Influential US Presidents: Harry S. Truman

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What does it mean to you when you hear ‘Visionary Leader’ or ‘Ethical Leader?’ Who do you think of? I reflected back on my career to determine what leaders I have worked for that match these statements. Once I begun to research leaders that would fit into both categories I came across someone that stood out to me: President Harry S. Truman. He was regarded as an honest, hardworking, ethical, and visionary leader dedicated to the betterment of the United States. He made ethical decisions based on the best interests of the American people, and he had a vision to transform the economy of the United States. Let’s take a look at some of the things that led me to believe that he was a visionary and ethical leader as well as how it relates to me.

President Truman was a visionary leader seeking change at a time when America needed it; WWII was ending and our economy was not doing well. The Oxford Dictionaries Online (2014) defines a visionary leader as someone who is “thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom.” His vision was to transition from a war-time government regulated economy, to a peace-time consumer based economy. He needed to lead America out of the economic depression it had been in during the war. This proved to be a bigger challenge than he anticipated. Even though he had a vision to fix the floundering economy, he neglected to consider the second and third order effects some of his decisions would cause. With a deregulated economy, union workers went on strike, manufactures struggled to meet increasing consumer demands, and industry stalled. One of the surprising effects was that beef prices doubled in a matter of weeks and people struggled to eat. This forced President Truman to revert...

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...correction, learn from it, and continue moving forward.

Works Cited

Edwards, B. (2010, February 12). This I Believe [Radio broadcast]. Washington DC: SiriusXm.
Kusch, F. (2011, January 26). Ethics, Leadership and Harry Truman. JFK Associates. Retrieved
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Visionary Leader. In oxforddictionaries.com (2014). Retrieved May 6, 2014, from
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