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Anger is a natural human emotion. There's a time and a place for it. If you're in the NFL, on the field. If you're in the NFL of car making, on the factory flo

by breck 5y ago

Anger is a natural human emotion. There's a time and a place for it. If you're in the NFL, on the field. If you're in the NFL of car making, on the factory floor. Tom Brady isn't so polite for 60 minutes on Sundays. Never once in my life have I met a world class performer who doesn't have some "field" where anger and profanity are permitted. If you want to be the best you can be I don't see how you can hit that without utilizing one of your core emotions.

peakaboo 5y ago
Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected. It's natural, but it's absolutely not a good leadership quality to be angry.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  > Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected Why does ego play a role? Couldn't one be mad because of what they believe is wrong is being done? It's not right to be angry at someone that didn't know any better but there are individuals that I've worked with that aren't aligned with the company well, are lazy and do selfish things. Why am I not allowed to be angry at a person like that?
  - peakaboo 5y ago
    You are allowed but there is a reason old people are not very angry anymore. They have learned to be humble though life, realizing people tend to do their best. If someone is not performing at work, it's usually because of motivation, and that's the job of a good manager to create. But I think the American culture is quite different from what I'm used to so maybe I sound weird in this context. :)
  - lazide 5y ago
    Anger generally is anchored to something that is being threatened - it is a defense mechanism. Sometimes, like if you’re angry at an opposing tribesman for attacking your village, it can be helpful. Other times, it can lead to acting out in ways that hurt you (like being so angry you don’t pay attention to your surroundings and get ambushed while trying to counter attack said enemy). There are many possible scenarios - anger at the threat to his stock valuations, or anger at the threat to his public image, or anger at the threat to the illusion he personally held that everything was going ok, or anger and frustration at his inability to get control of the situation in a productive way, which is a threat to many of these things. Most abuse is when a person is unable to properly manage and avoid painful emotions (such as anger), and projects fault and bad intent onto others - to scapegoat for instance as a maladaptive behavior they haven’t learned an alternative to, among other reasons. What is being described in the article is classic abusive behavior, no matter the venue. It is not ok, in any environment, and it causes destruction and missed opportunities anywhere it is deployed. The reason I think you don’t see that in his public persona because he knows it isn’t ok - but can’t control it sometimes, or even worse, thinks it’s a good thing when he can do it in ‘private’. He ‘knows how to treat his woman so he gets dinner on time’, as it were, and she’d better put her makeup on better so he doesn’t look bad in front of his friends I expect there are many internal witch hunts ongoing for leakers after this, and have been for other leaks too. Since after all, in his eyes it is not the behavior that is wrong, it’s being embarrassed in public that is.
ziziyO 5y ago
No. Those are unhealthy behaviors that are dehumanizing to the recipient. You don’t treat your employees like this.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
This is something I think about every now and then. The problem is that the Jobs/Gates/Musks are the shining exceptions. Survivorship bias basically. For every one of them, there's probably 100 other people in leadership positions that have similarly nasty temperaments, but nowhere near as successful as they are.
- sidibe 5y ago
  There are also plenty of people with relatively calm demeanors that achieved similar success leading companies. Google's founders, Buffett, etc.
- joshuahedlund 5y ago
  I'm halfway through Bad Blood (after having already read Musk's and Jobs's iconic biographies) and have been thinking about such comparisons. Were there specific differences that made Musk and Jobs successful compared to Holmes in spite of their flaws, or is it just random dice outcomes that explain why the former managed to turn the impossible into possible and the latter didn't?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jetrel 5y ago
