Then I had no right…

Do you have what it takes?
Imagine you work on an important project.
You are part of a team. And all of you are working toward the same goals.
This is a smart group of people and great results are expected.

Suddenly the work on the project comes to a halt.
No one seems to agree on anything. There are heated arguments.
Distrust, hate, name calling. And more of the same.

Do you have what it takes?
Can you convince these smart people to work together?
Can you make them understand how important this project is? And that it needs ALL of them?
Can you?

It is not easy to bring people together and forge alliances.
It takes humility. It takes confidence. It takes strong leadership skills.
We all know of a great example. We’ve read about him in the history books.

Humble beginnings
He was born in February, 1809.
His family lived in a tiny log cabin. The floor was dirt.
He grew up in poverty.
Loss and sorrow marked his early years. He was only nine when his mom died.

Self-made man
With very little formal education he would read anything he could get his hands on.
He taught himself law. And built up a successful law practice.
This smart, self-educated man was Abraham Lincoln, this country’s 16^th President.

Enormous crisis
As President, he surrounded himself with strong men.
Very conservative. Moderate. Radicals.
It didn’t matter to him what their political views were.
What mattered the most to him was to keep them working together.
Because that was the only way to save the Union.

At the time the country was going through an enormous crisis (over slavery).
With grit and determination, and putting his own feelings aside, Lincoln found the most capable men for the job.
This team of former political opponents worked together to unite a deeply divided country.
(In the process, Lincoln gained their admiration and respect.)

Asked why he’d chosen these people, Lincoln said:

“We needed the strongest men….
I had looked the party over and concluded that
these were the very strongest men.
Then I had no right to deprive the country of their services.”

The essence of leadership
You are a leader when you can rise above your own petty grievances.
You are a leader when you can bring people together from all walks of life.
You are a leader when you can get people to collaborate and work toward shared goals — in spite of their differences.
That is the essence of leadership.

Mariana Fieraru

Mariana Fieraru, an Eastern European transplant, fell in love with her new home shortly after landing in New York. She "discovered" pizza! Years later she still loves pizza. And so do her two feathered-kids, Sunny and Flipper

Mariana worked on both, the east and the west coast.
Big or small, each project she worked on helped define the importance of gaining and sustaining a competitive edge in an increasingly complex business environment.

Business know-how, love of teaching and writing – all combined in 2006 to form OBI.
Its mission: to make learning fun! And easy.

Through its training, consulting, and publications OBI builds bridges of knowledge to take you from where you are to
where you want to go. Using a mix of serious, informal, analytical, and optimistic approach, OBI truly makes learning fun.

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