"In the tent..."

As many of you know, I like to watch sports movies and war movies.  One of my all-time favorites is the 1972 film The Godfather starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton (among many, many other famous actors).  The film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and tells the story of the Corleone crime family.  The sequel, The Godfather II, at least in my opinion, was an even better movie (we won't talk about the final installment of the trilogy).  There is a scene in the second movie in which the crime boss Michael Corleone, played by the actor Al Pacino, tells one of his henchmen, "Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer."  It's a great scene and an even greater quote. 

I recently started watching the MasterClass on Leadership by the author Doris Kearns Goodwin.  Goodwin was a White House Fellow during Lyndon Johnson's Presidential Administration and tells a story in the first episode of how she was selected to work as Johnson's personal assistant, even after it came out that she had written an article in The New Republic describing the process to remove Johnson from his presidency for his management of the war in Vietnam (it was entitled, "How to Dump Lyndon Johnson").  Johnson reportedly said, "Oh, bring her down for a year and if I can't win her over, no one can."  Talk about keeping your enemies closer!  It was Johnson who also said, in a way that only he could say it, "Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."  Okay!

Goodwin talks about this "keeping your enemies close" and "inside the tent" extensively in her excellent book (one of my all-time favorites) Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  After he was elected President, Lincoln named several of his political rivals to his Cabinet, a number of whom he had defeated for the nomination earlier that year.  Rather than worrying about being overshadowed by his more experienced (and more educated) rivals, Lincoln rationalized that the country was in crisis, so he needed the best leaders on his team.  These men were some of the best and the brightest leaders in America at the time, so Lincoln would say, "I had no right to deprive the country of their services."

Goodwin goes on to tell how Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, two other Presidents that she has written biographies about, followed a similar strategy when selecting their Cabinets.  She also tells about how President Barack Obama selected his chief rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton, as his Secretary of State.

It's hard to imagine a leader building a "team of rivals" today, but then again, it's hard to imagine that a team of individuals who all act and think the same could ever be successful in our complex world either.  Part of leadership is learning to manage conflict in a productive way.  With that in mind, as you start to build a team, consider both Michael Corleone's and Lyndon Johnson's admonitions to keep your enemies inside the tent and remember how Abraham Lincoln built his team of rivals.