When Doris Kearns Godwin published Team of Rivals in 2005, her study President Lincoln’s bipartisan leadership during the Civil War, it seemed curiously out of step with presidential politics. That year may have been the apogee of the Bush Administration’s unilateral leadership style. Bush and his senior team, notably Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, prided themselves on doing things their way without airing alternate views and certainly without bridging internal dissent. Soon enough mismanagement of the Hurricane Katrina cleanup and the War in Iraq prompted a second look at the Bush team’s imperious style.

Today we watch how president-elect Barack Obama assemble his own team of rivals, notably Hillary Clinton who ran against him the Democratic primary. In political discourse, the term, “team of rivals,” used as a suggestion for building consensus. With our economy in wretched shape, struggling to cope with rising commodity, oil, and even food prices, partisanship rings hollow. And so what President Lincoln practiced during the Civil War seems a more apt model of management during crisis and one from which managers at every level can learn.

Assemble rivals . It is customary to form teams of people who support you. Lincoln, in managing a war that had torn the nation apart, realized that he would need to hold to the center therefore he peopled his cabinet with political opponents. This can be risky in corporate management, but if you at least hire for difference, that is, people who think differently you have a greater chance of surfacing ideas that may bridge the middle road.

Tolerate dissent. Group think is the enemy of enlightenment. Few leaders have been as castigated as Lincoln was about his war strategy. Lincoln invited disagreement and as a result cycled through commanders in chief with regularity until he found one that stood out, Ulysses S. Grant. Likewise managers need to make it safe for people to disagree; otherwise everyone hews to the same old ways of thinking and doing.

Hold to the mission . Preservation of the Union was all that mattered to Lincoln. That, too, was the unifier of his cabinet. And so it must be for any team. While people can disagree about tactics and even strategies, everyone must submit to the mission. Otherwise, there can be no consensus, and consequently little productivity.

Trust yourself . Abraham Lincoln was a president steeled by hard times. Death was often a close neighbor and he likely suffered from depression. But he knew himself and his strengths. He did not fear the egos or the machinations of his cabinet. Lincoln was comfortable in his own skin yet no so vain as to think more. As he said, “the question was not whether God is on our side but rather that we are on His.”

The style of management practiced by President Lincoln during the Civil War proved so successful that President Franklin Roosevelt emulated it during the management of Second World War. Prior to America’s entry into the war, Roosevelt publicly spoke of keeping America out of war; off stage, Roosevelt was doing all he could to prepare the nation for war. To achieve that balancing act, as well as to hold the nation together during wartime, he needed to have both Republicans and Democrats on his side and in his cabinet.

Source:
Doris Kearns Goodwin Team of Rivals New York: Simon & Schuster 2005

When Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s corporation, was asked the secret of his success, he quipped that all he did was look at how Dairy Queen of the 1950s and 1960s ran its operations and did the opposite. You can learn a great deal about leadership by studying an organization that fails miserably. And in the history of professional sports, there are few teams that have been as poorly coached, managed and owned than the Detroit Lions.

The Lions have not won a title since 1957, posting losing records in most of those years and winning one playoff game. Woeful does not begin to describe Lions miseries; they have found new ways to lose. In the second game of this season, the Lions found themselves down by three touchdowns but clawed back to be up by one point, only to surrender 24 points, including three TDs in 84 seconds. In game fifteen, the New Orleans Saints scored a TD the first SEVEN times they touched the ball. Their punter never even entered the game.

Losing becomes the Lions; this year the team has yet to win a game, becoming the first team in NFL history to post a 0-15 record. How Lionsesque! So what you can you learn about leadership from studying the Lions?

Hire the unproven. Matt Millen had never managed anything prior to becoming president and general manager of the Lions. True he was a star player and a very good announcer. His people skills left much to be desired and as a result, he ran roughshod over staffers and coaches, posting the worst record of any general manager in NFL history. In his first seven seasons, his teams posted 31 wins and 81 losses, 50 games under .500. [When the person in charge is incompetent, competence is a wish. Millen was fired mid-season in 2008 but the Lions kept on losing.]

