Be a Superboss

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Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green. Carol Carmichael. Today I'm talking with Sidney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth professor of Management in Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and the author of the new book How Exceptional Leaders Manage the Flow of Talent. He's also written extensively about the topic of super bosses for HBR and hbr.org Sid, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Great talking to you, Sarah.

So I thought we would just start by asking you what makes a super boss different from just a really good boss?

You know, super bosses are, are different than good bosses in a couple of different ways. Number one, they do some of what good bosses do, but they do more of it. So for example, a good boss is supposed to be a good mentor. Super bosses are like mentors on, on steroids. They're always interacting, they're involved with almost an apprenticeship type of approach. They're looking after people not just for their day to day work, but their career track and are willing to entertain all kinds of ideas to help them get there. And then the second difference is that super bosses do some things that even good bosses don't do. And here I'm thinking of in particular this idea of how super bosses are willing to even let go good talent. And it's a radical kind of crazy idea except that it works and it works big because very few bosses will. Good bosses will say, you know, I want to lose some of my best talent. And I'm not saying even super bosses want to lose their best talent, but they're open to the idea of helping other people fulfill their career potential, even if it requires them to move out of their group, out of their team, and sometimes out of their own company. And that's, that's a really big difference.

The book is sort of chock full of all these interesting examples, some of which, you know, you've written about for hbr.org as well. From Jon Stewart and Lorne Michaels in comedy to Bill Walsh in football, to Alice Waters in the restaurant business. I mean, let's just really dig into an example so we can get concrete on sort of what these people are doing.

Yeah, sure. Let's look at Lorne Michaels from Saturday Night Live, longtime producer of that show. And so what makes him a superboss? A superboss is someone, a leader who helps other People get better, who helps other people accomplish more than they ever thought possible, and in fact, as a result allows them or enables them to accelerate their careers. It's pretty clear in the case of Lorne Michaels that that's been the case. Every, virtually every big name in comedy has at some point worked, worked in snl, whether they're writers or producers or performers, from Jimmy Fallon to Tina Fey to going back Chris Rock and others. And so he's got that track record. What does he do? Well, he's put together a show that has a really interesting dimension to it that people don't often realize that is directly applicable to everyday business. And that is that he enforces a system where you've got to be very, very collaborative with your colleagues to be successful. And at the same time, you also have to be competitive. Both are required. And usually you think about a team and you say, well, they're a bit more competitive. They're, they're a bit more of a kind of team, like collaborative group. Well, in the case of snl, both have to happen at the same time. And that, that occurs predominantly through the way the show actually works. To get on the show, you got to produce a skit. It's not about stand up comedy. And that requires you to put together a little troupe, a little group with a writer or two, and multiple performers. Well, that's collaboration in action. But then as you get closer to the Saturday night actual live show, what started as two and a half hours or more of material came, gets winnowed down to an hour and a half of material. And that, of course, is the definition of competition when you have scarce resources and you have to compete with each other to get a slot, to get a piece of that action. And so Lorne Michaels has accomplished that. I think that's really helped tremendously in the success of the people that work for him and is a really good example of something you can apply in any company.

So you've mentioned this idea of an apprenticeship a little bit, and I want to go back to that because that's something that I don't think we hear as much about now as we do sort of mentoring or sponsoring or these other sort of types of things. Tell me a little bit about how the super boss apprentice relationship really works and what it really looks like.

Yeah, so as you know, it's a throwback to how the entire world worked for centuries and we, we've lost it or it's gone away with the exception of perhaps some professional services or maybe some of the Arts. Now, how does it actually work in practice? It means that super bosses are going to closely work with their team members on occasion. It's not like you could work non stop together because there's just not enough time to do that. But they will roll up their sleeves and work on a project with their, with their people and work very, very closely together. In fact, I often say, you know, they get close to that micromanagement line that you never want to go over where they get close to it, but they do something else that I think is really critical and that is that they delegate and delegate really, really big. And here again you have one of these paradoxes that sometimes we oversimplify our world and we miss some really important ideas. You know, many people think either delegate or you're micromanager. In fact, if you just for a second split those two up and say, well, you could be a big delegator or a little delegator, you could be a big micromanager or a little micromanager. All of a sudden you see that you could be in fact a big delegator and a very little micromanager. And that combination, which is part of what an apprenticeship does, give people an opportunity to learn, make some mistakes, but be there to step in and work closely together, I think is a critical component. The apprenticeship idea requires one other thing, and this is really important. It's customizing how you interact with your team members. You think about the world of, you know, marketing and sales. Look at the degree to which we've advanced. You know, when you're on Google, looking around for something, there's an ad that comes up. That ad is an ad just for you. Because the world of marketing and sales knows what you're interested in. It's kind of amazing. Compare that now to how much individual bosses know about the people within their teams. Do they really know what makes them tick? Do they really know how to develop them, how to motivate them? Some do, but many, I think, is more of a one size fits all. And part of the problem is many people talk about leadership styles. This is my leadership style, very directive. I'm more of a relationship person. That might be the case, but that's not a very customizable approach to managing people. No matter what your style is, I think you want to be able to adapt that style to the individual people in your team so that you can help them more but get more out of them. And an apprenticeship because of the close connection allows you to do that.

