...The Leadership of Abraham Lincoln Phillip Bullington High Performance Leadership Term Paper 2/12/15 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Leader 4 Power & Influence 4 Ethics & Values 6 Attributes 6 Behavior 8 Followers 9 Motivation 9 Satisfaction & Performance 9 Groups 10 The Rocket Model 10 Situation 11 Situational Levels 11 Emancipation Proclamation 12 Death 13 Conclusion 13 References 14 Introduction Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States of America. Abraham was born on February 12, 1809 to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. He grew up in both Kentucky and Indiana as the son of a farmer who preferred him to work on the farm rather than read books. Lincoln had an intellectual ambition however and was in constant pursuit of knowledge through his readings. Abraham set out for Illinois in 1831 and studied to become a lawyer which he eventually did in 1836 after passing the bar examination. He was then elected to the Illinois State Legislature in 1836, 1838, and 1840. After his retirement from legislature in 1841, Lincoln went on to marry Mary Todd Lincoln in 1842. He then began devoting the majority of his time to law practice until 1847 when he was elected and served in Congress (McPherson, 2000). Lincoln would continue to move in and out of politics for the next 14 years as was continually defeated in bids and elections for office. It wasn’t until 1861, after losing...
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...April 15, 1865 the sixteenth president of the United States of America took his last breath after being assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Being the first president successfully assassinated in the United States of America would be enough to put Abraham Lincoln’s name in the history books, however his life is equally remarkable. Lincoln’s reputation as a strong leader has stood the test of time from his career as a politician and lawyer to the president who preserved the union during a crucial turning point in our nation’s history. Lincoln’s unquenchable thirst for education and self-improvement formed the foundation for the leader he later became (Austell, 2006). Lincoln’s stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston, was the first person in his life that understood the importance of education and encouraged Lincoln in his educational efforts (Herndon & Weik, 1888). Lincoln’s quest for knowledge was a lifelong journey that continued throughout his career as a lawyer and a politician, and helped him to earn the trust and admiration of colleagues and friends (Alvy & Robbins, 2010). Lincoln’s first office for the federal government was as postmaster at New Salem followed by multiple terms in the Illinois state legislature. Over time Lincoln’s influence within the Illinois legislature grew, in large part due to his ability to draft bills and laws (Burlingame, 2008). It was during his first term in the Illinois legislature that Lincoln was first encouraged to study law by John Todd Stuart...
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...Abraham Lincoln Through the course of American history there are names that stand out, names that represent more than just a person, but represent an era in American history. The list of important and influential figures in American history is too long and numerous to list. Yet there is always one name, one man who stands above all the rest. Abraham Lincoln has come to define the American experience. His beginnings as a poor farmer in Kentucky to his rise in politics to his Presidency, his story fascinates everyone who reads and studies it. Abraham Lincoln is the epitome of what America is. He is Americas most cherished and beloved President and he may be the most well-known American President in the world. Despite all the praise bestowed upon Abraham Lincoln there are those who do not buy into the ‘official’ Lincoln legacy. A small, but growing group of Lincoln detractors claim that Lincoln was not the father of freedom and liberty, the great emancipator and the savior of the union; they see Lincoln as a diabolical dictator. A man who took advantage of America in its darkest hour, a man who had no respect for the Constitution, he instead sought to destroy and undermine it every chance he got. Abraham Lincoln was President during America’s darkest hour; he saved the union and kept the country together. Lincoln was justified in the actions he took, despite attempts to paint Lincoln as a tyrannical dictator there is no question that Lincoln’s status as America’s greatest President...
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...in American history. The list of important and influential figures in American history is too long and numerous to list. Yet there is always one name, one man who stands above all the rest. Abraham Lincoln has come to define the American experience. His beginnings as a poor farmer in Kentucky to his rise in politics to his Presidency, his story fascinates everyone who reads and studies it. Abraham Lincoln is the epitome of what America is. He is Americas most cherished and beloved President and he may be the most well known American President in the world. Despite all the praise bestowed upon Abraham Lincoln there are those who do not buy into the ‘official’ Lincoln legacy. A small, but growing group of Lincoln detractors claim that Lincoln was not the father of freedom and liberty, the great emancipator and the savior of the union; they see Lincoln as a diabolical dictator. A man who took advantage of America in its darkest hour, a man who had no respect for the Constitution, he instead sought to destroy and undermine it every chance he got. Abraham Lincoln was President during America’s darkest hour; he saved the union and kept the country together. Lincoln was justified in the actions he took, despite attempts to paint Lincoln as a tyrannical dictator there is no question that Lincoln’s status as America’s greatest President is deserved and true. During his Presidency Lincoln met fierce opposition. This is not uncommon among Presidents; they are commonly held in higher regard...
