Talent and leadership are naturally complementary; they should go hand-in-hand. Great leadership can be built upon great talent, but only if it works to develop it; to set it free. Great talent relies upon strong leadership to recognize it, nurture it, and imprint values and vision. But, not all leadership is talent-enlarging; some, unfortunately, is talent-diminishing.
Miles Davis, Sid Caesar, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Thomas Edison and John Bolton: what could this group possibly have in common? Well, to start off with, they were all extremely successful in their fields; they were all, also, obsessed by a dramatic vision of what could be achieved; and they were all extremely tough, demanding bosses. But, here, the similarities end, and the “nuts” – Caesar, Robbins, Bernstein, Edison and Davis – separate from the Boltons, on the basis of how they exercised the role of leader; the “nuts & bolts” of playing the leadership role, so to speak.
What Miles Davis, Sid Caesar, Jerry Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, and Thomas Edison had in common was that they trusted the talent of others to help their ideas succeed. They recognized, as leaders, that achieving any revolutionary goal (and they were all revolutionaries in their craft), requires the complete commitment of a team, because no matter how smart they were, they could not do it all alone. They were, in a sense, crazy about what they did, and how they did it, hence the use of the affectionate appellation “nuts,” but they needed others to help them achieve their goals. They also realized that it was how they interacted with those others that ultimately would determine what would be achieved, and it is this recognition that distinguishes the nuts from the Boltons.
Thomas Edison was a serial seeker of big ideas. His boundless energy allowed him to follow an relentless work schedule, hosting midnight dinners while his team worked through the night. He expected similar commitments from his “Muckers,” who were paid but modest wages but in return were furnished with a distinctive employment brand -- “Edison Inside!” -- that propelled many of them into future careers of considerable innovative success. Similarly, Miles Davis was well-known for hiring talented musicians as a bet on what they had never done before, rather than the certainty of what they had. Far from being intimidated by the talent of others, he was energized by their going into the unknown together. The result, according to Herbie Hancock, was that "Miles turned musicians into magicians." Both Edison and Davis recognized talent before others did, expected talented individuals to fulfill their promise, and then gave them the support and authorization to achieve great things.
There may not have been a tougher boss, however, than ballet choreographer Jerome Robbins, who changed the face of Broadway with West Side Story. The legend is that those who worked for him lost their fear of hell because of their work experience with Jerry. Yet, everything he did was designed to get the most out of the talent with which he was entrusted. Jack Klugman said: “if he told me to jump out of a window, I’d do it. And, it’d be good.” Like Edison and Davis, Robbins understood that big change is all about big ideas, and that big ideas are all about big talent. They realized that in the complex world of ideas that marks today's world, America’s talent is its best asset. They also realized that leading talent is all about helping it develop, and then letting go.
The Boltons, on the other hand, regard the talent and careers of others as expendable, something to be controlled and be spent sparingly in selfish support of their own upward advancement. John Bolton, America’s newly appointed National Security Advisor, has a long history of such abuse. He once arranged the dismissal of the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for wanting to inspect Iraq for the “weapons of mass destruction” that formed the rationale for invasion but were never to be found.
There is a term, “kiss-up, kick-down,” which is applied to such people when they deal with their own staff without regard to the consequences which might befall the careers of those who work for them. During a Congressional hearing, Carl W. Ford, Jr., former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, in the George W. Bush administration, from 2001 until 2003, referred to John Bolton as a "serial abuser,” observing "I've never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton ... I don't have a second, third or fourth in terms of the way that he abuses his power and authority with little people" ….” In fact, there are numerous instances of Bolton reacting to the ideas, opinions and suggestions of those who worked for him with fusillades of threats, diminishing comments and at least once with physical objects. To be sure, the nuts also threw things around, but for different reasons and with different results. Comic genius Sid Caesar reputedly held, not threw, Mel Brooks out of a 20rd floor window, but despite this he was loved as a leader to the extent that Brooks summed-up Casear’s influence on his career by admitting “No Sid Caesar, no Mel Brooks.”
In our study of the workings of great teams that changed the world, Andy Boynton and I studied a number of successful leaders, including Davis, Robbins & Bernstein, Caesar, Edison, Roald Amundsen [first to the South Pole], Groves & Oppenheimer [Manhattan Project], and the like. Not all of them were nice people, but they all did amazing things, in unconventional ways, and they each changed our world for the better. In every instance, it was how they built their teams, and how they treated the individuals who were a part of those teams, their tolerance for dissent and willingness to listen, that made the difference.
They were not easy; they pushed and stretched and demanded far more than most people were prepared to give, but they did it a way that enlarged the talent of their people rather than diminished it. They were not only changing their field, they were also preparing the next generation leadership for that field. The result was that they each had an edge over their competition for great ideas, and they each took full-advantage of the diversity within their teams to unleash distinctly new ways of thinking about the world to make a difference. Were they tough? Absolutely! Abrasive and uncompromising in the pursuit of excellence? Occasionally. But, abusive? Never! The “nuts” all realized that talented individuals can give more if they are stretched, recognized, given opportunities to shine, and appreciated for their contributions. In return, they received the lifelong appreciation and admiration of their successors. When Herbie Hancock was asked about Miles Davis' legacy, his answer was telling: "The people—the people that worked with him. His influence on those people is his legacy, and I’m one of those people."
The Boltons, on the other hand, are apparently indifferent to the talent entrusted to them and care little if those people ever reach the promise that they possess. There are few, if any, reflections on their leadership legacies, other than what appears in Congressional hearings regarding inappropriate behaviors. This is not about the politics, it is bigger; it is about how we see our leaders and their effects on the rest of us, whether they make us better by the way they conduct their role; how they go about their job.
Leadership is as much about what happens to the followers as to the leaders. In the long-run, how you achieve your goals may be more important than what you achieve. The best leadership advice is, when in doubt, trust the nuts, not the Boltons.
