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This is the second episode in our three-part; series sharing the top 10 leadership qualities of Abraham Lincoln, based on the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Do you lead like Abraham Lincoln?

Podcast Transcript

Joshua MacLeod:
There’s not a single instance where Abraham Lincoln, did what everybody else in his entire community did. They made excuses and blamed somebody else. Abraham Lincoln always said, “It was my fault.” No matter what it was.

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. This is the second episode in our three-part; series sharing the top 10 leadership qualities of Abraham Lincoln, based on the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Do you lead like Abraham Lincoln? Here are your hosts, Joshua MacLeod and Bernie Anderson.

Bernie Anderson:
Last week, we started talking about a book that you’ve read about Abraham Lincoln.

Joshua MacLeod:
Yes. So last week we talked about, the power of pause, where you want to pause before any important decisions. Never use the first draft and then appointing leaders in your organization based on their strengths. Not necessarily based on affection or affiliation,

Bernie Anderson:
I could give you three different occasions in which all three of these things were something that I used this week. And I was like, huh, Abraham Lincoln. Power the pause. Not a first draft. Don’t do your first draft, hiring by strengths. And not by just because you like somebody, all three of those things I literally use this week. So yeah…

Joshua MacLeod:
That doesn’t mean you want to not like the people that you hire.

Bernie Anderson:
I only hire people I hate. Yeah.

Joshua MacLeod:
So let’s talk about the fourth major point…

Joshua MacLeod:
So I’ve got 10 points here, top 10 points from Abraham Lincoln. The fourth thing that I learned from Abraham Lincoln was the incredible importance of becoming a storyteller. So Abraham Lincoln’s dad, one of the things that Abraham Lincoln learned from his dad is how to tell a great story. So even as a child, he would watch his dad, make everybody laugh and make a point that people would remember. And as a leader, it’s crucial. I can’t think of actually something more fundamental for a leader than to be able to tell a story. Humans learn through story. The things that we remember the most, are when they’re connected to a story, when we try to make a point and we don’t connect it to a story, people forget the point. When you make a point and you connect it to a story, they actually will remember that story. So three things that Abraham Lincoln did is; one is he kept a notebook of great stories.

Bernie Anderson:
Hmm

Joshua MacLeod:
So he would constantly, he had this book that was like a story collector and he would have this notebook and he would write down any time that he heard a good story, as a leader, one of your jobs is to keep a story notebook where you’re collecting. Good, good analogies. When you read a book and you come across a good story that you could use to share with somebody else, write that down.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah.

Joshua MacLeod:
The second thing is he would spend hours and hours practicing his stories. Even if he didn’t understand the punchline as a kid, he would see where the punchlines were and like where the data was important. And then he would learn how to craft that story and then tell it to his friends.

Joshua MacLeod:
So he would listen to stories from his dad, go practice it, go share it with his friends. Eventually when he was in debates, eventually when he was on stage, eventually when he was in a complex conversation. He would always have this pool of stories that he could pull from. And he also had stories that were really, perfectly tuned to the situation because he had so many stories. Abraham Lincoln had a tendency to laugh louder than anyone else [crosstalk 00:03:55]. So he was telling the story and when we tell stories as the leader, the question is, are we the one laughing louder than everybody else in the room? So if you walked into a room where Abraham Lincoln was telling a story, first of all, everybody’s listening because the story is so great and it’s so practiced, but then secondarily, you got to get into it. So if you want to be a great leader, collect really good stories, keep a notebook to do that, practice your storytelling. And then third, whenever you’re telling the story, make sure that you laugh louder than anybody else.

Bernie Anderson:
I love that. It made me think of a time when we lived in central Asia and we would go to the movie theater. A lot of times the movies are in English. And so the jokes are nuanced and I would be, I’m a loud laugher anyway. [crosstalk 00:04:39] And so I would be like the only one in the whole theater laughing. It was like, what is wrong with this American guy? That was hysterical. And I love that advice. I think that’s super cool. Fifth point.

Joshua MacLeod:
Fifth point from Abraham Lincoln about great leadership. Move at the speed of people. There are so many leaders who are attempting to, get their organization or their team to move at their speed. The problem is, most leaders, especially exceptional leaders. They move at a pace that’s faster than the rest of the group. If you study Abraham Lincoln and you look at, how he moved, the speed at which he moved on, abolishing slavery, if you look at it at the end, looking back, you’re like, well, he didn’t move fast enough. And he didn’t make this statement clear enough and he didn’t do XYZ. But if you really get to know him, like through this book, he was actually being very strategic, not only in the decisions that he was going to make, but actually the timing of how he was actually going to make the decisions and being strategic. We had a very racist society and Abraham Lincoln was less racist than the majority of people in the nation, but he still had to work with a bunch of racist people to bring about an end to systematic slavery.

Joshua MacLeod:
One of the things we talk about a lot, Bernie, is not just doing the right thing, but doing the right thing at the right time when you are working with a team or when you’re working with an organization, or even if you’re working with a state or a country. It’s so important that you learn to move at the speed of people.

Bernie Anderson:
Hmm.

Joshua MacLeod:
So what is the speed of people? The speed of people is when you generally understand, at what point in time will the people actually embrace this, not just nod their head, but actually sign off, get in the game and make a change.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah.