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...http://hr.blr.com/whitepapers/Staffing-Training/Leadership/10-Qualities-that-Made-Abraham-Lincoln-a-Great-Lea 10 Qualities that Made Abraham Lincoln a Great Leader By Catherine L. Moreton, J.D. Capacity to Listen to Different Points of View While researching her Pulitzer Prize winning book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Kearns Goodwin learned that Lincoln had the capacity to listen to different points of view. He created a climate where Cabinet members were free to disagree without fear of retaliation. At the same time, he knew when to stop the discussion and after listening to the various opinions, make a final decision. Ability to Learn on the Job Lincoln was able to acknowledge errors, learn from them, and then move. In this way, he established a culture of learning in his administration, said Kearns Goodwin. Ready Willingness to Share Credit for Success In response to concerns expressed by friends about the actions of some of his Cabinet members, Lincoln stated that the "path to success and ambition is broad enough for two" said Kearns Goodwin. When there was success, Lincoln shared the credit with all of those involved. Ready Willingness to Share Blame for Failure When mistakes were made by members of his Cabinet, Lincoln stood up for them said Kearns Goodwin. When contracts related to the war effort raised serious questions about a member of his administration, Lincoln spoke up and indicated that he and his entire Cabinet...
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...Ethics Competencies: In 1846, Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, pledging only to serve one term. He kept this promise to himself and his constituents. During his time in Congress, Lincoln opposed policies of then-President James K. Polk, including the Mexican-American War. Lincoln attributed the war to Polk’s desire for “military glory.” He emphasized his opposition by drafting and introducing his Spot Resolutions, which demanded that Polk show evidence of a Mexican incursion into the United States and their shedding the blood of American citizens. The legislation wasn’t passed and it cost Lincoln supporters in his political career as well as earning turning the press against him in Illinois. After backing a losing candidate in the presidential race of 1848, Lincoln was denied a high profile political post and refused to take another post that would have isolated him politically and geographically. He left the House after his single term and went back to practicing law in Illinois. He returned to politics to oppose slavery and an attempt to repeal an act that would repeal the Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery in the American territories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_career_of_Abraham_Lincoln Self-Competencies: Lincoln was raised on the western frontier with limited or no access to formal education. His formal education consisted of perhaps 18 months of schooling from illiterate teachers. In effect he was self-educated...
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...Customer Satisfaction Surveys & Customer Satisfaction Research | | |Written by Paul Hague and Nick Hague | | | |It seems self evident that companies should try to satisfy their customers. Satisfied customers usually return and buy more, they| |tell other people about their experiences, and they may well pay a premium for the privilege of doing business with a supplier | |they trust. Statistics are bandied around that suggest that the cost of keeping a customer is only one tenth of winning a new | |one. Therefore, when we win a customer, we should hang on to them. | |Why Customer Satisfaction Is So Important | |Why is it that we can think of more examples of companies failing to satisfy us rather than when we have been satisfied? There | |could be a number of reasons for this. When we buy a product or service, we expect it to be right. We don’t jump up and down with| |glee saying “isn’t it wonderful, it actually worked”. That is what we paid our money for. Add to this our world of ever exacting | |standards. We now have products available to us that would astound our great grandparents and yet we...
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...Customer Satisfaction Surveys A White Paper by Paul Hague and Nick Hague of B2B International E-mail Web Blog info@b2binternational.com www.b2binternational.com www.b2binternational.com/b2b-blog/ WHY CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IS SO IMPORTANT It seems self evident that companies should try to satisfy their customers. Satisfied customers usually return and buy more, they tell other people about their experiences, and they may well pay a premium for the privilege of doing business with a supplier they trust. Statistics are bandied around that suggest that the cost of keeping a customer is only one tenth of winning a new one. Therefore, when we win a customer, we should hang on to them. Why is it that we can think of more examples of companies failing to satisfy us rather than when we have been satisfied? There could be a number of reasons for this. When we buy a product or service, we expect it to be right. We don’t jump up and down with glee saying “isn’t it wonderful, it actually worked”. That is what we paid our money for. Add to this our world of ever exacting standards. We now have products available to us that would astound our great grandparents and yet we quickly become used to them. The bar is getting higher and higher. At the same time our lives are ever more complicated with higher stress levels. Delighting customers and achieving high customer satisfaction scores in this environment is ever more difficult. And even if your customers are completely satisfied with...
