“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person,” – Mother Teresa

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

29 November

Abraham Lincoln, Thanksgiver-in-Chief, Final Installment

The takeaway: there’s no great secret to Lincoln’s leadership in particular - or to leadership in general. The principle is simple even if the execution is apparently so difficult that few “leaders” choose to employ it: choose to become a servant leader, not the leader from hell [note: there’s no third alternative]. Lincoln’s example shows two things:

servant leadership is always hard and it never fails. Make sure your goal is rock-solid as Lincoln did, your gratitude sincere, your follow-through consistent. Make sure you encourage/affirm/validate your troops when they become despondent as they invariably will, as Lincoln did.

And when you do that for your troops they will go through hell for you – just like his did for Lincoln!