The Invisible Thread: What Great Leaders Really Do

Master the three pillars that separate extraordinary performers from everyone else. Whether you're stepping onto a stage, leading a team, or building your best self, success isn't about talent, it's about skills you can develop. This Skill Builder series reveals the secrets behind history's greatest communicators, leaders, and achievers. From FDR's nation-saving speech to Lincoln's cabinet of rivals to a chef's journey from addiction to empire, these aren't just stories, they're blueprints for your own transformation.
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Why Abraham Lincoln surrounded himself with his enemies and the counterintuitive truth about leading people
November 6th, 1860. Abraham Lincoln has just won the presidency of a fracturing nation. While most politicians would celebrate with their supporters, Lincoln lies awake, unable to sleep. But he's not thinking about victory, he's planning something that would make his friends question his sanity.
He decides to fill his cabinet with his three biggest rivals: William Seward, Edwin Stanton, and Edward Bates. Men who were more experienced, more educated, more celebrated than he was. Men who had publicly criticized him. Men who desperately wanted his job.
His advisors were horrified. "You'll look like a figurehead!" they warned. "They'll undermine you at every turn!"
Lincoln's response? "The country is in peril. These are the strongest and most able people in the country. I need them by my side."
This wasn't political suicide. This was genius. This was leadership at its highest level.
By the end of his presidency, those former rivals had become his most loyal allies. Seward would call him the greatest leader he'd ever known. Stanton, who once called Lincoln a "gorilla," would say at his deathbed, "There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen."
What transformed enemies into allies? What invisible thread connected them? The answer reveals everything about what leadership really is.
The Mirror Trap That Destroys Teams
Most people get leadership completely backwards. They think it's about being the smartest person in the room, having all the answers, making all the decisions. They surround themselves with people who think like them, agree with them, and make them feel validated.
That's not leadership. That's management by mirror.
Real leadership begins with a truth that's as uncomfortable as it is powerful: A leader is nothing without their team. And a great team isn't a collection of people who make you look good, it's a collection of people who make the work extraordinary.
Consider this: When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he didn't surround himself with yes-men. He hired people like Jonathan Ive, who would challenge his design ideas, and Tim Cook, who would push back on operational decisions. The result? The most innovative period in Apple's history.
The mirror trap is seductive because it feels safe. But safety is the enemy of greatness. When everyone thinks like you, you get more of the same thinking. When everyone agrees with you, you never discover the flaws in your logic. When everyone validates you, you stop growing.
The Energy You Can't See But Everyone Feels
Walk into any workplace and you can feel it immediately, the invisible thread that connects everything. Some places hum with energy and possibility. Others feel drained before you even sit down. The difference? Leadership energy.
Here's what most people miss: Your energy as a leader is contagious, and it spreads faster than gossip.
Leadership isn't just about what you do, it's about who you are when you show up.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings understood this principle when he implemented their famous "Keeper Test." Instead of creating fear, he created clarity: "We're a team, not a family. We want the best players in every position." This energy of excellence and honesty permeated the entire culture, creating one of the most innovative companies in the world.
The Counterintuitive Power Move
Want to know the secret to building an unstoppable team? Stop trying to be indispensable.
The worst leaders operate on what's called the "hero model", everything depends on them. They make every decision, approve every detail, and wonder why their teams seem disengaged and unmotivated.
The best leaders do the opposite. They empower people to make leadership decisions on their own. They delegate real responsibility, not just busy work. They create a culture where everyone feels valuable and necessary.
Here's why this works: When people feel trusted with real responsibility, three things happen:
1. They work harder because they feel ownership
2. They think deeper because the decisions matter
3. They care more because they're invested in the outcome
Satya Nadella transformed Microsoft by embracing this principle. Instead of the competitive, hierarchical culture that had defined Microsoft for decades, he created what he called a "learn-it-all" culture. He empowered teams to make decisions, experiment, and even fail, as long as they learned from it.
The result? Microsoft's stock price increased by over 500% during his first seven years as CEO.
As one successful leader put it: "If everyone's looking to me for every little decision, that's not interesting for them and it shouldn't be interesting for me. Everything should be a team model where everybody is valuable and everybody is necessary."
