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    You are here Home » leadership

    A Lesson in Leadership from the Melancholic Teddy Roosevelt

    Last updated on Jun 2, 2016 by Dan McCarthy · This post may contain affiliate links

    The
    26th President led a very tragic life; it made him empathetic and a great
    leader

    Guest
    post from Jon Knokey:

    Certainly there can only
    be one Theodore Roosevelt: the smile, the bombastic laugh, the unbridled energy
    that bore him the nickname the “steam engine in trousers.” 

    But Theodore Roosevelt was deeply melancholic and forlorn.
    America just did not know it, then or now.

    “His own brave and
    cheerful front was what the world knew him for,” biographer David McCullough
    writes “. . . [but] he dwelt more on the isolation and sadness inherent in
    human life, than most people ever realized.”

    An intensely sick and
    asthmatic kid, living in sheltered aristocracy, Theodore fought off death as a youngster.  Few in the Roosevelt family thought he would survive
    to see his eighth birthday.  Shortly
    after TR turned twenty years old, his father died abruptly of cancer. Just a
    few years later, on Valentine’s Day 1884, Theodore’s mother and wife died on the same day, in the same
    house, just hours a part.   The wife died from Bright’s disease, the mother
    from typhoid fever.  All three deaths –
    father, mother, and wife - were a complete shock.

    Roosevelt spent months not
    sleeping, walking through the streets of New York alone at all hours of the
    night.  Friends recalled his bloodshot
    eyes, his inability to process the disaster.  He told a friend he had nothing to live
    for.  He wrote in his diary that “the
    light has gone out of my life.” 

    “He was carrying a grief
    that he had in his own soul,” a close friend confirmed, “. . .[it] hounded him
    to death.”

    To Roosevelt the world was
    flawed and ephemeral; an imperfect place that required moral leaders vigorously
    fighting to mend its brokenness.  This
    burden of sadness propelled TR to seek the beauty in leading imperfect people,
    in an imperfect world, to a new and better frontier.  His tragedies provided a vessel to empathize
    with the poor and the sick, the young and the old, the north and the south, all
    in the name of uniting around the belief that the future would be better than
    the past.

    The hard truth of the
    three tragic deaths meant that the end was always near.  His father had died at forty-six; mother at
    forty-eight; wife, at twenty-two.  Life, like
    a candle, could be snuffed out instantly. 
    It was this overpowering appreciation that life was wild and precious
    and fleeting, that undoubtedly propelled TR to become the youngest person to
    ever be President.

    Alice Roosevelt, Theodore’s
    eldest child, was often surprised to find that her father - the most popular
    man in America - would suddenly and silently succumb to what she termed “a
    melancholic streak.”  Unprompted,
    Theodore would get quiet and abruptly retreat to his inner thoughts, his mind a
    thousand miles away, his body despondent. 
    Often, his other children would find their dad in his study staring out
    the window, his eyes down, lost in his own mind.  His second wife Edith would categorize his many
    lapses into sadness as another one of "his depressed conditions about the
    future.”

    Theodore, much like
    Abraham Lincoln, went through pains to hide his melancholy from the public; a
    forlorn leader was not what America wanted. 
    Theodore gave the masses energy and vibrancy.  But it was not easy.

    On the day he was
    inaugurated governor of New York he arrived at the Executive Mansion and began
    shaking hands with  several thousand New
    Yorkers who had lined up to meet him. 
    Through smiles and laughter, the mood was festive and energetic.  TR boomed with laughter.

    But despite all the pomp,
    and despite the fact that he was the most celebrated man in the nation’s most
    influential state, Theodore quickly grew quiet when he left the cheering
    crowds. His intimates had come to expect this. 
    After walking into the executive mansion for the very first time as
    Governor, he leaned in to longtime friend Fanny Parsons.  Eyes downtrodden and sad, he whispered that
    he had “shot his last bolt.”  It was only
    if he could find a way to leave his children “a legacy of work well done,” would
    he find happiness.

    In Theodore’s melancholic mind,
    he was already forecasting a sorrowful end to his political career, just minutes
    after he was sworn in as Governor. The proclamation that he “shot his last bolt”
    is particularly peculiar considering four of the previous six US Presidential
    elections had included a Governor from New York and Roosevelt was only forty-one
    years old at the time.

    “I have known sorrow too
    bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for
    more than a very brief period over success or defeat,” Theodore explained.

    Theodore Roosevelt
    embraced the fragility of life.  He never
    gloated in victory and had the strength to persevere in trial and defeat.  He just endured it all, striving to lead
    American’s to a better frontier, together, as one.  This steadfast determination was shaped by his
    crucible moments of suffering.

    Perhaps we can learn from
    a leader who internalized empathy - a man who promoted community in times of
    sadness as well as joy? Perhaps, then, we should revisit the importance of
    internal empathy, and not outwardly charisma, as a potential hallmark of true
    leadership? 

    After all, it was Roosevelt’s
    empathy that made him a leader of consequence.

     

    Jon
    Knokey
    is the author of Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of American Leadership
    , a riveting book exploring the leadership journey of the 26th
    President.
    Jon is a former NCAA quarterback for Montana State University. He holds
    a Masters in Business Administration from Dartmouth College and a Masters in
    Public Administration from Harvard University. Jon was a Vice President for a start-up software company before joining
    the MBA executive leadership programs at General Electric and then at John
    Deere. His career has focused on leadership and management at the intersection
    of business and government. He and his wife have two young daughters. Find out
    more at:
    http://www.makingofamericanleadership.com/  
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