Joshua MacLeod:
Sometimes as leaders, we make mistakes, we run too fast. We outrun, we outpace our team, but Abraham Lincoln was always slowing down. I mean, the guy was a strategic genius. That was just well beyond any contemporary, but he also had a fundamental understanding of the pulse of the north and a fundamental understanding of the pulse of the south. And at what point would the cabinet move here? At what point would the Senate move here? At what point would this army move here? At what point? You really have to move at the speed of the people that are on your team. So Abraham Lincoln had the power of the pause. He never used the first draft. He appointed leaders based on strengths and not friendships. He became a storyteller and then he also always moved at the speed of the people.

Bernie Anderson:
Wow. That concept is very striking to me. Joshua, have you ever had a leader or worked with a leader or had someone in your life where they either A, did this really well?

Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah.

Bernie Anderson:
Or B did this really poorly?

Joshua MacLeod:
Yes. I definitely have done this very poorly personally. One of the ways that, you know you have a strength, is when you look at somebody doing a task or a job, and you’re like, why do they just not get this? How is it possible that they can’t just do that? I’ve made this mistake in business. I’ve made this mistake in ministry. I assigned people based on what I can do, which is the dumbest thing in the world. Everybody is wired completely different. I’ve definitely made mistakes, assigning people to stuff that’s a little bit outside of their comfort zone or not taking enough time to give them the teaching, the training, the tools necessary for them to go out and actually be a little bit more comfortable in that space. Is this the right time to do it? And if it’s not the right time and if people aren’t going to embrace it and people aren’t prepared, then as the leader, your job is to work towards those things.

Bernie Anderson:
Yes.

Joshua MacLeod:
Work towards making someone embrace it, work towards preparing the people to actually do it, and then wait for that perfect ideal time to where it’s like, now’s the time let’s move. It’s kind of like the power of the pause, but with a policy.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah I love that.

Joshua MacLeod:
So in one thing, Abraham Lincoln would make the power of the pause with a correspondence. But in the second thing is you would also work on the power of the pause with a policy.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah, so good.

Joshua MacLeod:
Okay. Next up. Should we go to the next one?

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah. Let’s go to the next one.

Joshua MacLeod:
Number six. So sixth point, Abraham Lincoln, always take the blame.

Bernie Anderson:
What?

Joshua MacLeod:
When Abraham. Always 100% of the time, Abraham Lincoln never… blamed somebody else. If Grant was out fighting and did a foolish thing, Abraham Lincoln said, “I didn’t give him enough information”. If a policy went through that, one of his cabinet just put together this crazy policy. And it went through Abraham Lincoln said “it was my fault. I was the reason behind that”.

Joshua MacLeod:
In this whole 1000 page book, there’s not a single instance where Abraham Lincoln did what everybody else in his entire community did. They made excuses and blame somebody else. Abraham Lincoln always said; “it was my fault”. No matter what it was. And so the fortitude of just being able to say, this is on me, this is totally on me. You did a stupid thing. Knowing full, well, it wasn’t him. He didn’t have anything to do with it, because he was in charge.

Bernie Anderson:
Hmm.

Joshua MacLeod:
He always took the blame.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah.

Joshua MacLeod:
If people weren’t prepared, “it was my fault”. If we lost this battle, “it was my fault”.

Bernie Anderson:
Wow.

Joshua MacLeod:
If whatever happened, he would always take the blame. That reminds me of a friend of mine, Warner Butters, just an incredible guy. He was a hospital administrator and he went into a hospital. They hired him to come in and bring the hospital to turn it around. When he went in to the hospital, everybody working in the hospital was absolutely gun shy of any risk at all.

Bernie Anderson:
Right.

Joshua MacLeod:
Because, what had happened with the previous administrator was, anytime that anybody did anything wrong, they were smacked down. They were yelled at. It was just a very toxic environment where, you made a mistake. And because you made a mistake, you’re an evil person. And we hate you. So Warner came in and he talked to all of the leaders in all of the managers. And he said, “you guys have so much more potential than we are utilizing as an organization. I want you to know that this is a different leadership style. We’re going to do a different thing. And here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take your best idea and are going to run with it”. So this is just him and the hospital staff, the managers, the people that are in this hospital, he said, “here’s what we’re going to do.

Joshua MacLeod:
We’re going to take your very best idea and we’re going to run with it. And here’s, what’s going to happen with the results. Number one, if we use your best idea and it works, we are going to celebrate because it worked. Number two. If we take your best idea and we try it and it does not have a lot of gain, it’s just kind of like an out wash. We are going to celebrate because we got smarter in the process, but if we use your best idea and either abysmally fails, we are going to celebrate because we got smarter and I will tell every single person above me and in the entire conglomerate, across the nation, that it was a hundred percent my idea. If it wins, you get the credit. If it has zero result, we all get smarter.

Joshua MacLeod:
If it abysmally fails, it was my fault. I’ll take the blame”. The next year, that hospital turned around and was more profitable than any other hospital in the region. And then the next year, they were more profitable than any hospital, in the state. That’s the kind of leader that I want to work for.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah.

Joshua MacLeod:
That’s the kind of leader that everybody wants to work.

Bernie Anderson:
Right.

Joshua MacLeod:
They’re not going to yell at you for making mistakes. They’re going to encourage you. They’re going to work or they’re going to take their own blame. Abraham Lincoln did that for an entire country. Everybody that worked under him, “Hey, if we try it and it works, we’ll celebrate. We try it. And there’s no change. We got smarter. We tried and it dismally fails. I’ll take the blame”. So one of the things that great leaders do is they always take the blame.

Bernie Anderson:
That’s so rare. I know I respect when I work with a leader who is willing to shoulder blame, even when it may not be her fault at all, it doesn’t matter. The buck stops at my desk and I’m going to take responsibility for it. That’s just so powerful. Someone who can do that is an incredibly powerful person.

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.