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F O R T H E P E O P FF oo rr TT hh ee PP ee oo pp ll ee A NEWSLETTER OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN ASSOCIATION VOLUME 12 NUMBER 4 WINTER 2010 SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS LINCOLN AND THE LEADERSHIP FOLLIES Times…Pat Williams‟ Lincoln Speaks By Allen C. Guelzo to Leaders: 20 Powerful Lessons for Gettysburg College Today's Leaders from America’s 16th Let‟s say that you are responsible for President…Character Counts: Leader- hiring the president of a large but un- ship Qualities in Washington, Wilber- dercapitalized republic sometime after force, Lincoln, and Solzhenitsyn by Os the middle of the 19th century. Guinness…What Would Lincoln Do?: Lincoln’s Most Inspired Solutions to You hire two search firms. One meets Challenging Problems and Difficult with prospects in Chicago, the other in Situations by David Accord…Lincoln Baltimore. They come up with two can- on Leadership: Executive Strategies for didates. One of them is a former em- Tough Times… Abraham Lincoln's ployee, a certified genius, with the best Faith Based Leadership. But the sheer education. The other is a lawyer who‟s number of these books is a sign that no been with the republic for four years, one‟s really sure of the answer, or else and has been responsible for major op- we wouldn‟t need all of these books. erations over the last four years, but has General George Brinton McClellan On the theoretical level, discussions of little to show for it. Photograph by Mathew Brady, 1861 leadership tend to fall out along two Whom do you hire? It‟s one of the great truths of life, that lines: one is traits, and the other is tem- everybody wants to go to heaven, but perament. Traits are usually thought of If you chose the second candidate, con- nobody wants to die. Similarly, every- as teachable, like habits, and so we have gratulations: you‟ve just hired ABRA- body wants to be a leader, but nobody one tribe of leadership consultants who HAM LINCOLN. But you probably didn‟t, seems to have a very good handle on believes that leadership can be distilled because he doesn‟t really look like the what leadership is. Wander up and down into a series of learnable practices „leadership‟ types the latest „leadership‟ down the bookstalls at Borders or Bar- that you can pick up by dint of self- seminar taught you to look for. More nes & Noble devoted to business books, application. likely, you chose the first candidate. and count how many books are sitting Congratulations: you‟ve just hired there, struggling to explain leadership: Temperament leadership, on the other GEORGE BRINTON MCCLELLAN. Why? servant leadership, transformational hand, is not about you developing a Because it‟s the election year of 1864, leadership, effective leadership, leader- temperament. Temperament is not de- and Little Mac is the guy with the ship skills, leadership lessons from At- veloped. It is a mysterious asset which golden resume, the hire that every ex- tila the Hun. comes hard-wired with the person, and ecutive search firm dreams of finding the purpose of temperament leadership for their stable. It was inevitable that, in all of this out- training is to teach you how to recog- pouring on leadership, people would nize it in others, not how you can de- The other guy, however, turns out to be eventually turn to Abraham Lincoln. velop it in yourself. pure gold. He surmounts all the chal- And sure enough, there are no shortage lenges in the next fiscal year, restores of books on offer that promise to iden- The problem with a great deal of the everything to profitability, gets the sat- tify and package the aspects of Lin- leadership literature – from Howard ellite campuses back to the core mis- coln‟s „leadership‟ for use by „leaders‟ Gardner to Tom Peters – is that leader- sion, and frees up four million or so who wonder how they, like Ray Bolger, ship is rarely this tidy. You can incul- capital units. can be seen “thinkin‟ like Lincoln.” cate all the traits you like, but at the Donald Phillips‟ Lincoln on Leader- But you didn‟t hire him, did you? ship: Executive Strategies for Tough (Continued on page 2) Visit our website at www.abrahamlincolnassociation.org 2 A NEWSLETTER OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN ASSOCIATION FOR THE PEOPLE (Continued from page 1) himself to studying the details of cases. In No part of the drudgery of being president one of his greatest cases, Hurd v. Rock was more important than mastering the end of the day, you may be doing nothing Island Bridge Company in 1855, Lincoln organization of the government itself, and more than teaching a dog how