The Diversity Advantage That Most Leaders Miss
Here's a fact that might surprise you: If you took the smartest person in a room of 100 people and gave them unlimited resources and time, the other 99 people working together would still outperform the genius working alone. This isn't opinion, this is backed by decades of research. Diverse teams make better decisions than homogeneous teams or lone geniuses.
Why? Because diversity isn't just about demographics, it's about perspectives, experiences, and approaches to problems. When you bring together people with different backgrounds, ages, cultures, and viewpoints, you're essentially collecting the widest variety of human intelligence available.
Lincoln understood this instinctively. His "Team of Rivals" represented different factions of the country, conservative, moderate, and radical. By listening to all of them, he could make decisions that reflected the complexity of the nation he was leading.
Modern research from companies like Google confirms this. Their most successful teams weren't the ones with the highest individual IQs, they were the ones with the highest collective intelligence, which came from psychological safety and diverse perspectives.
The key insight: Homogeneous teams feel comfortable, but diverse teams perform better. Great leaders choose performance over comfort.
The Courage to Be Wrong
But here's where leadership gets really interesting: You have to empower your team to disagree with you, and prove you wrong.
Most leaders say they want honest feedback, but their actions tell a different story. They get defensive when challenged. They promote people who agree with them. They create cultures where dissent is discouraged through subtle (or not-so-subtle) punishment.
Great leaders do the opposite. They actively cultivate disagreement.
Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, built the world's most successful hedge fund on this principle. He created what he called "radical transparency", a culture where anyone could challenge anyone, regardless of hierarchy. Meetings were recorded. Feedback was mandatory. Ego was the enemy.
The result? Bridgewater has generated more profits for investors than any other hedge fund in history.
One president told his team on his first day in office: "I don't want you to be afraid to express your opinion or to disagree. You will never be fired, transferred, or marginalized in any way for disagreeing with me or anybody else." Think about that. Imagine working for someone who not only allowed you to disagree with them but encouraged it. How much more invested would you be? How much harder would you think about the problems? How much better would your work become?
The paradox: Leaders who invite disagreement actually get more loyalty, not less. Because people respect leaders who care more about being right than about being seen as right.
The Art of Listening (That Most Leaders Never Learn)
Here's something that separates good leaders from great ones: Great leaders listen more than they talk.
Your brain already knows what you think. You don't need to hear your own thoughts repeated back to you. But when you listen, really listen, to your team, you're constantly learning. The best leaders have mastered something called "conversational leadership." When someone asks them a question, they don't just answer, they turn it back: "What do you think about your own question?"
Why? Because people who ask questions usually have thoughts about the answers. They're often testing their own ideas or seeking validation for solutions they've already considered. By listening, you tap into knowledge and insights you never would have discovered otherwise.
But here's the deeper truth: When you listen to someone, you're not just gathering information, you're showing them they matter. And people who feel valued work harder, think deeper, and stay longer.
Jeff Bezos was famous for this at Amazon. In meetings, he would often stay silent for long periods, just listening. When he finally spoke, it was usually to ask a question that revealed he'd been processing everything deeply. His teams knew their voices mattered, which made them think more carefully about what they said.
The Hardest Part: Making the Call
All this listening and empowering is crucial, but eventually, someone has to make a decision. That's what leaders do. They synthesize input, weigh options, and make the call, especially when it's unpopular. The key is in how you communicate difficult decisions. When you have to make a choice that won't make everyone happy, you owe your team transparency:
"I've reached the decision that I believe is best for our organization. I know it won't make everyone fully happy, and I'm sorry about that. I want you to know I heard you. I tried to take your interests into account. I considered this from multiple angles, and here's why I made the decision I did..."
People can respect a process even when they don't like the outcome. The worst thing you can do is make decisions in a black box and expect people to follow blindly.
When Reed Hastings decided to split Netflix into two companies (Netflix and Qwikster), it was wildly unpopular. But he explained his reasoning transparently. When customer feedback showed it was a mistake, he reversed course quickly and publicly. The transparency built trust even in failure.
The Credit/Blame Formula That Changes Everything
Here's a simple rule that separates great leaders from mediocre ones: Give credit for the good stuff, take responsibility for the bad stuff.
Most leaders do the opposite. When things go well, they say "I achieved this." When things go wrong, they find someone to blame. Great leaders use "we" when talking about successes and "I" when talking about failures. They catch people doing things right and make sure everyone knows about it. When mistakes happen, they don't look for scapegoats, they look for solutions.
