Undaunted


When Jay Winik wrote his book, April 1865: The Month That Saved America, he was writing about the last month of the Civil War. He knew he would be retelling certain events that led to the Union victory, that he would have to do a lot of historical research, and that he had a compelling story to tell. What he didn't realize was that he would also find out a lot about what makes some people good at being leaders.

"What I discovered is this most common trait among great leaders: They can repeatedly suffer failure and be undaunted by it. They adhere to their vision, and they just keep plugging away. Plugging away seems like the simplest explanation you can have, but historically it's very clear. Men who go on to do great things in history often do them against great odds. They do it because they refuse to be defeated by the whirl and sway of events. You see it in Lincoln, you see it in Grant, you see it in Robert E. Lee.

"At the end of my book, I included a panorama of what America would become in the 50 years following the Civil War. I looked at the people who went on to shape the country's destiny. I was shocked by what I found. In 1865, most of these people were failures.

"Mark Twain, for instance, was thinking about going to Hawaii and thinking that perhaps, at some future date, he might be able to write a book. Thomas Edison had just been fired from his fifth job and was working in a telegraph office. Henry Ford's father told him, 'You are a tinkerer and you will never amount to anything.' These men, who all turned out to be great leaders, had the internal drive to keep them going despite repeated failure. The lesson from this? Just when you think things cannot get worse, keep going—and you can make them better."

Genius is divine perseverance. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness, but perseverance all can have.

—Woodrow Wilson,
U.S. president




Diamond Power. Gems of Wisdom From America's Greatest Marketer
Diamond Power: Gems of Wisdom from Americas Greatest Marketer
ISBN: 1564146987
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 207
Authors: Barry Farber

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