From How-To books and seminars to inspirational banners and posters, everybody is adding content to the leadership story. There’s not enough time to read or make sense of it all, and clearly it isn’t all worth reading. Since advice on leadership is typically rooted in history, my thought is to augment the list of leadership literature with biography. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin is a perfect example and a great place to start. It is an Abraham Lincoln biography that uniquely provides insight into Lincoln’s leadership style by providing additional biographical information on Lincoln’s cabinet team.
The book refers to Lincoln’s cabinet as a team of rivals because Lincoln selected these members from the list of candidates that ran against him in pursuit of the 1860 republican party nomination. Unique to a straight forward biography, Team of Rivals includes several concise biographies of key cabinet members including the Attorney General Edward Bates, the Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, and the Secretary of State William Seward. In addition there are a large number of biographical snippets of people who surrounded Lincoln, both contributing and detracting from his effectiveness. This additional biographical material provides detail that helps readers evaluate the effectiveness of Lincoln’s actions.
After winning the nomination and presidency, it was risky choosing these rivals. This was a group of extremely ambitious men, each of whom felt more deserving, better qualified, better educated, better prepared, and entitled to the presidential position, especially compared to Lincoln whom they considered an awkward, backwoods, frontier lawyer.
Lincoln was an under dog going into the convention; Seward was the stand out favorite, and every other candidate assumed they were next in line after Seward. In choosing his cabinet from this group of men, Lincoln lived up to the axiom, a good leader shouldn’t surround himself with yes-men. Team of Rivals argues that Lincoln won the republican nomination, despite being an underdog, as a result of his political genius, not based on luck.
Lincoln’s ambitious, high powered cabinet members could have easily wasted their time on infighting and internal competition if not for Lincoln’s ingenious management. This cabinet produced the emancipation proclamation, passed the 13th Amendment, managed the civil war, and war time foreign policy. This biography includes insight into Lincoln’s application of leadership techniques; with respect to his team, these are the techniques commonly listed in leadership literature as critical traits for team building. This isn’t to say the cabinet developed into a happy group of friends or had high levels of interpersonal trust. Lincoln demonstrates team building techniques despite heavy head winds. Although all the team members were united against slavery, they had wide differences in personalities. Despite wishful thinking, interpersonal trust grows slowly and is easily destroyed. It’s common that in a team of more than two people, different team members will mesh and contrast differently based on their compatibility. Some teammates are more at ease with each other and can have open discussion without reservation, while at the same time, other combinations produce conversation that is reserved and guarded. Within a team pockets of trust often create opposing pockets of dis-trust, competition and jealousy.
Lincoln and Seward, despite having drastically different childhoods, got along exceedingly well and could relax in each other’s company. In contrasting to this friendly exchange, Chase’s personality was not one that could relax easy in any company, and his ambitions for the presidency led him to see Lincoln’s casual communication with Seward as favoritism. This led to jealousy, and an example is provided where Chase started spreading stories amongst senate members that the cabinet was dysfunctional. In Chase’s opinion, Seward had special access to the president in such a way that undermined cabinet discussions. These rumors Chase spread led to a well documented event referred to as the cabinet crises of 1862, that occurred after the union defeat in Fredericksburg.
Team of Rivals’ presentation of the cabinet crises is greatly enhanced, as compared to other Lincoln Biographies, by the previously provided biographical background information on Seward and Chase. Chase, jealous of Seward’s relationship with Lincoln, shared his negative opinion outside of the cabinet team. Based on faulty information provided to other ambitious persons eager to have some effect, a crisis erupted. Rumors, initiated by Chase, were accepted as truth by a handful of influential senators. These senators made demands upon Lincoln, with the loss at Fredericksburg as an excuse to make demands, that he make changes in his dysfunctional cabinet. Seward was their target for removal. Had their demands been met, Lincoln’s administration would have suffered the loss of a great talent and Lincoln’s most collaborative associate. As presented in Team of Rivals, it is clear how egos, circumstance, and timing of events can spiral out of control. This cacophony of events and personalities is far from unique. Perhaps the reason why the cabinet crisis of 1862 is well studied and documented, is because Lincoln masterfully navigated the situation. Using techniques found in our modern day leadership literature focused on emotional and psychological studies, Lincoln exercised listening and patience. Letting every party present their opinions without interruption, Lincoln allowed the situation to unravel and thereby prevented the necessity of any cabinet member’s resignation. In addition, his technique helped disperse the internal hostilities within his cabinet concerning the incident.
This is one of many examples provided in Team of Rivals, where personalities combine with special circumstances in a way that creates extra, inconvenient work. With insight into the historical circumstances and the personalities involved, each example is a small case study in leadership, and it’s from similar examples that principles of leadership literature are derived. Team of Rivals is an excellent biography to augment your reading of leadership literature.
What if Lincoln had access to our modern day leadership literature. Consider something basic such as time management. In leadership literature, time management is a basic principle and leaders need to be especially diligent; staying focused on the right things and pruning out non-value add activities. This isn’t entirely a modern idea and Lincoln’s contemporaries were aware of this principle. They often asked him to be more diligent with his time. If he listened, had he pruned out all the time recognized as non-value add, I doubt he would have developed his most memorable character traits. Many Lincoln biographies include the admiration that Lincoln’s peers developed for him, explaining how he was known and admired by his contemporaries for his magnanimity, patience, and empathy. These qualities fueled his achievements and even spilled over to his peers such that after his assassination our country was still able to heal the wounds and reunite. I assume Lincoln wasn’t born with these abilities, he must have developed them through application and practice. Without discrediting the importance of time management, I assume that if Lincoln took time management advice to heart, and exercised more diligent guard against persons who wasted his time such as office seekers, Chase, and McClellan, he would not have developed the traits and modeled the behavior that so amazed his contemporaries.
In this way, I see that any technique removed from circumstance runs the risk of being misinterpreted and misapplied. Augmenting leadership literature with actual biography can help avoid this error, and Team of Rivals is a good place to start.
Founder & Principal, GD Consulting, llc