"So came the Captain with the mighty heart..."

Today is April the fifteenth, and most Americans understand that under normal conditions their tax returns would be due today.  As the Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once said, "...in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."  Well, even in spite of the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has put our official tax day on hold for about 3 months, there's no escaping the fact that we will be paying our taxes this year.  There is another reason that April the fifteenth is an important day in history.  More than 150 years ago today, April 15, 1865, the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln died after being shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on the previous night.  Lincoln died, and a nation mourned (see Walt Whitman's poem "O Captain! my Captain!").

For many Americans, Lincoln is the greatest President in history.  He led the United States during and through one of the most turbulent times in American history.  The American Civil War was a time of political and moral crisis.  Through it all, Lincoln was a source of constant strength, resolve, and commitment to preserving our Union.  In the end, he not only preserved the Union, but he also abolished slavery.  He is the quintessential example of what it means to be a "crisis leader," and it would have been interesting to see how he would have led us through the Reconstruction period had he not been assassinated.

Lincoln, by far, is my favorite President.  Whenever I am facing troubles in my professional life, I found solace in his words and deeds during his own personal crisis.  He was far from perfect.  No individual is perfect.  But he was a leader for all.  As the writer and Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn writes in her latest book, "Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times:

Abraham Lincoln was made into an effective leader - first from the inside out and then from the outside in - as he developed and changed throughout his life.  That, as president, he refused to ignore the larger consequences of his actions on men and women who had little or no agency, that he saw beyond the immediate moment and owned the responsibility of affecting a vast future, and that he rejected an ethical callousness about the choices he made are demonstrations of leadership that we yearn for today.

Lincoln's crisis leadership is perhaps best described in a poem written by Edwin Markham, called "Lincoln, Man of the People" (one of my personal favorites!):

So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the judgement thunders split the house,
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest,
He held the ridgepole up...

If, as Lincoln once famously said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand", it was Lincoln's leadership that kept the house from falling apart.  He, as Markham suggests, was the ridgepole that kept the rafters from falling down, "when the judgement thunders split the house."

One could certainly argue that the kind of leader that Lincoln was comes along once in a hundred years or so.  But for leaders facing the current COVID-19 pandemic crisis today, there is much to be gained from reading about Lincoln's style and brand of leadership.  As Koehn concludes her study of Lincoln, "May all who aspire to lead with worth and dignity learn from the life and leadership of Abraham Lincoln."