Going a little further on this idea on style in the book, you do talk about some different types of styles. Nurturers, iconoclasts, glorious bastards. How does that kind of individual style play into this?

Yeah. So I was struck at how different the core motivations were for why people became superbosses. They weren't all the same, it turns out, what they do, despite their differences, very, very similar, along the lines of what we've been talking about. But what's behind it turns out to be actually different. And so the nurturers are the types of people we often think about. You know, Norman Brinker, who's famous from Chili's and Steak and Ale and many other casual restaurant chains, that he has mentored so many of the leaders of that industry today to iconoclasts that are a bit more of the creative types. I actually talk about Miles Davis, Alice Waters, the famous chef and restaurateur from Chez Panisse in Berkeley who really resurrected the farm to table organic food movement in America. Very, very influential. Much more of an iconoclast in the sense that they attract talent. People want to be part of their circles and it's just by the everyday interaction as the, as part of the creation of what they're trying to accomplish that they help other people get better. It's not that they sit back and think about what's my strategy to help other people. It just happens very, very organically. Then the third type that is maybe the most interesting is the glorious bastards type. And they are, they are tough. There's no way around it. They're not for everybody. They will push you, they will be difficult, but if you can handle it, the opportunities you'll end up with in your career are gigantic. And in that category, you have people like Larry Ellison, the legendary founder and CEO of Oracle, with a long time reputation of being a very tough character, but someone who has helped produce some of the absolute best talent in Silicon Valley over a matter of decades.

Well, and it's interesting because in all of this I'm sort of hearing you go back and forth between, well, they nurture people, but they have really high expectations and they hire great, great people, but they also adapt organizations and roles to suit their people. And it sounds like it's really almost just like walking this tightrope between different extremes.

Yeah, it's a really good, it's a really good observation, Sarah. They are really adaptable and, you know, even comes out in how they think about their vision and their purpose in life, if you will. But what they're trying to accomplish, they almost without exception, have an uncompromising vision. Alice Waters going to create a restaurant that sources local food. It's going to be organic, it's going to be farm to table. That's she's not going to do anything else other than that Ralph Lauren is going to create a lifestyle of luxury and is going to live that life and create that life for millions of millions of customers. George Lucas is going to create, is going to tell stories through digital means and create and recreate the storytelling genre in the science fiction world. And these things are not going to change. That's who they are. But given that they are completely open to anyone and anything that could help them get there, no matter how radical or different it is, they really unleash creativity. So it's yet another example of what you're talking about where they have this kind of strict, tough side to them and it's very real. But at the same time, because they want that to happen, they have this open mindedness around different ideas, around creativity. And I'll say one more thing about that. You have to be, if you think about this, you have to be pretty confident to pull that off. Because you know, if you're really insecure as a manager, you're not going to bring on the absolute best people around you. You're not going to be willing to bring in unconventional talent, which is what the super bosses do. So you do need a degree of confidence and a degree of certainty about what it is you want to accomplish in your, in your job or on the job or in your career even. And if you have that, it gives you this bedrock that allows you then to be actually very, very generous in many ways in terms of helping other people get better.

Well, so tell me how this would play out if direct reporter, employee of a super boss made a mistake. Because I could sort of see it going one way where it's like, well, the person's a little bit rigid and has very high standards. And I could sort of see it going another way where they're also flexible and interested in developing people. So if someone makes a mistake, what does a superboss do?

Well, super bosses are not fond of mistakes that happen very often, that's for sure. But I will say I've seen in many, many examples in many of my interviews with proteges and superbosses, a remarkable sense that you know, as long as you're trying for something important, something big, and you made a mistake, well, that we can deal with if you're just kind of going through the motions, if you're just doing. If your aspirations are low and you mess that up, well, that's unacceptable. I think about, you know, Jay Shiat, another, another one of the super bosses, founder of the Shiat Day advertising agency and a legendary player in the advertising field who's really sponsored so many great talents in that, in that industry. And he was, he was such a risk taker. He would actually reward some of his, some of his advertising agency staff if they lost the contract as long as they came up with something so compelling, so exciting that it fulfilled the mission and the creativity really dogma that existed in his mind and that organization. And so he actually rewarded, didn't just say it's okay, you learn, he rewarded that type of failure. But you know, I won't say that every super boss is going to be, you know, casual about these things. So as you say, it could go both ways. I would say overall there's a sense that if you're not taking some risks, then we're doing the wrong thing and sometimes it doesn't always work out, but you better fix that quickly and you gotta make sure you're not gonna continue to make that type of mistake.

