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Do you lead like Abraham Lincoln? This is the first of a three-part conversation about the Top 10 Leadership Qualities of Abraham Lincoln. Reflections on the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Podcast Transcript
Joshua MacLeod:
If you are a genuine leader, your rivals will eventually become your champions. When they see that you’re not just blowing smoke and that you’re the real deal, it’s safe to invite people who are your challengers and who have a difference of opinion than you. Appoint leaders based on strengths, not friendships. Your rivals will become your champions and those who are only seeking power will be exposed and diminished.
Podcast Announcer:
Welcome to the Growability podcast, teaching business and nonprofit leaders a more excellent way to run a business. Visit growability.com for your leadership, coaching consultation and business collaboration needs. What would happen to your business if you led more like Abraham Lincoln? This is the first episode in our new series, Sharing the Top 10 Leadership Qualities of Abraham Lincoln. Here are your hosts, Joshua MacLeod and Bernie Anderson.
Bernie Anderson:
The question I have for you today, Joshua, is how do you develop leaders? And more specifically, how does an organization develop leaders who develops leaders who develop leaders?
Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah.
Bernie Anderson:
How do we do that? And how do organizations in particular do that well?
Joshua MacLeod:
One of the best ways for someone to become a leader who can make new leaders is to study great leaders. For me, one of the best leaders that I’ve been able to study is Abraham Lincoln. There are some incredible books out about Abraham Lincoln, but one of the best books about Abraham Lincoln that I read was called, Team of Rivals. This book is really about how Abraham Lincoln surrounded himself with people who were his rivals, people who were actually trying to get in the seat of the presidency, who were trying to actually really replace him and how instead of being threatened by that, he really just kept the main thing in mind, try to develop the country as best as he could. I’ve got a top 10 list when I read Team of Rivals that I think is a good start, maybe to start looking at leaders.
Bernie Anderson:
Abraham Lincoln, let’s talk. Summarize this thousand page, 67 hour book on Abraham Lincoln.
Joshua MacLeod:
The first thing that really stood out to me about Abraham Lincoln was the power of the pause. Abraham Lincoln was a professional “pauser.” When he would be confronted with disgruntled, often arrogant, rival in the political machine, coming to demand something of him, instead of just like whipping back and just ripping him a new one, he would just pause and take that in and wait a day and then he would send a letter and bring a response. Abraham Lincoln was always pausing. He would get advice from a trusted advisor before making a major decision. I think what a pause does is a pause allows you to look at the scenario strategically rather than just emotionally. The pause allows you to extract some of the emotion to give it some clear and rational thought and then make a strategic decision. So Abraham Lincoln was an absolute master of pausing.
Joshua MacLeod:
Now I’ve got to point out though, there’s a huge difference between a pause and a delay. If you pause, you’re just making sure that I’m not acting emotionally or irrationally or something like that. If you delay, you’re missing the opportunity. So many of the things that Abraham Lincoln had to make a decision about were things to do with war, things to do with policy, putting out fires. So you can wait a day, but you can’t wait two days, pause and then make a decision. Delay is different. Delay is not making a decision and just putting it off. Abraham Lincoln never did that. He always made a decision. He just always made the decision on the other end of a pause.
Bernie Anderson:
That’s great. I can think of so many times in my life where the pause was not there. There have definitely been times in my life where the pause would have done me a lot of good and actually, it’s one of those things you just learned the hard way over 30 years of working in leadership development and various fields and all that.
Joshua MacLeod:
So you can either pause or you can pay the stupid tax.
Bernie Anderson:
Yeah.
Joshua MacLeod:
The cost of the pause is very minimal. The cost of the stupid tax is often very maximal. I’m getting older. I’m getting a little smarter. I still pay stupid tax, but golly, the power of the pause, it’s important.
Bernie Anderson:
Yeah. I love that.
Joshua MacLeod:
So the second thing I learned from Abraham Lincoln, and specifically from this book, Team of Rivals, never use the first draft. It really surprised me that Abraham Lincoln rewrote three or four times every single piece of legislation, the letters that he was going to write to his friends, the speeches that he gave. Abraham Lincoln refined everything. He wrote a letter, he waited a day, he “power of the pause” it, and then he made a couple tweaks and then send out the letter the next day. What I wrote down as the bullet points for this, your very best speeches or policies will be your third or fourth draft.
Joshua MacLeod:
Even in we’re teaching people to make customer personas, we’re teaching them to create vision mission value statements, we’re teaching them to create sales funnels, we’re teaching them… Hey, your first draft doesn’t have to be perfection. Your first draft just needs to be created so that you can get to your third or fourth or fifth draft. So just start somewhere and then work with it. If you try to do perfect on the front end, mm-mm (negative), it’s not going to happen. Abraham Lincoln had the power of the pause. He also never used his first draft. It’s comforting for me to know that when Abraham stood up and said, “Four score and seven years ago,” that wasn’t the first draft. That was like the fifth draft, which is really cool.
