One fascinating example is that of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was the surprise winner of a hotly contested primary election that included personal attacks and attempted coup d’états. Once he had secured the nomination, and later the presidency of the United States, Lincoln assembled his cabinet primarily of the very men he quarrelled with for the nomination. This “team of rivals” was able to provide a variety of perspectives and create a tension over the solutions that avoided the traditional, yes-man saturated groupthink sessions that marked so many other presidents’ cabinets.
What is important is for the leader of such diverse
rivalries to sustain the right amount of creative friction, taking care to
produce the tension needed to refine new ideas and challenge old assumptions
while ensuring that the tension doesn’t get overbearing and melt the team.
While there was a team of rivals in Lincoln’s cabinet, we suspect it was always
certain who that needed leader was.
We tend to think of creatives as artists, musicians and
writers. However, Lincoln’s deliberate attempt to leverage tension provided him
with a style of creativity he found quite useful in navigating America through
an equally tumultuous feud.
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