Team of Rivals

For some time now, I have had Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals on my reading list. The historian has focused on the role Abraham Lincoln’s adversaries have planned on his Presidency and on the Civil War. Harvard Business Review has conducted an interview with Goodwin about lessons leaders can learn from Lincoln’s working with his adversaries.

Goodwin makes three strong points about Lincoln’s leadership:

•Abraham Lincoln’s genius was to manage the ambitions and egos of his rivals to form a team that could confront the challenges of civil war.
•His ability to create a team of rivals was rooted in an extraordinary level of emotional intelligence. He learned from his mistakes, he shared responsibility for the mistakes of others, and he did not hold grudges.
•Lincoln’s experiences, like that of other presidents in times of emergency, give hope that the United States and other democracies will weather the current crisis.

My students are now finishing semester-long term projects, and it is becoming very clear that some groups are more effective than others. I’ve been able to catch glimpses in which groups take their multiple assignments and contributions and put aside differences and egos to create well-crafted, equally articulated documents. Unfortunately, other groups continue to resist working as a unit, each protective of own ideas and approaches rather than focus on a unified tasks. These weaker groups struggle with poor attendance, assignments turned in “just in time,” yet not enough time to solicit feedback and revision to create a prepared, thoughtful whole—it’s a culmination of pieces that don’t fit.

I’m impressed with Goodwin’s observation: “What Lincoln had, it seems to me, was an extraordinary amount of emotional intelligence. He was able to acknowledge his errors and learn from his mistakes to a remarkable degree. He was careful to put past hurts behind him and never allowed wounds to fester.”

Working collaboratively, especially in forced situations, can appear to be a team of rivals, yet through a willingness to meet a cooperative goal, groups can achieve what can’t be accomplished alone. Goodwin reminds us that the “idea is not to put your rivals in power—the point is to choose the best and most able people . . . for the good” of the project. Then the team of rivals can become a productive team.