader in his own right, has written a biography of the founder of the first successful mutual insurance company in the United States. The book, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life has been praised by critics across the country. According to Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin was among the most versatile of the Founding Fathers. He was by turns a diplomat, scientist, inventor, revolutionary, businessman and university founder. “Yet,” says Isaacson, “if you asked him what he was, he would say a printer, a newspaperman, a publisher.”

Isaacson considers Franklin a “complex man;” the Founding Father most made of flesh and blood. “We can see ourselves and our values reflected in him, because he’s not intimidating the way George Washington is,” Isaacson said in an interview for the University of Pennsylvania, the college that Franklin founded. “But, deep inside, he was a man of great virtue, especially the virtue of tolerance and especially, religious tolerance.”

And that, Isaacson says, is a virtue needed not only in Franklin’s day but in ours as well. “The virtue of tolerance, I think, is the most important virtue we need in the 21st century,” he told CNN after the book was published.

“When Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, he had a great line: ‘We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.’ And Franklin crossed out ‘sacred and undeniable’ and put, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ [Franklin] said we need to be a very tolerant nation in which our rights are based on reason, not based on religion, and I think in this century, we have to be tolerant of all religions and all tribes, and that was the thing that Benjamin Franklin taught us.”

But it’s not just Franklin who has lessons to teach. Isaacson, according to Tufts University president Lawrence S. Bacow, is “widely regarded as one of the best in the business. (He) has played a key role in reporting and analyzing the leading issues and figures of contemporary and historic times. His celebrated and accomplished career is a testament to his sharp intellect, boundless curiosity and unwavering integrity.”

Isaacson, like the celebrated subject of his book, is also first a journalist – with a string of other accomplishments. His career has straddled print, online and broadcast media. Despite dealing with the daily tumult of breaking-news journalism, Isaacson carved out a niche as a biographer of influential American policymakers. His first two books were The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (Simon & Schuster, 1986), co-authored with Evan Thomas, and Kissinger: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1992). The Wise Men profiles six prominent figures from the post-World War II era. He also directed two of the most influential news outlets in the world, serving as the chairman and CEO of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine.

“People like me become journalists because we actually believe it can help – that drawing more people into the news, helping explain it more works,” Isaacson said during an interview on public television’s “Newshour.”

Today, as head of the world-renowned Aspen Institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., Isaacson oversees the institute’s mission to engage corporate and world leaders in an ongoing dialogue about the contemporary issues facing the international community. Its core mission is “to foster enlightened leadership, the appreciation of timeless ideas and values, and open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues.” And Isaacson drives the point home by saying, “At certain points in our lives, many of us feel the need to reflect on what it takes to lead a life that is good, useful, worthy and meaningful. Perhaps we have noticed ourselves trimming our principles and making too many compromises in our careers, and we want to reconnect with our values. Or perhaps we yearn, in a world filled with clashing opinions, to understand the great ideas and ideals that have competed throughout the progress of civilization. We have passed through a period in the 1990s when we saw the consequences, in both the business and political arenas, of becoming unhinged from underlying values. We face a world in which the biggest threat, to nations and to communities, is a lack of tolerance and understanding.” And, according to Isaacson, “together we can learn one of the keys to being successful in business, leadership and life: balancing conflicting values in order to find common ground with our fellow citizens while remaining true to basic ideals.”

But there are still valuable lessons to be learned from Ben Franklin’s insights on life, Isaacson told graduates of Tufts University in a keynote address. “Learning doesn’t begin or end in college,” he said. Sharing virtues from Ben Franklin’s life, the author and former media executive urged graduates to “live usefully, take responsibility and remember their roots.”

“Be willing to engage in a war of ideas,” Isaacson told them. “But seek to find common ground with those who disagree with you. Hold true to the humility that is expressed through tolerance and be uncompromising only when confronting those who would show no such tolerance.”

Leaders come from all walks of life and we can learn lessons whether the person is living or from our past. At this year’s convention, Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, will bring to life chairman Wayne White’s theme, “Excellence in Leadership,” as he offers a view of leadership from a historical perspective.

For additional information about the NAMIC 110th Annual Convention and to register, visit www.namic.org.

Posted: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 12:00:00 AM. Modified: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 1:58:04 PM.

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