President’s Day is a good time to think about the lessons past presidents have taught us, especially those leaders like Abraham Lincoln whose words and actions changed the world we live in today.
While researching a new book on individuals who stand out in every field, I learned that the most inspiring leaders are great communicators, but great communication is sharpened by practice.
Long before Lincoln crafted and delivered the Gettysburg Address—the short speech students and celebrities recite publicly to this day— he became known as a storyteller, honing his skill on the American frontier. If it hadn’t been for Lincoln’s skill as a storyteller, he would not have won the presidency and America may look far different than it does today.
In Team of Rivals, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin details Lincoln’s storytelling skills and credits it as a key component of his success as a young lawyer and the nation’s leader. “Storytelling played a central role in the president’s ability to communicate with the public,” she writes.
Like all great storytellers, Lincoln was inspired by the storytellers who came before him.
Stories Drove Lincoln’s Desire For Self-Improvement
At the age of six or seven, Lincoln listened to the stories adults shared by his father’s fireplace at night, the stories of life on the frontier and the characters they met. The next day, Lincoln translated the stories using language his young friends would understand, “mesmerizing his young listeners.” Contemporary speakers walk onto the red carpet of a TED talk to share ideas; Lincoln used a tree stump as his stage. But like today’s most popular TED speakers, Lincoln’s storytelling skills made him stand out.
Goodwin reminds us that for years after the American Revolution, the event released a pent-up demand to improve one’s position in life. When a person could become the equal of another person based on talents—and not royal bloodlines—every American was “eaten up with longing to rise,” in the words of Alex de Tocqueville.
At the age of 22, with little more than a few meager belongings that he could carry, Lincoln left his small town and impoverished surroundings to seek a better life. In the pack he carried on his shoulder he included books, without which he may never have become president. They were the Bible and Shakespeare’s plays. While his horse rested, reading transported him into another world and taught him the power of stories and language. “Reading the Bible and Shakespeare over and over implanted rhythms and poetry that would come to fruition in those works of his maturity that made Abraham Lincoln our only poet-president,” writes Goodwin.
Lincoln — The Master Storyteller
When Lincoln visited small towns during the presidential campaign of 1860, thousands of people walked for miles or traveled for days to hear him speak. According to Goodwin, “No one could equal his never-ending stream of stories nor his ability to reproduce them with such contagious mirth. As his winding tales became more famous, crowds of villagers awaited his arrival at every stop for the chance to hear a master storyteller. Everywhere he went, he won devoted followers.”
Lincoln’s “stirring oratory” earned him admiration from voters, but also from his political opponents who were so captivated by his eloquence and vision, they joined his cabinet. In a lesson that applies to today’s divisive political climate, Lincoln was able to turn competitors into colleagues and together “steered the country through a division that threatened the republic’s existence.”
Lincoln understood that persuasion requires that a leader educate andentertain. Lincoln did both in conversation, speechmaking and in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. Instead of asserting messages point-by-point like Douglas, Lincoln wrapped his argument in story form. According to Goodwin, the story was irresistible, “transporting his listeners back to their roots as a people, to the founding of the nation—a story that still retained its power to arouse strong emotion and thoughtful attention.”
A story or parable is an extended metaphor, and Lincoln was a master of the form. In his famous anti-slavery speech accepting his party’s nomination for senate, Lincoln used a powerful metaphor that we often quote today—“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The inspiration for that metaphor came from the book he carried in his backpack while roaming the American prairie—the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.
Storytelling plays a role today for all leaders. As a prairie lawyer taught us in the 1860s, leaders cannot command people to change their minds. People must be sold on an idea and persuaded to support it.