I used to produce fund-raising videos for hospitals. One day I had to interview a doctor I had never met before. As my crew was setting up the lights, several of the nurses on the floor came up to me and said things to the effect of, “Oh, you’re working with Dr. Johnson? Well, word of warning, he’s a very, very impatient man.” Others tried to warn me about what a grouchy man he was. So when the guy finally showed up, I was stressed out and prepared for the worst.
But, much to my surprise, he was a thoroughly pleasant and even charming individual. He was an easy interview, eager to help me out any way he could, and even hung around for few minutes afterwards because he was curious to see how video people do video work.
As I thought about this afterward, I realized that this guy had a dual personality; one, a harsh taskmaster for dealing with underlings that he wanted to make jumpy with fear, and two, a far more affable side for dealing with, well, . . . me.
So the point is this: beware the mythology of the overbearing tyrannical manager. What people tell you about someone is only what they have heard or observed. It may not be the whole story.
Peter Drucker often talks about working for Alfred P. Sloan, but other than that, most business and management blogs I read are rather general, referring to “studies” and other 2nd-hand information. For example, I endlessly run into management blogs talking about how much of an overbearing grouch Steve Jobs was. Okay, maybe he was. On the other hand, maybe he was only an overbearing grouch to certain select people. And maybe he put that on as a show for press people. Unless you worked with him all day long every day, how can you know?
Another example: Arturo Toscanini had a major reputation as an overbearing manager. There are many stories about him throwing tantrums and berating people from the podium. One day I was giving a talk about conductors’ management styles, and someone brought this up. And they asked: “If Toscanini is acknowledged the greatest conductor who ever lived, shouldn’t we all emulate his brow-beating style?”
Well it turns out, despite the common stories and reputation, his brow-beating style was not consistent. When I read up on Toscanini, it turns out many of the people in the New York Philharmonic (and these are first hand stories from players in the orchestra, not a press observer) loved him to death. On tours, he was famous for getting into poker games with the players, and after he died, the orchestra never really felt like any conductor who followed him was good enough for them. And perhaps the first-raters in the group loved it when he browbeat and drove out the second raters, so they could go back to calmly working together at a very high level of mutual trust.
In other words, it is very hard to get the whole truth.
I can tell you for a fact that top conductors are masters (and I do mean masters) at manipulating emotions, and I find it hard to believe that Toscanini was not playing the press people like a violin for the purpose of magnifying his larger-than-life reputation. It’s part of the business. It might very well have been staged. Rehearsals are usually closed, so when they were opened to the press, were his tantrums and outbursts for real, or was it just an act to impress them and give them something sensational and dramatic to write about?
And as far as famous CEO’s talking to you directly, can anyone be truly objective about themselves? How could a supposedly total arrogant heartless tyrant like Steve Jobs give such a famous and stirring commencement address?
So the next time you hear a story about some CEO who managed with an iron fist, just remember, they may have only used it on select people. Unless you personally worked with that person all day every day, and saw how they managed every single person, you can’t know if what you have heard about them is the whole story. And when you become a manager yourself, don’t automatically fall into the mythological trap of thinking you have to emulate these mythical S.O.B’s all day long in order to be effective. It all may have been an act for a journalist that day, or part of a manufactured reputation to keep stockholders cowed. It may not have been how they behaved with their trusted inner circle, and if so, you will never hear about it, partly because it makes for very dull reading.
© Justin Locke
PS From “Band of Brothers:
RONALD SPIERS
You want to know if they’re true or not… the stories about me. Did you ever notice with stories like that, everyone says they heard it from someone who was there. But then when you ask *that* person, they say *they* heard it from someone who was there. It’s nothing new, really. I bet if you went back two thousand years, you’d hear a couple of centurions standing around, yakking about how Tertius lopped off the heads of some Carthaginian prisoners.
CARWOOD LIPTON
Well, maybe they kept talking about it because they never heard Tertius deny it.
RONALD SPIERS
Well, maybe that’s because Tertius knew there was some value to the men thinking he was the meanest, toughest S.O.B in the whole Roman Legion.
