Lincoln's Leadership and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

Introduction: Lincoln as a Model of Rational Leadership

In Lincoln on Leadership, Donald T. Phillips paints a portrait of former President Abraham Lincoln as an extremely adept leader with a vast, effective, and honest arsenal of leadership strategies. So timeless were Lincoln's methods that Phillips often relates them to success in practice today. Interestingly, Lincoln faced two decades of failure before becoming one of the world's greatest leaders. From 1831 to 1858, the former President endured a string of losses, difficult situations, and defeats (Janke, 2010). The central contention of this essay is that Lincoln was a great leader because he employed many of the strategies promoted by Albert Ellis, Epictetus, and other philosophers who advocate control over one's emotional destiny.

Lincoln actively resisted a number of Albert Ellis's Irrational Beliefs, specifically Irrational Belief No. 5 — "The idea you must be miserable when you have pressures and difficult experiences; and that you have little ability to control, and cannot change, your disturbed feelings" — and Irrational Belief No. 6 — "The idea that if something is dangerous or fearsome, you must obsess about it and frantically try to escape from it" (Ellis, 1997, pp. 155, 177). Moreover, Lincoln's model for both leadership and life illustrates how ordinary people are not controlled by negative situations that, once they have begun, are completely outside their control. Lincoln's behavior also showed a strong correlation to Boyd's (2010) concept of predetermined destiny: rather than trying to change situations over which one has no control, successful individuals accept them, recognize their own weaknesses, and build upon their known strengths. Likewise, Lincoln's conduct reflected Epictetus's philosophy that "Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions" (Epictetus, 135).

Irrational Beliefs, Emotional Destiny, and Lincoln's Resilience

Before becoming President of the United States, Lincoln had suffered the following events: two business failures resulting in two declarations of bankruptcy, defeat for a seat in the State Legislature, the death of a fiancée, defeat in an election, defeat in a bid for Congress three times in a row, defeat for a seat in the U.S. Senate, defeat for the office of Vice President, and yet another defeat for a seat in the Senate (Janke, 2010). How did he overcome such a consistent pattern of defeat and become one of the greatest leaders America had ever seen?

Most people do not overcome such persistent failure — they quit after their first setback (Ellis, 1987). Most do not follow Ellis's counsel to "attempt to eliminate or improve the painful condition, or accept it philosophically" (1997, p. 161). Unfortunately, this failure to act leads inevitably to dissatisfaction and the non-realization of one's goals. As demonstrated in both the assigned texts and online resources, one must control one's emotional destiny — as Lincoln surely did — by recognizing that things and events are not inherently bad. It is merely one's interpretation that assigns the label "bad" to any given thing (Ellis, 1976).

A thing cannot be "bad," "good," or "neutral" without a human perceiving it as such. A thing simply is. Moreover, what is "bad" to one person may not be "bad" to another. Context is also essential: is something "bad" to a person who will be born one hundred years from now? How could one possibly know? These ideas are, in essence, what Ellis is articulating when he speaks of controlling emotional destiny: nothing is inherently good or bad — it is entirely a matter of interpretation.

The Rock Analogy: Situations Are Neither Good Nor Bad

Consider the following illustration. There is a large rock in front of a door. A man needs to get through the door. The rock is too heavy to move. The man cannot open the door. If the man does not open the door, he will die. Another man is watching, and sees that the rock is too heavy for both of them together to move. The observer concludes: "The rock is bad because it is blocking the door and is too heavy to move. If the man cannot open the door he will die. Death is bad. The rock is bad. This situation is bad."

This type of thinking, however, would be seen by Ellis and Epictetus as logically incorrect. These philosophers would most likely ask the observer questions such as: "How can a rock be bad? The rock might be bad for this person, but is it bad for the insects living underneath it? If we moved the rock, might it kill those insects? Might the rock, in its current position, actually be good? Why should this man's death be bad? How do you know this man might not kill ten people in his lifetime if he were to live, thus preventing the births of countless future individuals? In that context, wouldn't the rock's placement be good, as it would save more lives than just the one? What if the rock, in its current location, is protecting twenty people behind the door from someone who intends them harm? Isn't the rock good in that context? How can you know whether the rock, the situation, or the man's death is good, bad, or neutral?"

Of course, this is an extreme example, because any sensible observer would try to move the rock as quickly as possible to save the man's life, likely because their goals include helping other human beings. Nevertheless, the example illustrates Ellis's point: when faced with a difficult situation, one rarely has enough information to accurately label it as "for" or "against" something — that is, as good or bad. It is one's thoughts, not the situation itself, that are for or against things. Furthermore, if one views the situation as "bad," one becomes powerless to change what is "bad," since the situation is now framed as insurmountable. This traps one in a state of perpetual suffering. If, however, one understands that the situation itself is neither bad nor against anything, but that it is one's thoughts that make the situation seem bad, then one has the power to change that interpretation and perceive the situation as manageable (Ellis, 1997). This is the foundation of Ellis's Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) (Ellis, 1962; 1976; 1987; 1997).

Returning to Lincoln and his adherence to the concepts advanced by Ellis, REBT, Epictetus, and the assigned readings: Lincoln also executed many other insightful and strategically intelligent leadership behaviors in the face of dire circumstances, such as the American Civil War. In the most general sense, Lincoln "led by being led" (Phillips, p. 99). The former President paid close attention to his cabinet members' suggestions and often followed them when he felt they were right or better informed than he was on a given subject (Phillips). Most significantly, he allowed them to take credit for their ideas that succeeded while taking the blame for their ideas that failed (Phillips). In this way, he developed excellent networking skills, kept his subordinates motivated, and encouraged innovation — especially, as Phillips notes, among high-profile generals of the Union Army during the Civil War.

Leading Without Fear: Lincoln's Strategies in Practice

This strategy is reflected in a passage from the Enchiridion by Epictetus: "Don't be prideful with any excellence that is not your own. If a horse should be prideful and say, 'I am handsome,' it would be supportable. But when you are prideful, and say, 'I have a handsome horse,' know that you are proud of what is, in fact, only the good of the horse" (Epictetus, 135).

More importantly, this particular strategy of Lincoln's directly illustrated his conviction that when a fearful situation arises — for example, the disapproval of a nation, the prospect of defeat in a bid for reelection, or the potential loss of the Civil War — one must not shrink from it or frantically attempt to escape it. In other words, Lincoln had successfully overcome Ellis's Irrational Belief No. 6 (1997).

When one does not shrink from a fearful situation, as Lincoln demonstrated, Ellis explains that one understands that the consequences of the situation may be harmful and may actually occur, but that once one "has taken reasonable precautions to ward off" such situations, one can "usually do little about them" if they do occur (Ellis, 1997, p. 164). "Worry, believe it or not," Ellis continues, "has no magical quality of staving off bad luck. On the contrary, it increases your chances of disease or accident by unnerving you" (Ellis, 1997, p. 164). Worrying about and avoiding fearful situations accomplishes nothing but perpetuating both the fear and the situation itself. If the situation causes distress, that distress will continue unless the situation is addressed — it will not simply disappear. Indeed, Elko and Ostrow (1991) found that anxiety-prone individuals tend to worry about their worry, worry about outcomes, and actually perform worse than those who do not. Moreover, in leadership roles — as in Lincoln's case — fearful situations almost never disappear on their own, because leaders are precisely the individuals expected to confront them.