This comes from Doris Kearns Goodwin, noted historian and author - should be a must read for any presidential candidate. The original article appeared in Parade Magazine:
1. The capacity to listen to differing points of view, to let his advisors argue with him, question his assumptions. He created a climate in which people felt free to disagree without fear of consequences.
2. The ability to learn on the job, acknowledge errors, profit from mistakes, withstand adversity, come through trials of fire. Everyone is broken by life, Hemingway said, but some are strong in the broken places. This ability, Stephen Covey argues, literally turns failure into success. It is not our mistakes that hurt us most, but our response to those mistakes.
3. He showed a ready willingness to share credit for success, creating what has been called “an emotional bank account, a reservoir of good feeling. Harry Truman once said: You can accomplish anything in life so long as you do not care who gets the credit.
4. Even more striking than the ability to share credit was his willingness to shoulder blame for the failure of his subordinates.
5. He possessed an acute awareness of his weaknesses which allowed him to compensate for them. Forming a team with his opposite Stanton.
6. He was able to control his emotions. Ritual of writing hot letters hoping if he put it aside he would cool down psychologically and never need to send it. If he did lose his temper, he followed up with a kind gesture immediately.
7. He understood how to relax, replenish his energies, shake off anxiety. Theatre and humor.
8. At crisis moments, his immediate instinct was to go to the battlefield, walk amidst the soldiers, visit the wounded in the hospitals, bolster morale, assess the situation directly. Equivalent to managing by walking around. Indeed, he never lost sight of the people he represented. His White House was open to ordinary people. Sensitivity to currents of opinion allowed him to become a master of timing.
9. He possessed a quiet but steely resolution to stick to his long term goals even at moments when his own popularity was at stake.
10. He had a remarkable ability to communicate his goals to his countrymen, with stories, everyday metaphors, as well as with a beauty of language.
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