Thomas Jefferson: Executive Leadership, Character, and Strategy

April 13, 2012, 1:00pm – 4:30pm

Event Details

Are you inspired and enjoy learning from history to effect future change in leadership? If so, the Jefferson Leadership session will be a perfect fit for you. This workshop will focus on Jefferson’s leadership skills and political character through his executive roles as Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, Secretary of State, and two-term President of the United States. One of the most ambitious and successful leaders of the Founding generation, Jefferson deployed three fundamental leadership qualities throughout his forty-year career: mastery of the art of communication, decisive decision-making and strategic planning, and a long-term focus on shaping his “leadership legacy” for future generations. We will focus on specific illustrations of these traits—as critical for leaders today as they were in Jefferson’s time—using case studies from Jefferson’s political career and several of his own letters and documents. Through them, we will gain a better understanding of the nature of Jefferson’s success as well as his lessons for modern executives.

Specific areas of focus will include:

• Jefferson’s personality, character, and nature of leadership: his skills at organization, relationship-building with peers and subordinates, and method of leading both his party and the government;
• The relationship of principles and expediency in his leadership: Jefferson the ‘strict constructionist’ of the Constitution expanded the power of the Presidency beyond his own expectations, and Jefferson the frequent critic of slavery almost certainly fathered children by his slave. Historians have long criticized Jefferson’s alleged ‘hypocrisy.’ Is this a fair criticism, or did his flexibility make him a more effective leader?
• Jefferson’s vision of the University of Virginia not only as source for enlightenment and knowledge in the state, but also as an expression of his personal leadership legacy and living monument to his vision of the American republic
• Jefferson’s relationship with, and management of, political adversaries—such as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr—and his handling of political setbacks and defeats, most notably during his Governorship of Virginia.

Facilitator: Dr. James R. Sofka is Adjunct Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville and the American Military University, where he teaches courses in international relations, European diplomatic history, and international law to senior members of the American civil service and armed forces. He previously taught in these fields along with early American foreign policy in the Department of Politics in the University of Virginia from 1993-2006, where he also served as Dean of the Honors program in the College of Arts and Sciences. He received his M.A. in 1991 and Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Virginia and his A.B. with Honors in Government from Franklin and Marshall College in 1989.

A Jefferson scholar, Dr. Sofka has published widely on Jefferson’s foreign policy and has presented numerous lectures on the subject at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, where he has held two fellowships, as well as for the Brookings Institution. He co-taught a seminar on Jefferson’s foreign policy at Monticello and has participated in international conferences under its auspices. Along with other leading scholars, Dr. Sofka appeared in the 2010 documentary “Jefferson” broadcast nationally on the History Channel. He is finishing a book-length study of Jefferson’s foreign policy entitled “A Commerce Which Must be Protected”: The International Policy of Thomas Jefferson, 1785-1809.”

Register now