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...LEVEL 5 LEADERSHIP THE TRIUMPH OF HUMILITY AND FIERCE RESOLVE What catapults a company from merely good to truly great? A five-year research good to truly great? A five-year research project searched for the answer to that question, and its discoveries ought to change the way we think about leadership. The most powerfully transformative executives possess a paradoxical mixture pf personal humility and professional will. They are timid and ferocious. shy and fearless. They are rare -- and unstoppable. In 1971, a seemingly ordinary man named Darwin E. Smith was named chief executive of Kimberly-Clark, a stodgy old paper company whose stock had fallen 36% behind the general market during the previous 20 years. Smith, the company's mild-mannered in-house lawyer, wasn't so sure the board had made the right choice -- a feeling that was reinforced when a Kimberly-Clark director pulled him aside and reminded him that he lacked some of the qualifications for the position. But CEO he was, and CEO he remained for 20 years. What a 20 years it was. In that period, Smith created a stunning transformation at Kimberly-Clark, turning it into the leading consumer paper products company in the world. Under his stewardship, the company beat its rivals Scott Paper and Procter & Gamble. And in doing so, Kimberly-Clark generated cumulative stock returns that were 4.1 times greater than those of the general market, outperforming venerable companies such as Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Coca-Cola,...
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...factors Collins identified as essential to take a company from good to great, he chose to focus on leadership in this 2O01 piece. However, even a casual rereading of the article will convince you that he was right to do so. Collins argues that the key ingredient that allows a company to become great is having a Level 5 leader: an executive in whom genuine personal humility blends with intense professional will. To learn that such CEOs exist still comes as a pleasant shock. But while the idea may sound counterintuitive today, it was downright heretical when Collins first wrote about it-the corporate scandals in the United States hadn't broken out, and almost everyone believed that CEOs should be charismatic, larger-than-life figures. Collins was the first to blow that belief out of the water. Level 5 Leadership TheTriumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve by Jim Collins What catapults a company from merely good to truly great? A five-year research project searched for the answer to that question, and its discoveries ought to change the v^ay we think about leadership. I n 1971, a seemingly ordinary man med Darwin E. Smith was named cfeief executive of Kimberly-Clark, a stodgy old paper company whose stock had fallen 36% behind the general market during the previous 20 years. Smith, the company's mild-mannered in-house lawyer, wasn't so sure the board had made the right choice - a feeling that was reinforced when a Kimberly-Clark director pulled him aside and reminded him...
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...Page 1 Ulysses S. Grant (2002) Program Transcript Part One Narrator: October 23, 1863. Chattanooga, Tennessee. After a grueling four-day journey, General Ulysses S. Grant arrived at Union headquarters. He had injured his leg and had to be helped off his horse. Once again, he was dogged by rumors that he'd been drinking. He listened silently as his officers described a bleak situation. The Union Army was surrounded. Men and horses faced starvation. A Confederate victory seemed inevitable. Grant thanked his men, and began to write his orders. Max Byrd, Novelist: You see a lot of Grant in just that act of writing. The concentration and the determination. He never looked up. He never hesitated. He never seemed to search for a word. Geoffrey Perr et, Biographer: By the time he'd finished, he was surrounded by pieces of, of paper that he'd covered with his, his very even hand writing. In effect, he had fought the battle already in his o wn mind. Narrator: Before the war, Grant had been a nobody, a failure as a farmer and a businessman. As Commanding General, he was called an incompetent, a butcher. But he would win every campaign he ever fought. His plain, Midwestern w ays would captivate the American people. David W. Blight, Historian: There was something about that element of the American dream of that rags to riches story. He had experienced humiliation and he had understood failure. And I suspect a lot of Americans could see themselves in him. Donald Miller, Historian: Grant...
