Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1992

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Part 1, Chapter 3

Part 2, Chapters 4-7

Part 3, Chapters 8-12

Part 4, Chapter 13-Afterword

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Index of Terms

Paradoxical

By describing Abraham Lincoln as “paradoxical,” Phillips is expressing the view that Lincoln exhibited contradictory traits in his personality and behavior. For example, “he tended to be strikingly flexible while at the same time a model of consistency” (77). Phillips discusses Lincoln’s contradictory qualities in Chapter 7 because he claims that they are a strength rather than a weakness in a leader. By being both flexible and consistent, Lincoln showed that he was able to respond to situations based on context rather than preconceived notions of how he should act.

Phillips provides a bullet point list of Lincoln’s paradoxical traits to help clarify the meaning of the term. Each item on the list describes a contradictory quality Lincoln displayed at one time or another in his life or presidency. The third item on the list, for example, is: “He was trusting and compassionate, yet could also be demanding and tough” (79). By including this list, Phillips wants to show that Lincoln did not have tunnel vision when it came to making decisions or giving orders. His flexible personality allowed him to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, which contributed to his success as a leader.

Republican

Republican refers to the party for which Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860. The Republican Party in America began in 1854 and was a coalition of citizens who opposed the expansion of slavery into the United States territories, areas of the west that weren’t settled yet. The Republican Party gained support and eventually combined in the Northern states with the Whigs, giving it added momentum leading up to the 1860 election. In the election, the Democratic Party was split among Southern Democrats and Democrats, with each faction having their own candidate, John Breckinridge in the South and Stephen Douglas in the North. Lincoln won 180 electoral votes to Breckinridge’s 72 and Douglas’s 12. A fourth party, the Constitutional Union Party, won 39 electoral votes for their candidate, John Bell. The Constitutional Union Party was composed of Southern Whigs who opposed secession from the North but also did not support the Republican Party. With all the votes split in this manner, Lincoln became the first president elected on the Republican Party ticket.

Whereas the Republican Party in modern America is the mainstream conservative party, it is important to remember that in the 1850s and 1860s it was a new offshoot with a divisive and progressive platform of prohibiting the expansion of slavery. While initially Republicans proposed to allow slavery to continue in the Southern states where it already existed, the secession of many southern states following Lincoln’s election triggered the Civil War, and ultimately slavery was abolished throughout the US, including the South.

Subordinate

In a hierarchically organized group, a subordinate is anyone who works below another person of higher rank. For example, most modern businesses are organized hierarchically with a boss or supervisor who is in charge of a variety of workers. A manager of a restaurant is often responsible for giving tasks to assistant managers, who in turn are responsible for giving tasks to wait staff. In Lincoln on Leadership, the author uses the term subordinate throughout the text as a catch-all term. It applies both to the people who were positioned below Abraham Lincoln in the American government and the American military and to employees in businesses today.

Just as General Ulysses S. Grant, in Chapter 11, answers to Abraham Lincoln as a subordinate, so do employees in a modern company answer to their boss, supervisor, or executive director. The term subordinate allows Phillips to create analogies between Lincoln’s role as a leader of the country, government, and military, and anyone who runs a business or company in a modern context. In reference to Lincoln, for example, Phillips writes, “In short, Lincoln exercised competent leadership—he delegated responsibility and authority, and empowered his subordinates to act on their own” (42). His word choice is similar when referencing modern leaders: “Contemporary leaders should adopt Lincoln’s style and ‘pardon’ mistakes as opposed to chewing out subordinates” (63). The term subordinate helps Phillips make connections between Abraham Lincoln’s era and his own.