Change systems with regularity . Under Millen, coaches came and went, four in seven years. Excluding the interim coach, each brought in new offensive and defensive schemes. Consistency was further complicated with a succession of coordinator coaches, each with his own ideas about how to run plays. Just as players get a feel for the system, a new coach comes in and changes everything. Without consistency, people lose focus and direction.

Waste talent . The Lions have drafted high and have landed a few good players. One reason such players have little impact is because they are put into coaching schemes ill-suited to their talents. Good coaches put their players into positions where they can succeed. Just the opposite occurs with the Lions. More painfully, discipline is missing. Talented players have been allowed to loaf in practice (even in games), break team rules, and even get in trouble with the law with little or no consequence. When little is asked of employees, little will be delivered, or gained.

Hovering above all of these issues is the ownership . William Clay Ford, grandson of Henry, has owned the team since the early Sixties. You will not find a more genial or more loyal owner than Mr. Ford. He has invested in top-quality facilities, including a state of the art stadium in downtown Detroit. [Taxpayers were not asked to spend a dime.] The problem is that Ford is too nice; his loyalty in his staff overrides common sense. The lack of accountability within the Lions organization is tangible, and until accountability is truly instilled nothing ever will change. And that may be the ultimate leadership lesson. When an owner does not hold his people accountable, he renders his authority meaningless and how power useless.

No one likes to be laid off. It is a sickening feeling. Emotions range from a sense of loss to a sense of betrayal. Even when people know the reason they are being laid is economic rather than individual it hurts. It is wholly appropriate to feel the emotion of the moment, but then it will be time to move on.

Finding a new job is seldom easy and it is twice as hard in hard times like now. The older you are the harder it is. The greater your experience and your skill level the tougher it can be to find the right match.

Critical to finding a new job is preparation. Sometimes personal finances will dictate that you find something ( anything ) fast. This is likely not a good idea but it is a reality. However, before you jump into the job of your dreams or the job of last resort, consider what you can do to prepare yourself. Often it is a matter of focus. While it may be one of the most used buzz words in the business lexicon, focus does matter. And here are some ways to apply it.

Focus on your purpose. Consider what motivates you. Ask yourself what you enjoy doing best and why you enjoy it. Perhaps you like working the details; or you may like operating as a big picture thinker. Consider what makes you happiest and then consider what you want to do next. It may be the same job for a different company or a totally new job in a totally new company. Developing a short purpose statement, (what want to do and how you will do it) may be helpful for you.

Focus on what you can do. Consider your skill set. Often these are your competencies, that is what you do best. Those new to the workplace will be relying on their technical skills; experienced managers want to focus on how they have leveraged their skills to lead others.

Focus on your presence . Anyone looking for a job in senior management must have presence, that is, a sense of leadership that inspires confidence in others. Doing this in a job interview is not easy, but you can work on it so that you present yourself with a strong sense of self awareness as well as a sense of optimism and confidence.

Focus on your messages . Think about how you will answer questions about yourself and your career. Develop short “elevator style” messages about what you have accomplished as well as what you have learned. Be candid when asked about failures and shortcomings. Demonstrate what you have learned from these mistakes. Be clear and concise. Writing such messages out prior to interviewing may be helpful. You don’t read them aloud, but you can rehearse and polish.

Focus on you. Consider where you want to be in six months or a year or even further out. What do you want to be doing once you get past the rough patch? Envisioning your future should stem from your purpose statement. Be specific about what you want to do. Also think about the impact that you want to have on your next organization and the people with whom you will be working.

Sharpening your focus may also be useful for exiting your current job, or reflecting on what happened during your tenure. No matter how talented you are, there are always opportunities for improvement. Consider what you did well as well as well as what you could to better. Ask yourself what you learned from the experience and how you will apply those lessons to the future.

Yup getting sacked sucks but so often, and for so many people, it can be a doorway to a new job, a new career and whole new life. Focusing on the possibilities will help you make the right decision for you.

