Honor Abraham Lincoln By Condensing Your Message

Today is the 211th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

While we could write endlessly about the 16th president’s leadership during the most turbulent period in American history, The Daily Coach wanted to focus on perhaps his most famous message ever — The Gettysburg Address.

The speech, which was intended to honor American soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg, contained two lines that everyone should regularly consider: “All men are created equal” and “That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

But what few realize is that The Gettysburg Address was just 272 words and lasted less than three minutes.

Think about that. One of the most famous speeches in American history was shorter than just about any boardroom speech or newspaper article we’ll read today — in fact, it was just slightly longer than a tweet.

Are you as a leader conveying your message concisely? Can you make your point succinctly to keep your team’s attention? Is your organization one that’s for the people?

Remember, less is often more when trying to capture an audience. Pause today to reflect on Lincoln and consider how you can apply some of his lessons to be a better leader.

Here is The Gettysburg Address below:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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