Leadership and Ambition

1. Leadership and Ambition

Happy New Year! It is great to be back! I sincerely hope that your 2023 is off to a fun, interesting, fulfilling, rewarding start – mine is!

We are kicking off a new series, tapping into the work of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and her book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times. In her book, written in 2018, Goodwin looks into the lives of leadership led by those presidents who she has studied, written about, and in one case, worked for – Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson.

Of these men, Goodwin asks these questions:

Are leaders made or born?
Where does ambition come from?
How does adversity affect the growth of leadership?
Do the times make the leader or does the leader shape the times?
How can a leader infuse a sense of purpose and meaning into people’s lives?
What is the difference between power, title, and leadership?
Is leadership possible without a purpose larger than personal ambition?

Goodwin begins Leadership by taking a look at the ambition of Abraham Lincoln. At age 23, Lincoln wrote “every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you.” Of Lincoln, Goodwin writes, “His ambition was two-fold. It was not simply for himself; it was for the people he hoped to lead. He wanted to distinguish himself in their eyes. A sense of community was central to the master dream of his life – the desire to accomplish deeds that would gain the lasting respect of his fellow man.”

How did that ambition develop? “He carried away from his brief schooling,” another biographer, David Donald observed, “the self-confidence of a man who has never met his intellectual equal.” A dream that Lincoln may someday be in a situation to make the most of his talents began to take hold early in his life. His abilities were behind his ambition. Writes Goodwin: “While his mind was neither quick nor facile, young Lincoln possessed singular powers of reason and comprehension, unflagging curiosity, and a fierce, almost irresistible compulsion to understand the meaning of what he heard, read, or was taught.” Lincoln combined this with a desire to “develop every talent he possessed to the fullest.” An interesting aspect on how Lincoln was able to establish himself so quickly in the minds of others was explained by someone in his early days in New Salem, Illinois when it was said of Lincoln’s sociability: “Everybody loved him.”

At the same time, Lincoln was humble and self-effacing when it came to having his stances win the day. He pledged that if his opinions on any subject turn out to be erroneous, he stood “ready to renounce them.” Writes Goodwin, “With this commitment, Lincoln revealed early on a quality that would characterize leadership for the rest of his life, a willingness to acknowledge errors and learn from his mistakes.” At the end of the day, he was self-driven, telling others “always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”

For Abraham Lincoln, leadership was about being the best he could be, for the benefit of others. He didn’t seek success for his own personal glory, or to have his name be exalted above all others. He was ambitious in his pursuit of democratic ideals that shape our country.

2. Talent in the Digital Age

If there is anything that the last three years have taught us is that every organization has a digital agenda, and every organization must find a way to lead its own digital transformation.

I really liked this article from McKinsey & Company on the confluence of talent and digital transformation: Digital transformations: The five talent factors that matter most.

3. Speaker of the House

“For what reason is the man from Georgia recognized?”

“I, Richard Perkey, would like to place a nomination for the role of Speaker of the House, the name of the great American feline, ‘Pudding’ Perkey!”

Pudding Perkey is the speaker of our house. She lets us know every morning at 6:45 a.m. that it is indeed time for us to awaken and fetch her food. She is forceful and decisive. She gets the entire House to work for her greater good. She sets the Rules for the House of Representative Perkeys, dictating the rhythms of our lives. At 17 years of age, Pudding elicits great followership. Pudding’s greatness is one for the ages. I think she could win the role of Speaker of the House on the first ballot. It would be historic for a cat to be named Speaker of the House, but given that thus far there have been 13 votes and the stray cats in the U.S. House of Representatives have failed to coalesce around a human Speaker, I think Pudding is the best of the options that are out there…