Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President, is one of the most admired and studied leaders in history. His gift for storytelling, his humor, his spiritual depth, and extraordinary wisdom continue to inspire and amaze. How did this unknown, modest country lawyer from Illinois, who grew up poor, lacking college training or formal education achieve such remarkable feats of leadership? Sixteen thousand books and even entire libraries have been devoted to an effort to understand his greatness.

Lincoln is perhaps best known for the leadership he provided during the Civil War. He freed the slaves and saved the Union. I believe that one of the most remarkable qualities he possessed was a primary management practice learning theme: effective team management. A key to Lincoln’s successful leadership was his ability and skill to bring people together under one mission.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book Team of Rivals, makes the insightful and compelling case that a vital factor of Lincoln’s leadership was his willingness to assemble his cabinet from the men who had opposed him for the 1860 Republican Presidential nomination – notably William Seward, the governor of New York who would become Lincoln’s secretary of State, Salmon Chase, Ohio’s Governor who was appointed as Treasury Secretary and later Supreme Court Justice, and Edward Bates from Missouri as Attorney General.
Lincoln had an amazing ability to recognize the unique strengths that each of his rivals would offer and that they all possessed invaluable talents that the country needed if it was going to survive the Civil War.

It has been said that a nation can be known and judged by its heroes, by whom it honors above all others. We pay ourselves the highest compliment, when we say that Abraham Lincoln is that hero for us.

Sources:

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Simon and Schuster, New York. 2005

McDonald, Alonzo L., Abraham Lincoln: The Spiritual Growth of a Public Man. Trinity Forum 1993

Koehn, Nancy F. Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Harvard Business School Case 9-805-115. Rev. May 21, 2007