“Change We Can Believe In” is the mantra that fueled the 2008 presidential campaign that put Barack Obama into the White House. Obama staffers used that phrase to keep campaign messages in focus and on target.

This is a lesson that leaders must learn in their own communications. Simplicity is good, but when you are too simple you end up sounding paternalistic, that is, speaking down to an audience. It is as if the leader does not trust the people listening to understand his own brilliance. That is a fallacy and it has cost many a leader, particularly corporate leaders the trust of their own people. So what can you do to keep things simple?

Set the hook . Every speaker wants to get people to listen to her. But how? Speechwriters call it “setting the hook,” that is, opening with something provocative that gets people to think about what you say. That provocation is intended to pique interest and get them to listen to more. For example, a leader might say something like, “Let us focus on the future and how we will get there.” Or she might turn it into a question, “Have you considered how you will help us achieve our future and what things will be like for you?” Both are appropriate starting points, but the second one involves the listener in the process. That will get people interested and encourage them to listen for more.

Provide back up . The hook can slip out, if the speaker is not careful. You need to supply information that supports your message so that people are sufficiently informed. What might this be? It’s the meat, or as marketers call it, the freight, the supporting documentation for your message. That is, if you are calling for an increase in production, you had better back that statement up with facts, figures and data that support your message. Likewise if you are asking people to support your call to action, you had better make certain tell them that following you is the right thing to do for the company. And if possible, why it is the right them for them as individuals. That can be a tough sell, but if the issue is important speakers must deliver on it.

Tell stories . One of the best ways to make your message come alive, and keep the hook firmly embedded in your listener’s consciousness, is to surround it with stories. All of us learn from stories; it is a primal form of communications. And so stories that support your message are critical. The stories may come from the pages of your newspaper or the annals of history. Often they may come from inside the doors of your own company. Talk up the desires to do something useful, the obstacles they have overcome, and the great results they have achieved.

Keeping it simple is not simplistic; it just makes good sense.

Does your CEO need to be a “regular guy (or gal)”? The notion that employees want a leader with whom they might share a beer or a hot dog is really an expression for something more – a plea for accessibility. That applies even more in the corporate world. We want our bosses to understand us as people. So how do you make yourself accessible? Here are some suggestions:

Be present. Leaders need to be seen and heard. Leaders need to make their presence felt by walking the floor, stopping by the cubicle, and even eating in the cafeteria. Bosses I know who succeed are those that know everyone in their department, but more importantly everyone in the department knows the boss. Most often, each feels as if they could knock on the boss’s door and make their viewpoint heard.

Be open . Listen to what people say. Just listening conveys a sense of caring. It also opens the door for conversation about the workplace. Bosses do not mingle simply to schmooze; they do it with purpose, perhaps to learn more, problem-solve, or simply contribute advice. Listening is a powerful investment in the lives of your employees.

Be with us . When things get tough, be it an economic downturn or troublesome internal problem, people want to know their boss has their backside. A big complaint about Carly Fiorina’s leadership at Hewlett-Packard was the feeling that she saw herself apart from the others. To be fair, Ms. Fiorina was met with downright hostility when she pushed for the merger with Compaq and the culture of H-P resisted her new ideas. Yet even after the merger she was not perceived to be as one of the team. That sense of apartness eventually contributed to her exit from H-P.

One more point. In my experience employees rarely give two hoots about their CEO or senior leadership team unless that person connects with them in a genuine way. That point was driven home to me when I was interviewing employees of GM’s Saturn unit for a piece I was writing on the late Skip LeFauvre. The comments from white and blue collar, union and non-union, were remarkably similar; they adored him. Why? Because he was accessible to them. He went where the work was and engaged people in real conversations about the work and their lives. I know the feeling was mutual because Skip was long gone from Saturn by the time I was doing my research.

Authenticity has become sadly a buzz word co-opted by everyone from political commentators to corporate philosophers. Regardless, the sentiment remains. People want to know that their leaders are sincere and can be counted on to walk the talk, in good times and in bad.