The Art of Authenticity

6Balanced Processing and Collaborative Decision Making

We are all trapped in our own way of thinking, trapped in our own way of relating to people. We get so used to seeing the world our way that we come to think that the world is the way we see it.

—Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman¹

Imagine President Obama and former Speaker of the House John Boehner huddled closely doing a joint news conference to bring the nation up to speed on a decision they had just made regarding how to respond to yet another ISIS video threat. Or better yet, former Secretary of State Clinton coleading a joint task force on immigration with former Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Something perhaps more shocking than those visuals actually happened in 1861 when the most extraordinary balanced processor in American history invited Salmon P. Chase to become Secretary of the Treasury, William H. Seward to become secretary of state, and Edward Bates to become attorney general of the United States of America. Like Rick Perry, Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and Speaker Boehner, all three of them were the rivals of this extraordinary balanced processor. This balanced processor saw them as more than rivals. He saw them as bringing complementary, different, and important skills and points of view to the table. He also saw their talents as equal to and perhaps greater than his own talents. Abraham Lincoln was the ...