Lincoln Abraham - Leadership lessons of Abraham Lincoln : apply the principles of the sixteenth President to your own work and life

LEADERSHIP LESSONS OF
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

LEADERSHIP LESSONS OF
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Apply the Principles of the
Sixteenth President
to Your Own Work and Life

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Edited with introductions by
Meg Distinti

Copyright 2011 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

Leadership lessons of Abraham Lincoln : apply the principles of the sixteenth president to your own work and life / Abraham Lincoln ; edited with introductions by Meg Distinti.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61608-412-7 (alk. paper)

1. Leadership--Quotations, maxims, etc. 2. Lincoln, Abraham,
1809-1865--Quotations. 3. Presidents--United States-
Biography. I.

Distinti, Meg. II. Title.

HM1261.L553 2011

352.3'9--dc23

2011031729

Printed in the United States of America

To the memory of my Mom,
who loved me enough to drag me
kicking and screaming to the kitchen table
every night to go over my homework.

You taught me the meaning of the words
dedication and leadership.

I will never forgive you for making me
finish all my brussel sprouts.

To Labor with Purpose and
Succeed with Discipline

The Mastery and Art of
Communication

Responsibilities and Burdens of
Leadership

Words of Wisdom for
Conflict Resolution

Essential ReadingSelected Quotes and
Speeches of Lincoln

LEADERSHIP LESSONS OF
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.

Letter to Anson G. Henry; November 19, 1858

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, one year before roaming men in suits combed the countryside collecting data for the third census of the United States. The information gathered by those census takers paints a picture of a nation far different from ours today; less than eight million people called themselves citizens and the predominant occupation of almost all individuals in the country was agriculture.

While baby Abraham was learning to crawl, his family and neighbors were busy taming the state of Kentucky, President Madison was enforcing the Embargo Act, and Eli Whitney's Cotton Ginwhich had only won its patent in 1807was revolutionizing the economy of the South. By the time Lincoln died, the U.S. population had more than quadrupled, the industrial age was in full swing, and construction had begun to link the East and West coasts via the transcontinental railroad.

For all that Lincoln was able to preserve, the Union Lincoln saved has become a Union he might not recognize were he alive today. In 2000 the U.S. population hovered just below three hundred million, with less than two percent of Americans employed in agriculture. Fifteen Amendments have been added to the Constitution Lincoln defended so unfailingly, and in 2008 a momentous event took placeone Lincoln himself could not have imaginedwhen the American people elected the first African-American president.

In a world that constantly seems to change at the speed of email, a nation looking for answers must be cautious about taking the past out of context or aggrandizing a national figure. It is far too easy to romanticize historyand to judge its participantsthrough the rosy lens of hindsight. But for all the differences between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first, the leadership skills developed and honed by Abraham Lincoln are timeless.

As a working man, Lincoln developed simple yet practical skills for dealing with the pressures of a heavy workload and balancing home-life with professional burdens. As a politician, he mastered the art of mass communication and compromise. As a leader, Lincoln envisioned a goal and attained it by tempering responsibility and determination with compassion and hope.

While no book will every truly allow us to re-create Abraham Lincoln's wisdom, or find out how he would deal with today's pressing problems, we believe he did leave behind an eternal legacy of leadership. Though the details differ, Americans in every socio-economic stratum face almost the same questions today as Lincoln did one hundred and fifty years ago: how to find equilibrium between work and life, how to interact personally and professionally, and how to meet the challenges that arise in a rapidly-evolving world.

For all the changes that took place during his lifetime, Lincoln fought for and succeeded in preserving a distinct democracyone which does not try to forget, one which, for better or worse, folds the bloody lessons, painful memories, and awe-inspiring victories from the past into its present. For guidance in times of uncertainty and answers in an age of terrorism, housing bubbles, and health care crises, we can only turn to the scraps of paper left behind by a man who rose to the occasion when his nation called. Yet we believe that sometimes scraps of paper are enough to inspire a nation; and the test of a true leader can be found in a man who continues to inspire a country long after his own voice has faded to the echoes of time.

Leave nothing for tomorrow
which can be done today.

A man, nameless to the annals of history except for a random chance of geographic proximity, once dared to look beyond the veil of martyred hindsight to remember a lanky yet surprisingly strong young man from Kentucky, Abe Lincoln worked for me didn't love work half as much as his pay. He said to me one day that his father taught him to work, but he never taught him to love it.

This charmingly unsentimental anecdote fits with what little is known about Lincoln's early years. Other neighbors interviewed years after Lincoln's death would recall watching Abe helping his father on the farm. The tall youth was known to faithfully, if not quite enthusiastically, perform the backbreaking labor required to survive on the frontiers of Kentucky, Indiana, and eventually Illinois.

No one would say Lincoln ever shied away from hard work; instead he saw physical labor as a means to an end. In his youth, that end was most often the chance stick his nose back in a book. As Lincoln grew in both wisdom and age, that end would become a defining and unshakable principle: the Union must be saved.