"Couldn't have happened without you" - those five words can transform how someone feels about their work and their contribution.
When the 2008 financial crisis hit, many CEOs blamed external factors. But Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase took responsibility: "We made mistakes. I made mistakes. Here's what we're doing to fix them." That accountability built trust and helped JPMorgan emerge stronger than its competitors.
The Parent-Teacher-Coach Balance
Leading people requires you to be three things simultaneously: a parent (caring and supportive), a teacher (patient and instructive), and a coach (demanding excellence and accountability).
The art is knowing when to be which one.
When someone is struggling, lead with the parent: "I understand what you're going through. I've seen this before. We all face these challenges. Let's figure out how to work through it together." When someone needs to grow, be the teacher: Show them not just what to do, but why it matters and how it connects to the bigger picture. When standards slip, be the coach: Address the behavior, not the person. "That approach didn't work" doesn't mean "you're not capable." It means this specific action can be improved.
The balance is crucial: Too much parent and you create dependency. Too much teacher and you create confusion. Too much coach and you create fear. Great leaders fluidly move between all three based on what their people need in the moment.
The Culture Secret That Most Leaders Ignore
Someone once said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast," and it's absolutely true. You can have the world's best business plan, but if your culture is toxic, you'll never achieve your goals. Culture isn't created by mission statements hung on walls, it's created by experiences, especially the small, seemingly insignificant ones.
It's the leader being the first to admit a mistake. It's celebrating someone's idea even when it doesn't work. It's the Friday afternoon team-building session that nobody expected. It's responding to crisis with humor instead of panic.
Culture is the accumulation of a thousand small decisions that show what you really value.
The Lincoln Test for True Leadership
So how do you know if you're really leading? Ask yourself Lincoln's question: Are you confident enough to surround yourself with people who will argue with you, question your assumptions, and challenge what you think you know?
If you're only comfortable with people who echo your views, you're not leading, you're performing. If you feel threatened by people who are smarter than you in certain areas, you're not leading, you're competing. If you need to be the source of every good idea, you're not leading, you're controlling. Real leadership requires the confidence to know that having strong people around you doesn't diminish you, it multiplies you.
The test: Look at your inner circle. Do they challenge you? Do they bring perspectives you lack? Do they make you better? Or do they just make you comfortable?
Your Team Is Always Watching
Remember this: every day, your team is watching how you show up. They're absorbing your energy, your priorities, your values. They're learning what really matters by watching what you do, not what you say. They see whether you give credit or take it. They notice whether you listen or just wait to talk. They feel whether you trust them with real responsibility or just give them busy work.
You're not just managing tasks, you're shaping future leaders. The question is: what kind of leaders are you modeling for them to become?
Lincoln's cabinet of rivals went on to help him navigate the Civil War and preserve the Union. Those men who started as his enemies became his greatest allies, not because he forced them to, but because he showed them what real leadership looked like. Seward, who initially dismissed Lincoln as inexperienced, came to revere him. Stanton, who had mocked him publicly, wept at his bedside. Bates, who thought he deserved the presidency more, became one of his most trusted advisors.
What transformed them wasn't Lincoln's authority, it was his leadership.
The invisible thread that connects great teams isn't hierarchy or policy or incentive programs. It's trust, respect, and shared purpose. It's the knowledge that everyone in the room is working toward something bigger than themselves, and that their leader genuinely cares about their success and growth.
That thread starts with you. Every interaction either strengthens it or weakens it. Every decision either builds trust or erodes it. Every day, you're either creating the culture you want or accepting the culture you have.
The question isn't whether you're in a leadership position—it's whether you're actually leading.
The invisible thread is waiting. How strong will you make it?
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Ready to master all three pillars of peak performance? This is part 2 of our Skill Builder series. Don't miss the other game-changing guides:
For Public Speaking: [The Power of Words: How to Command Any Room] - Discover the 7-word phrase that saved a nation and the conversation trick that changes everything
For Personal Growth: [The Fire Within: A Blueprint for Becoming Unstoppable] - From addiction to empire: the secret that transforms ordinary people into forces of nature
Which skill will you master next? Your breakthrough is waiting.
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