So I wanna pivot now slightly, a little bit and talk a little bit about hiring and sort of that end because it does seem like one of the things that all these different bosses have in common is a really uncanny ability to spot talent. Like to go back to Lorne Michaels. I mean, every memoir I've ever read from an SNL person will say I was unbearably nervous and I'm sure I bombed the audition. And yet somehow he still saw something in me and hired me. So how do these super bosses go about finding the people to be on their teams?

This is another place where they are so innovative and break the rules of traditional HR practice. So for example, they will hire someone sometimes on the spot even without a job description if they think they found the right person. There are all these stories about, you know, Ralph Lauren hiring, hiring a woman that he met at a burger restaurant with his family because she was dressed in such a unique, interesting way that he was captivated by how she had that creativity. He offers her a job on the spot. Bill Walsh, the San Francisco 49er head coach, goes out to scout a highly touted quarterback who's throwing the ball to the third string receiver that's his roommate. Well, Bill Walsh somehow sees the receiver and sees something in that person and ends up drafting him. That, that's Dwight Clark, whose famous football fans will know for the catch that helped win a Super Bowl a couple of decades ago. So they're always on the lookout for spotting talent. So, yes, they have a certain skill, I'm going to say that. But how many of us are always looking for talent wherever we go, have our antennas up? I think many people in business compartmentalize that and say, okay, the recruiting team or the talent team or the HR team, where they're going to, you know, put out a job description and collect some resumes and go through, and then they'll send me some of the best ones and we'll go through that and interview them. I'm not saying you can't do that or shouldn't do that. When you're talking about very large numbers in some big organizations, of course you're going to do some of that. But super bosses add something else, which is the more almost analog method, which is always being on the lookout for talent. The other thing that I think is interesting is what they look for. There's a lot of things that you need to be successful in a career, and every job is different in terms of kind of the raw skill set that you need. But the types of things that super bosses look for that are generalizable across different types of industries are really three things. One is tremendous intelligence. And by the way, this is not just iq, although it often is depending on the industry. It could be emotional intelligence. It could be your ability to manage relationships. It could be a lot of different things. Secondly is creativity. In line with some of what we've already talked about, they're looking for people that have that. That ability to think on their feet and think differently. And by the way, there are plenty of assessments around, so you can apply more traditional tools to that to try to assess potential candidates on creativity, but you better know that you got to look for that. And then third is what I call the extreme flexibility. They often. Super bosses often move people around to different jobs to develop them and to broaden their way of thinking and looking at the world so they can actually contribute more, not less. And that requires a degree of flexibility. And they're looking for that. They want that, they enjoy that. And so they're looking for these types of things. Intelligence, creativity, flexibility, time and time again, all kinds of different super bosses in different industries. So that's kind of interesting.

So I feel like having asked you about now about hiring, I can't let you go without asking you sort of the flip side of that, which is about inherited talent, because I know most managers actually aren't making bespoke teams, you know, out of people they've hired. A lot of managers are dealing with people that they've inherited. And some of those people could be great. Others maybe not so much. Can you be a super boss with a team of people that you've just inherited?

Well, yeah, you absolutely can. I like the idea of being able to hire your own people. I got that. But. Okay, we're taking that off the table. Well, you know, 80% of what we looked at and what's in the book, the super bosses book, is about what you do with people once they're. Once they're in your team. And that means. And that's around motivation. We've talked a little bit about apprenticeship. It's certainly around coaching. Let's talk about motivation. As one specific example. It's not unusual in modern business, modern any organizations to be working and working really, really hard. We're always on. We're in a 24.7world. And so that's not a shock. Super bosses live that world as well as most others, and they raise the bar. They have very high expectations. They expect you to be better and better each time and not just plateau at a particular. At a particular place. But then they add something that I find missing among most bosses and including many good bosses, and that is that they spend a lot. They spend a lot of time truly inspiring people in their teams to feel like they are the ones that could accomplish all these challenging, exciting goals. And they inspire them through communication, through telling them how great they are, through announcing to the rest of the world how strong their team is, through instilling confidence in them. And you got to be authentic with this. Right? You can't just walk the talk on a thing like that. You got to truly believe it. And. And Superbosses really do really do believe it. And so they. They fire up their troops. They energize their people in a way that. That ends up making it more exciting for people on the team. But maybe more to our point here, helping them accomplish more, which helps you become more successful. So, in fact, even with inherited teams, there are. There's just a ton of things that super bosses can do well.

Sid, thank you so much. I feel like even if some of us won't ever get to the level of super boss, you've given us a lot of good advice we can use to be a better boss.

Thanks, Sarah.

That was Sidney Finkelstein. His book is Superbosses. For more go to hbr.org.