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...Office of Research and Development Office of Technology Transfer Response to Presidential Memorandum: Accelerating Technology Transfer and Commercialization of Federal Research in Support of High-Growth Businesses 1. Executive Summary. Every year, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) researchers develop dozens of new health care-related technologies and other inventions that benefit VA’s patients, other Veterans, and all Americans. VA’s Technology Transfer Program (TTP) translates the results of VA employees’ discoveries into practice. The program educates VA inventors on their rights and obligations; evaluates inventions; obtains patents; and helps commercialize new products. VA’s program is different from other Federal technology transfer programs, because it is highly decentralized. More than 100 VA medical centers (VAMC) conduct research, and all are Federal Laboratories. In addition, 124 VAMCs have formal affiliations with academic institutions and hospitals, and many full- and part-time VA employees also have academic appointments or are employed at an affiliated academic institution or hospital. Because of these arrangements, most VA inventions are jointly owned by VA and its academic affiliates, making technology transfer a collaborative effort. In order to fulfill the goals of the President’s Memorandum dated October 28, 2011, requiring all Federal departments and agencies to accelerate technology transfer and support private sector commercialization, VA has developed...
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...business ethicists and business professionals watched with concern as Wall Street analysts demanded increasingly strong corporate financial performance to support rising corporate stock prices. At the same time, the gargantuan compensation packages (including stock options) of the top executives running these companies became inextricably linked to their companies’ stock prices. In 1990, average CEO pay at major corporations was 107 times the pay of the average worker. By 2004, CEO pay had risen to 431 times the pay of the average employee. (If the pay of average workers in the United States had risen as fast as CEO pay, the lowest paid workers would be earning $23.03 an hour, not $5.15 an hour.)2 It was an “accident” waiting to happen, although everyone was making so much money in the market that no one wanted to admit that something could be fundamentally wrong. Experts warned of a bubble—even Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve, cautioned against “irrational exuberance” in the markets.3 But no one could have predicted how bad things would get. In a June 2002 interview on PBS’s Frontline, Arthur Levitt, former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, explained how stock prices influence executives and their ethical decision making...
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...New Nationalism and Teddy Roosevelt: The new ideals of federal intervention, social justice and economic welfare for the Nation. Abstract In 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated, Roosevelt confronted sentiment, especially from the older members of the Republican Party, that he was not the right person to lead the country, often referring to him as “His Accidency.” Roosevelt was interested in quickly changing the mood of the country and establishing his legitimacy to his new position. He did so by introducing a “New Nationalist” form of Progressivism. When Roosevelt was sworn in, the Progressive Party had already been developing and growing since the end of the 19th century. It advocated for reforms and the lead of the government in changing society’s problems in response to socio-economic and political imbalances. Such thinking was a radical change in the country’s mindset, with earlier efforts supporting private efforts to solve the nation’s ills. The Progressive party had a broad platform, but the overall goal was for government to implement and lead efforts to alter societal inequalities. The Progressives called for eliminating corruption in the federal government as well as supporting a social welfare program, the women’s vote, penal system reform, and prohibition. Although the issue of civil rights for African-Americans was of concern of some members, this issue was not formally included in any of the Progressive party’s literature. With the support of...
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...Accountability and Rhetoric during a Crisis: Walt Disney’s 1940 Letter to Stockholders Joel H. Amcrnic UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO and Russell J. Craig AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY ACCOUNTABILITY AND RHETORIC DURING A CRISIS: WALT DISNEY’S 1940 LETTER TO STOCKHOLDERS Abstract: In 1940, Walt Disney was faced with crafting a message of corporate accountability under duress. His company, the product of his creative genius, had been forced to submit to public accountability. It had a pressing need to raise preferred equity finance for a major expansion during a period of market uncertainty, war, and reported losses. This paper conducts a “close reading” of the “Letter to Stockholders” in Walt Disney Productions’ 1940 annual report, the first such letter signed by Walt Disney. The letter’s rhetorical features, including metaphor and ideology, are examined in the context of the times. What is revealed is an accountability document skillfully crafted with the exigencies faced by Disney’s company firmly in mind. The letter offers suggestive insight to the world as Disney made sense of it. The paper contributes to understanding the use of rhetoric by top management in activities related to aspects of financial accountability and reporting. It also helps to understand better a significant public persona of the 20th century, Walt Disnev. Acknowledgment The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful comments of the reviewers. SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES Analysis of annual reports, including letters...
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