Leadership - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #152 ❤️
Our bonus item last week put the spotlight on the confessions of Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran on Diary Of A CEO, which did NOT go down well.
It got us thinking, can you be a huge success and a terrible boss? Are certain big names known for their particular ways of working (think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sheryl Sandberg and of course the infamous Musky Musk) doing something right, or everything wrong?
Let’s get into it.
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#1 Barbara Corcoran’s Bad Buzz(Feed)
Barbara Corcoran, basically the US Shark Tank’s answer to Dragons Den’s Deborah Meaden, came under fire last week after a video of her on the podcast “Diary of a CEO” went viral on TikTok in which she gleefully described her favourite thing to do as a boss – firing people on Fridays. After sowing the seed in their minds earlier in the week of course, so they have a few days to stew on it.
She stated that the joy came from getting rid of a negative person as they ruin the overall team that they’re in. While ensuring that the right people are present in a team and the wrong people are not is a big part of leadership, should you really take so much joy in kicking someone to the curb?
Another controversial part of her firing strategy is her advice to never tell them why, advising bosses to simply say they just “don’t fit the company”. Constructive criticism and personal development must not be part of her leadership style.
Another interview moment went viral in which she recalls thinking her Shark Tank costar was the bell boy in the hotel they were staying in, so overall she seems like a great person.
#2 - Bill Gates Flame Mails
When you think of Bill Gates, or at least when we think of Bill Gates, we picture a nice guy. He gives a lot of money to charity, he always seems to be wearing knitwear, how fiery can the guy be?
Well, pretty fiery, according to his employees, as they coined the term “flame mails” for the email tirades he would send out, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Gates is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time, we’ve probably all used something he created in the last hour, so he clearly had the ability to attract, inspire and keep exceptionally talented employees – he didn’t do it all on his own, but he was by no means the perfect boss.
He lacked patience and was well known for his “tantrums”. Described as “rude, sarcastic… even insulting”, once he picked out a flaw he would dress down the offending employee in front of colleagues, and apparently they were “always relieved” when he was out of town.
Does that sound like a good boss to you? Us neither, but apparently employees appreciated one thing about his behaviour – they always knew where they stood.
One of his staff members posited that often people don’t like their jobs because they don’t get any feedback, which was never they case with Bill Gates – you always knew exactly what he thought of your work.
Another view could be that the reason he managed to get such good results out of his staff was the overall “pioneering spirit” of Microsoft and a shared goal that they knew was exceptional. In short, maybe it was the work, rather than the leadership, which attracted so many talented and ambitious young people to work under Gates?
#3 Steve Jobs & The Reality Distortion Field
Following on from Bill Gates, another big name, Steve Jobs. Bill Gates himself admitted being jealous of Jobs prowess as a leader, describing him as “a wizard at over-motivating people” and mesmerizing them.
So how did he do it? Some experts have described it as being because of his unique “guru” like personality, while another description of his leadership style is “management by meaning”. With Apple, he gave people a mission with visionary projects and products that brought design to tech.
His ability to “bend reality” was also a big part of his leadership, with his infamous ability to push people to do the “impossible” being dubbed his Reality Distortion Field, after an episode of Star Trek.
This has two sides, with some people seeing it as bullying, lying or gaslighting, and others seeing it as something that led them to perform extraordinary feats. To be honest, none of those things are mutually exclusive, certainly when it comes to the type of personality that he ws.
Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that people simply did “impossible” things because Jobs didn’t give them the option not to, which is a pretty intense leadership approach. He got things done, but at what cost?
#4 - Sheryl Sandberg – Leaning In Which Direction?
Sheryl Sandberg became a household name when she wrote the “corporate feminist manifesto” ‘Lean In’, and while technically Marl Zuckerberg was her boss, she arguably overshadowed him as a leadership figure.
She is defined as following the “Transformational Leadership” style – which is where a leader works with teams “beyond their immediate self-interests to identify needed change” by creating a shared vision.
However, while her work to pioneer female leadership by asking women in the workplace to “lean in” was a huge inspiration to many, hanging her hat on diversity became a stumbling block when she was accused of not actually being a true pioneer of diversity as a whole. Her book was judged as only being for a certain type of woman (rich, white, etc.) and her time as Facebook COO saw accusations that she put profits over the cause of women.
She seems to have a pretty lofty view of her own leadership, tweeting that her view of leadership is being able to “make the world a better place”. Pretty humble, just doing her bit for world peace and all that.
A more down to earth description of her leadership however comes from her mentor Larry Summers, who told her that he thought her future was in “civilizing geeks”, in that her talents could be put to use as a tech leader as she was smart enough to be respected by computer genius types who needed management to be able to bring the tech world into the business world. We like that description a lot better.
#5 - Elon Musk – My Way Or The Highway
While he is officially also described as a “Transformational Leader”, from the outside looking in, Elon Musk seems to run on chaos.
His leadership tactics have been described as “oppressive”, referring in particular to his ultimatum to Twitter employees in November of last year, asking whether they wanted to jump ship or stay on and work “long hours at high intensity”.
Musk’s leadership seems to assume that everyone works the same way he does, and should have the same drive and obsession with work as him. The same can perhaps be said for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, however this tactic works better with a shared vision and goal, for example the pioneering work done by Apple and Microsoft respectively at the height of their prowess.
While that may work for disciples who have chosen to follow him at SpaceX or Tesla, imposing passion on employees after a takeover doesn’t quite work the same way.
Following a radical change in leadership and direction, a new boss needs to win hearts and minds rather than coming in hot with “it’s my way or the highway”, and what’s been going on at Twitter since seems to drive that lesson home.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Being Your Own Boss
Blast from the past brand name Tupperware may be coming to the end of an era, as they risk going bust if some outside investment doesn’t come to save them.
While today Tupperware has become a noun rather than a brand name for most of us, the word used to be synonymous with Tupperware parties, where “housewives” were given a new lease of life, becoming their own boss and becoming CEO, sales exec and front of house for their own business.
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