    The difference was mostly a choice, and it's arguably the main "smart" thing Musk was able to do, whereas Holmes dropped the ball on. Musk's first breakout gig, Paypal, was honestly just dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time - online credit card payments were an inevitability, and it was just arbitrage on getting there before the banks got their feet wet. That is - at the time, "everyone" broadly agreed it was going to happen, even banks, but some groups were institutionally slower about setting it up. He happened to be lucky by getting in on a startup right then, when low-hanging fruit like that was waiting to be plucked. The left him wealthy enough to fund something else as a sort of Angel Investor, and it was at this point that "his choice of what to fund" was a significant act of cleverness. He looked at the world and asked "what are some things that are technically totally viable, but have been completely stagnant because of political problems in getting funding to try them, rather than any technical problems with them actually working? He spent a few years(!) crunching the numbers on them, and doing some research, and concluded that two things PROBABLY fit that bill: electric cars, and reusable rockets. What he was ideally looking for is something where an industry had a blind spot - where the industry had "tried it, failed, and decided it's a dead idea nobody should bother trying again". But where they'd done this for a really bad reason. ---- These were two things that just needed some billionaire to finally take them seriously - they weren't something some "rogue scientist" could just do in their garage; you genuinely needed major capital investment for said rogue scientists to be able to build test versions and refine their ideas into something that worked. Electric cars were wide open because all the basic tech was there, but the existing car companies weren't even interested in trying due to cultural reasons. The biggest thing is most of the critical advances in batteries had already been driven by hundreds of billions of R&D dollars in the consumer electronics and computer industry - they'd been desperately pushing battery tech forward, and it'd become orders of magnitude better than it was when the auto industry made a consensus decision that electric cars weren't viable (back in the 80s). In the 80s they had a range of maybe 15 miles, and struggled to get up hills. Auto execs just didn't understand HOW much better batteries had gotten in a mere 10 years (in fact they probably assumed batteries weren't even really improving, and had reached their physical/scientific limits). Reusable rockets had been scrapped because of the space shuttle's failure; it'd been intended to be completely reusable, and they couldn't pull it off because ... reasons. The consensus was that those "devil in the details" issues would always come up. On closer investigation, though - most of what went wrong is the same procurement malpractice we're currently having with stuff like the F-35 fighter jets, and not something that had any real bearing on the actual engineered work itself. Similar thing with Jobs - computer GUIs existed, but the only companies that had developed them had been sitting on them and refusing to deploy them as a mass-market product. ---- The key difference with Holmes is the fundamental tech keystone (doing medical tests via micro-samples of blood) just wasn't viable. Some biotech researchers tried to sound the alarm about that, but once they were too far into the process of running the company, everyone had already laid down their financial bets and was afraid to pull out. What happened to them is very similar to what would have happened to SpaceX if it turned out that they were wrong about reusable rockets (for example, if SpaceX had tried to be a company in 1995, before modern computing was able to do all the differential-equation wizardry that lets their rockets land). Or if Tesla had tried to make an electric car company in 1988, and bitterly realized "oh shit, there's no humanly possible way we can make a vehicle with more than 30 miles of range." You have to take a bet that everyone else is betting against ... and then also be RIGHT about that wild, contrarian bet. ---- Choosing that bet was the smart thing Musk did. It's possible to make wickedly smart bets like that, and still be a mediocre manager, but win because the bet itself was just such a bullseye. One reason for this is that sufficiently good bets can often attract great managers; both Tim Cook, and Gwynne Shotwell, especially, may be great examples of people who've come in under the auspices of a "big idea guy", but have been able to make their companies excel because they replace the poor managerial skills of the idea guy with their own. But yeah; a guy like Musk's time is best spent not micromanaging their companies, but is best spent strategizing on big picture stuff (like doing the number-crunching to reveal that SpaceX could enable Starlink).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tremon 5y ago
a world class performer who doesn't have some "field" where anger and profanity are permitted That "field" should never be in front of, or directed at, subordinates. The best people have peers (or walls, or chairs) to vent their frustration at.
enumjorge 5y ago
I don’t buy it. Those folks throw fits because they provide enough value to their bosses (be it a company’s board or the NFL) that they can get away with it. Everyone else is expected to act professionally and keep their emotions on check. Outbursts of anger are not a sign of genius, but a sign that the person can’t easily be replaced.

by breck 5y ago

peakaboo 5y ago

Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected. It's natural, but it's absolutely not a good leadership quality to be angry.