to walk on defended the owners of the Rock Island it was on this point that Lincoln started its hind legs. The wonder, as Dr. Johnson Railroad from a suit filed by the owners of from well below the baseline. Lincoln said, is not that it‟s done badly, but that the sidewheel steamer Effie Afton, which himself admitted to Massachusetts senator anyone really thinks you should be doing it had been wrecked after striking one of the Henry Wilson that “when he first com- at all. bridge‟s piers. Lincoln took the trouble to menced doing the duties, he was entirely visit the site of the accident, measure dis- ignorant, not only of the duties, but of the Somewhere, there is a mix – temperament, tances and the volume of water flowing manner of doing the business.” Apart from traits – and we need to hold on to both in under the bridge, and get statements from one lackluster term in Congress, Lincoln understanding what leadership really is, witnesses the plaintiff had not bothered to had never served in any executive capac- whether we do the leading or whether look up, so that the boat‟s owners found ity, not even as mayor of Springfield, and we‟re responsible for identifying those themselves resting, too late, on “the testi- had never run any organization more com- who do it. There is no equation that solves mony of men who had made no experi- plex than his law-office. No wonder, then, it all and produces a leader. Maybe that‟s ment – only conjecture.” that William Henry Seward, Lincoln‟s pick the lesson the leadership gurus need to for secretary of state (and an old Washing- learn. History does not, after all, repeat Lincoln not only knew, but loved the ton hand), determined in the first month of itself, except in a way so generalized that knowing. Logan Pearsall Smith, the the Lincoln administration that Lincoln it‟s useless for anticipating day-to-day American-born British essayist, once said had better “devolve” foreign policy mat- situations. Yet there are certain aspects of that “The test of a vocation is the love of ters “on some member of his Cabinet.” Abraham Lincoln‟s character which really the drudgery it involves.” He might have did make him a great leader. Made him, been thinking of Lincoln in that regard, Seward quickly found out that Lincoln not for instance, the man whom James because Lincoln not only knew both law only had a very tight learning curve on Longstreet, who fought against him, de- and politics, but rejoiced in the nuts-and- political affairs, but also had a determina- scribed as “without doubt the greatest man bolts of it. “The leading rule for the law- tion to keep responsibility and accountabil- of rebellion times, the one matchless yer, as for the man of every other calling, ity in the same hands. “If this must be among forty millions for the peculiar diffi- is diligence,” Lincoln wrote in lecture to done, I must do it,” Lincoln replied to culties of the period”…the man about aspiring lawyers. There were no shortcuts Seward. And within a year, Lincoln had whom one of his allies, George Boutwell around the drudgery of the law, and if you asserted his mastery over both the Cabinet of Massachusetts, said “Under him and could not embrace that drudgery, you had and the rest of the government. largely through his acts and influence jus- better not plan on being a lawyer. Lincoln tice became the vital force of the Repub- warned: “If any one, upon his rare powers By 1863, John Hay thought that Lincoln lic”…the man whom one of the humblest of speaking, shall claim an exemption had become a “backwoods Jupiter” who of his fellow Americans, an old man only from the drudgery…his case is a failure in “sits here and wields...the bolts of war and newly-freed from slavery, could describe advance.” Lawyering, he said in 1860, “is the machinery of government with a hand as indescribable: “No man know Linkum. very simple, though laborious, and tedious. equally steady & equally firm…. He is Massa Linkum, he ebery whar; he know …Work, work, work, is the main thing.” managing this war...foreign relations, and ebery ting; he walk de earf like de Lord.” planning a reconstruction of the Union, all It‟s worth identifying the seven most sali- at once. I never knew with what tyrannous ent of these characteristics, not because authority he rules the Cabinet, til now. The they‟re guaranteed to turn someone into a most important things he decides and there „leader,‟ but because they do help us un- is no cavil.” And yet, Hay added, “there is derstand how Lincoln tackled the great no man in the country, so wise, so gentle problem of his day, which was emancipa- and so firm.
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