On Keeping Your Cool With Hot Letters

Yet another lesson gleaned from the Master Class by Doris Kearns Goodwin explored how great leaders dealt with putting aside awkward interpersonal dynamics in the name of pursuing the greater good. Explicitly highlighted was Abraham Lincoln.

One example provided was Lincoln's selection of Edwin Stanton to serve as his Secretary of War. Years earlier, Stanton had humiliated Lincoln. In 1855, Stanton was an Ohio-based attorney of great repute. His firm required an in-state partner to argue an important patent case before an federal court in Chicago, and Lincoln was hired as an up and coming local talent who could navigate the local system. Lincoln spent hours preparing for the case.

At the last minute, the case was moved to a Cincinnati court, where Lincoln dutifully appeared with his notes and research to assist on the case. At their initial meeting, Stanton remarked to a colleague that Lincoln was  a "long armed ape." Continuing with his mean-girl act, Stanton refused to review Lincoln's notes, would not allow him to sit next to the other attorneys in court and even insisted that Lincoln sit separately during meals. Stanton gave a master class in petty humiliation.

Fast forward to 1861. Lincoln asked allies for cabinet recommendations, and his colleagues all concurred regarding the top candidate for the role of Secretary of War: Edwin Stanton, the attorney who'd acted like a colossal jerk earlier in Lincoln's career. In an act of grace difficult to imagine today, Lincoln set aside personal animosity and asked Stanton to serve as Secretary of War.

Stanton accepted. He transformed the War Department into a far more efficient branch of government at a critical time, and improbably, became one of Lincoln's closest friends and supporters, saying at his death, "Now he belongs to the ages." A far cry from the insult he'd hurled at their first meeting.

A second example of coping with animosity was how Lincoln used to write "hot letters," which despite sounding like precursors to 50 Shades of Gray represented a way to channel anger so it would not cloud his future decision-making.

These letters were written with no intention of being sent. They allowed him to vent feelings of betrayal and disappointment in his ostensible political allies without undermining his greater goals for the nation.

I am not nearly as gracious now as Lincoln was then, but in an era where temptation is great and the barrier to sending an impulsively written email is low, it's more important than ever to preserve alliances and play the long game.

I look forward to adopting the practice for those few but still-seething resentments that continue to fuel my late night dyspepsia.