Lincoln as 21st Century CEO: Problem 2: Lack of Team Building Skills

Problem Two: Lack of Team Building Skills

Lincoln should never have won the Presidency. He was barely known in the country outside his native Illinois, had virtually no administrative experience, or executive experience, or foreign policy experience, or military experience. Having won the Presidency, how was this prairie lawyer from the middle of nowhere to survive in the snake-pit known as Washington, DC?

The short answer is, with difficulty. He set out to build his team, one that would, presumably, help the North win a war that was all but lost on so many occasions, by choosing for his cabinet the rivals he had just beat out for the Republican nomination for president. Why? Simple: he needed all the talent he could find – even if that meant that there’d be a mini civil war at every cabinet meeting!

Each man in that cabinet was college educated, far more experienced and better known than Lincoln himself, each more familiar with the subtle, byzantine workings of Washington, and each with an ego the size of a barn. He even included members of the opposition party [his Secretary of War from January 1862 was Edwin Stanton, a Democrat who, like the others, started out utterly contemptuous of Lincoln]. Yet, when Lincoln was warned, “they will eat you up!” he quipped, “They will as likely eat each other up.” His cabinet also represented a careful balance of regions and passionately held ideologies - the few men in that cabinet were nation in miniature.

Lincoln rode herd on arguably the most talented cabinet ever assembled by any American president, before or since. In meetings he would listen patiently and, despite what often seemed the picture of chaos, would summarize at the end, attaching value to this suggestion or that as each suggestion deserved - no more and no less. And decisions, when once arrived at, invariably received the assent of all in the room.

With time the sterling quality of the man shone through. [Sterling quality always shines through with time, for those with sterling quality who are patient enough to wait it out.] For example it became clear that he was more concerned about getting answers than garnering credit.

In other words, with time the members of his cabinet team came to recognize and respect the leadership qualities of this, their most unlikely leader.