The Toxic Mythmaking of the Mercurial Leader
I am so sick of hearing about Elon Musk. He is the epitome of entrepreneurship porn, of the myth of entrepreneurial genius who is a little unstable, unpredictable, and chaotic. This myth has persisted far too long and in truth, it lets a lot of people get away with a lot of bad behavior.
Andy Dunn built menswear brand Bonobos into a 310 million dollar company and sold it to Walmart in 2017. Along the way, he kept his Bipolar I disorder a secret. He was hospitalized at Bellevue in New York City and charged with a felony, and the next day showed up to an all company meeting to plan strategy. This is a privilege afforded to men who build large businesses.
Our conversation is raw and amazing.
Along the way, Andy was by his own account maddening and inspiring to those he hired. The cycling of hypomania-- and full blown mania-- with major depression took a huge toll on Andy, but it also took a toll on his staff. He used anger to get his way and didn’t always listen to others. Now, Andy reflects on his inconsistent leadership and says an unexpected gift when he sold Bonobos was that “I got to become an employee....I got to work for two bosses, Marc Lore (who was CEO of Walmart.com), and (Walmart CEO) Doug McMillon. They don't talk that much in meetings. They ask a lot of questions. They listen well, and they create an environment where everyone feels safe and comfortable sharing dissenting ideas.” And Andy had an aha moment, that his lifelong “need to be right'' was a huge roadblock. He admired Lore and McMillon. Andy says:
“I had to make some massive changes in how I showed up first. I needed to shut up second. I needed to think about leadership as asking questions. Third, I needed to identify the quiet people at the table and ask them what they thought to create a more inclusive conversation. And then I needed to recognize anger when I felt it recognize feelings of frustration or irritability, but treat them as data to be inquired upon rather than as something to act upon and therefore present a much steadier hand to the enterprise. And I think sometimes vision visionary leaders are allowed to, or expected to be more mercurial.
I was no longer gonna be able to make the excuse of, Hey, well, if you want the good that I bring, then you've gotta deal with the bad, right. No, I can improve on the bad and still offer the good.”
When I interviewed Google and Microsoft’s Danny Bernstein, he shared a similar viewpoint that’s really stuck with me. Danny admitted that his anxiety and drive had led him to sometimes be a “terror” to work with. Now, Danny told me, “The leaders that I've come to really admire are remarkably consistent in how they show up, and I was not. I was a little too unpredictable, a little too inconsistent. The modern manager has to be remarkably consistent and remarkably predictable. And that may be even more valuable than the image that maybe we previously had of managers as sort of like this creative type who could be a little enigmatic, who could be a little unpredictable, but their brilliance sort of papered over that. I operated with a bit of that as a core value for a long time, and I've really come full circle to realize that that was misguided. I'm channeling my anxious energy towards having consistent, supportive interactions with my team.”
I asked Danny his toolkit for keeping up this practice, for growing the empathy, for being consistent. He said:
“One is I'm trying to very consciously empower the leaders in my team to step up and to play bigger leadership roles. I'm trying to consciously help them operate out of my shadow. I'm trying to lead more from the back rather than the front. I check in with these leaders on a near daily basis and say, "How is this going? Did it happen too quickly? Is there more I can do to support you?"
The second is that I'm really trying to consciously open up how I would approach things. [and treat] things that might have been an advantage for me in the corporate environment not as some sort of trade secret, but as a best practice. So I'm trying to say, "Hey, here's how I would have approached it, or here's where you can kind of go in with this meeting," and just try to have no concept of Danny's secret sauce. I don't value that at all. I might have valued that a little bit before. But I'm really trying to open that up more.
The third thing for Danny is to be more open and share his learning and evolution as a leader. That’s why he (bravely) joined my podcast! Danny says, “My hope also is that if it does reach some of the people I work with and they listen to this, they're like, "Yeah, you know what? I have observed this, and I can be involved in Danny's journey. I can involve him in mine." I think that would be really exciting.”
Are you showing up consistently for your teams?