Bernie Anderson:
That’s so applicable today, Joshua, to our culture of everything being at the speed of clicks and sending an email or posting something online or whatever. I think so often maybe if we did a little less, but did less but better, did less, but with a little more of an edit to it-
Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah.
Bernie Anderson:
It would be way more powerful.
Joshua MacLeod:
Okay. So third point, third lesson from Abraham Lincoln, appoint leaders based on strengths, not friendships. And this is what I think set Abraham Lincoln apart from literally every president before him. It would be like, imagine if Joe Biden becomes the President and hires all of Donald Trump’s cabinet to come in and actually be his chief advisors in the government. That’s what Abraham Lincoln did.
Bernie Anderson:
Amazing.
Joshua MacLeod:
Abraham Lincoln looked at all of the people that were running against him for the presidency. He made this one, a Secretary of State. He made this one, the Attorney General. They made this one, the Secretary of the Treasury. All of his main competitors. He brought them in to actually be in his cabinet. And so the thing is, if you are a genuine leader, your rivals will eventually become your champions. When they see that you’re not just blowing smoke and that you’re the real deal, it’s safe to invite people who are your challengers and who have a difference of opinion than you. Appoint leaders based on strengths, not friendships. Your rivals will become your champions. And those who are only seeking power will be exposed and diminished.
Joshua MacLeod:
That played out entirely in Abraham Lincoln’s life. It’s the reason why the Civil War didn’t split the entire nation. If Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t have figured out how to, in his own sphere of influence, get everybody with animosity to work together, there’s no way that he would have been able to, in our country, figure out how to get people with animosity to work together. In a sense, our government leaders need to read Team of Rivals and take cues and see if they can actually create cabinets that aren’t just, you’re stupid and I’m smart, but actually let’s work together for a common good and compromise where we can to move the nation forward. So that’s the third thing that Abraham Lincoln did.
Bernie Anderson:
Wow. So you read this book and you 10 things that you learned from this book. Do you always have 10 things that you write down that you learned from a book or was this just an exceptional book that you learn 10 things from?
Joshua MacLeod:
So leaders are learners. Leaders have to have a learning engine when they process information. When I read a book, I’m looking for, what are the things in this book that are generally true with all of the other books that I’ve read and what are the things in this book that can really serve someone else? And then, what are the things in this book that are easily taught to someone else? I start an Evernote, so Evernotes an application where you take notes on things. And I just put that book title as the title of my Evernote document and then I write chapter one and I put a bullet list under chapter one.
Joshua MacLeod:
And I can read it later, a year later after reading the book, and I have, here’s the chapter, here’s the little notes under each one, so then if I want to recommend to a client like, “Hey, here’s a book. Read chapter 12. Tell me if that helps you in your situation. You might want to read the rest of the book, but chapter 12 is really good when we’re talking about this dynamic.” And then what happens is eventually you have a library of books and information on the books that are just really helpful and tools for other people. If you’re just skimming books or just reading books, you’re not really… We’ve got to do more than just “read the book”. We’ve got to actually do some processing and some follow-up or else we’re not going to get the meat out of the book that we read.
Bernie Anderson:
It’s reading with other people in mind. It’s not reading selfishly to check off, oh, I read one more book. I got one more thing on the good reads or whatever, but it’s reading for the benefit of others. I think that it’s amazing to me that we’ve talked about three really incredible leadership principles about the power of the pause, don’t use your first draft and appoint leaders based on strengths, not friendships. I mean, if you could get that, you will develop as a leader very quickly, if you can figure out those three things right there.
Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah.
Bernie Anderson:
That’s huge.
Joshua MacLeod:
And that’s why I’m so thankful for leaders like Abraham Lincoln, who showed the way in that he really was exceptional. He broke the mold. When our nation was at its deepest crisis, we needed somebody who was willing to surrender power and surrender comfort for the good of the whole and he did that. And so what that looks like, in the case of Abraham Lincoln, was surrounding himself with people who were very, very different than he was.
Bernie Anderson:
Yeah.
Joshua MacLeod:
So I think we should maybe stop there and then we can pick up. I’ve got actually a ton more points from this one book that I think is probably helpful. We’ll see if people respond to it.
Podcast Announcer:
Thank you for listening to the Growability podcast. The mission of growability is to equip leaders to flourish in their life and work by developing vision, rhythm, and community. To discover if there is a more excellent way to run your business, visit growability.com and speak with a certified Growability coach. Bernie and Joshua are also available for speaking engagements, workshops and conferences. Subscribing to this podcast helps Growability equip leaders throughout the world and we appreciate your support.