Lincoln Knew When to Be the Fool

Most leaders I know have a joke they never tell. It’s usually a decent one, and it dies quietly somewhere between the thought and the conference room, because the stakes felt too high or someone once suggested that humor isn’t executive presence.

That instinct may be costing them. In a 2017 study, Wharton and Harvard researchers found that the successful use of humor signals confidence and competence, which in turn raises the joke teller’s status. In one experiment, people who used humor effectively were even more likely to be elected group leader for a later task. The catch is that inappropriate or unsuccessful jokes lower people’s sense of your competence. So humor is a skill with risk attached, which describes most things worth getting good at.

Abraham Lincoln understood this long before anyone ran the experiment.

During the Civil War, Lincoln issued an order transferring certain regiments, largely to please a politician. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton refused to carry it out and called the President a damned fool. When word got back to the White House, anyone hoping for an explosion went home disappointed. Lincoln’s reply, as it’s usually told, was that if Stanton said he was a damned fool, he must be one, since Stanton was nearly always right and generally said what he meant. Then Lincoln went over to see him.

Consider what Lincoln had to work with. Stanton was brilliant, abrasive, and not shy about it. Lincoln could have fired him or reminded him who outranked whom, which would have felt satisfying for about an afternoon. Instead, one line at his own expense took the heat out of the moment and told Stanton that his candor mattered more than the President’s pride. It also left the door open to find out whether Stanton had a point. Stanton went on to become one of Lincoln’s most trusted partners.

What strikes me as a coach is that the joke was never the point. Lincoln had a gift for putting people at ease, and humor was one of the ways he did it. People remember the leader who made them comfortable enough to speak plainly, and they keep speaking plainly to that leader long after the moment has passed. The line worked because it reflected something Lincoln actually believed: being wrong in front of a capable person costs far less than losing that person.

Leaders who use humor well tend to aim it at themselves far more often than at anyone else. They also use it to lower the temperature in a room rather than to score points, and they don’t seem to need the laugh, which is probably why they get it.

None of this requires you to be funny on command. Lincoln had a deep stock of stories and decades of practice telling them. Most of us have a dry observation or two and the willingness to let someone else be right, and that’s plenty to start with.

Your Spark: Think of someone on your team who rarely pushes back on you. What would it take for them to feel at ease enough to tell you that you’re wrong, and what small thing could you do this week to make that easier?