Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times

Donald T. Phillips’s purpose in Part 1 of Lincoln on Leadership is to provide a method for establishing productive relationships with employees or colleagues based on Abraham Lincoln’s own habits and behaviors when he was in an important leadership position as president of the United States. Phillips asserts in the Introduction to the book that “there are no set rules or formulas for leaders to follow. There are only guidelines and concepts, perceptions and ideas, abstractions and generalities” (3). This can be dangerous because lacking a clear plan or method while occupying a high leadership position often results in a leader’s failure to achieve desired results or gain the support of followers.

One way to avoid leadership failures is to “study individuals who are recognized as successful leaders, those who have demonstrated their abilities with tangible results” (3-4). According to Phillips, Lincoln is the best individual to study for this purpose because we can replicate his methods for developing productive relationships and achieving goals in modern corporate business environments.

Part 1, entitled “People,” relates to Lincoln’s strategies for creating strong and productive relationships with the people he encountered during his presidency, ranging from simply US citizens or constituents—or those whose support he needed to become and remain president—two key relationships with specific military generals or government officials during the Civil War.

The implication of Part 1 is that the stakes were very high for Lincoln; the fate of the United States depended on his judgment, decisions, and behavior during the war. Consequently, his ability to form good working relationships with other important figures on the side of the Union was crucial to achieving victory. While the stakes may not be as high for the CEO of a company today, Phillips’s point is that the same principles can apply to a modern context to help a leader achieve success.

Phillips reiterates this point on many occasions throughout the book. In Chapter 1, for example, he writes, “[Lincoln] was doing what all leaders should do. He was acquiring new skills gleaned from his followers through frequent personal contact. Lincoln was learning while on the job” (24). He then adds, “Future leaders can learn from Lincoln’s example. […] By entering your subordinate’s environment—by establishing frequent human contact—you create a sense of commitment, collaboration, and community” (25). Lincoln recognized the importance of other people’s ideas and avoided behaving like a dictator. As a result, he treated people from all walks of life with respect and, when needed, “compassion,” which in turn strengthened the people’s trust in him. In Phillips’s view, gaining the trust of “subordinate[s]” through respectful behavior (25), like Lincoln did, is also one of the most important aspects of achieving success in business.

In addition to making a connection between Lincoln’s patterns of behavior toward people working below him and successful outcomes, whether in war or business, Phillips also addresses scenarios in which the primary tactics of treating others respectfully, listening to differences of opinion, forming compromises, and allowing employees to make their own decisions to encourage innovation, simply do not work. This can occur when differences in personality or opinion between the leader and follower are too great to bridge effectively.

In Lincoln’s case, he had an unmendable relationship with his head general early in the Civil War, General George Brinton McClellan. Lincoln attempted to form a productive working relationship with McClellan the way he had with his Secretary of State, William H. Seward. While his relationship with Seward was a success, Lincoln never managed to gain McClellan’s support. Lincoln tried a hands-on approach with McClellan because Lincoln believed it was important to be knowledgeable about the direction the military would take in various battles. Unfortunately, “McClellan had mistaken Lincoln’s visits to him as a sign of weakness rather than one of strength and resourcefulness” (32-33). The purpose of the example of Lincoln’s failed relationship with McClellan is to show that even in difficult circumstances, Lincoln still followed his core principles of giving those below him multiple chances to succeed and treating them with respect. Even though Lincoln “was forced to remove McClellan from command” (33), he could still look back on this incident knowing that he had done all he could to make the relationship work and never resorted to authoritarianism. Phillips states that “the most important asset an organization has is its employees” (35). Lincoln’s relationships with the vast array of people below him during the Civil War is a model for modern businesspeople who need to create a productive environment for employees, despite occasional conflicts or differences in personality.

While primarily focusing on specific examples of personal relationships from Lincoln’s career, Phillips also discusses Lincoln’s communication style at length in Part 1, since techniques of persuasion and storytelling were key components in Lincoln’s method for building productive relationships with people. Lincoln was an attorney in his early career, and he became very skilled in “the art of persuasion” (39). Instead of issuing commands, Lincoln would rather reason with people and bring them to his side of a debate voluntarily. Phillips draws a connection between Lincoln’s preference for reason and persuasion as a way to get results and his antislavery stance. Just as Lincoln hated the coercion of slavery in the American South, he also believed that no leader should behave like a dictator because, in Phillips’s words, “dictatorship in any form degrades human beings” (40). Lincoln encouraged the generals during the Civil War to make their own decisions as much as possible. Trusting them with important tasks and persuading rather than dictating when in disagreement with them aligned with Lincoln’s most sacred convictions regarding the independence of every individual. At the end of Part 1, Phillips provides excerpts from Lincoln’s letters to demonstrate his persuasive style and his strategy of “gain[ing] commitment from individuals through openness, empowerment, and coaching” (40-41) rather than issuing commands.