bostonsre 5y ago
> Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected Why does ego play a role? Couldn't one be mad because of what they believe is wrong is being done? It's not right to be angry at someone that didn't know any better but there are individuals that I've worked with that aren't aligned with the company well, are lazy and do selfish things. Why am I not allowed to be angry at a person like that?
- peakaboo 5y ago
  You are allowed but there is a reason old people are not very angry anymore. They have learned to be humble though life, realizing people tend to do their best. If someone is not performing at work, it's usually because of motivation, and that's the job of a good manager to create. But I think the American culture is quite different from what I'm used to so maybe I sound weird in this context. :)
- lazide 5y ago
  Anger generally is anchored to something that is being threatened - it is a defense mechanism. Sometimes, like if you’re angry at an opposing tribesman for attacking your village, it can be helpful. Other times, it can lead to acting out in ways that hurt you (like being so angry you don’t pay attention to your surroundings and get ambushed while trying to counter attack said enemy). There are many possible scenarios - anger at the threat to his stock valuations, or anger at the threat to his public image, or anger at the threat to the illusion he personally held that everything was going ok, or anger and frustration at his inability to get control of the situation in a productive way, which is a threat to many of these things. Most abuse is when a person is unable to properly manage and avoid painful emotions (such as anger), and projects fault and bad intent onto others - to scapegoat for instance as a maladaptive behavior they haven’t learned an alternative to, among other reasons. What is being described in the article is classic abusive behavior, no matter the venue. It is not ok, in any environment, and it causes destruction and missed opportunities anywhere it is deployed. The reason I think you don’t see that in his public persona because he knows it isn’t ok - but can’t control it sometimes, or even worse, thinks it’s a good thing when he can do it in ‘private’. He ‘knows how to treat his woman so he gets dinner on time’, as it were, and she’d better put her makeup on better so he doesn’t look bad in front of his friends I expect there are many internal witch hunts ongoing for leakers after this, and have been for other leaks too. Since after all, in his eyes it is not the behavior that is wrong, it’s being embarrassed in public that is.

ziziyO 5y ago

No. Those are unhealthy behaviors that are dehumanizing to the recipient. You don’t treat your employees like this.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

This is something I think about every now and then. The problem is that the Jobs/Gates/Musks are the shining exceptions. Survivorship bias basically. For every one of them, there's probably 100 other people in leadership positions that have similarly nasty temperaments, but nowhere near as successful as they are.

sidibe 5y ago
There are also plenty of people with relatively calm demeanors that achieved similar success leading companies. Google's founders, Buffett, etc.
joshuahedlund 5y ago
I'm halfway through Bad Blood (after having already read Musk's and Jobs's iconic biographies) and have been thinking about such comparisons. Were there specific differences that made Musk and Jobs successful compared to Holmes in spite of their flaws, or is it just random dice outcomes that explain why the former managed to turn the impossible into possible and the latter didn't?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Jetrel 5y ago
  The difference was mostly a choice, and it's arguably the main "smart" thing Musk was able to do, whereas Holmes dropped the ball on. Musk's first breakout gig, Paypal, was honestly just dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time - online credit card payments were an inevitability, and it was just arbitrage on getting there before the banks got their feet wet. That is - at the time, "everyone" broadly agreed it was going to happen, even banks, but some groups were institutionally slower about setting it up. He happened to be lucky by getting in on a startup right then, when low-hanging fruit like that was waiting to be plucked. The left him wealthy enough to fund something else as a sort of Angel Investor, and it was at this point that "his choice of what to fund" was a significant act of cleverness. He looked at the world and asked "what are some things that are technically totally viable, but have been completely stagnant because of political problems in getting funding to try them, rather than any technical problems with them actually working? He spent a few years(!) crunching the numbers on them, and doing some research, and concluded that two things PROBABLY fit that bill: electric cars, and reusable rockets. What he was ideally looking for is something where an industry had a blind spot - where the industry had "tried it, failed, and decided it's a dead idea nobody should bother trying again". But where they'd done this for a really bad reason. ---- These were two things that just needed some billionaire to finally take them seriously - they weren't something some "rogue scientist" could just do in their garage; you genuinely needed major capital investment for said rogue scientists to be able to build test versions and refine their ideas into something that worked. Electric cars were wide open because all the basic tech was there, but the existing car companies weren't even interested in trying due to cultural reasons. The biggest thing is most of the critical advances in batteries had already been driven by hundreds of billions of R&D dollars in the consumer electronics and computer industry - they'd been desperately pushing battery tech forward, and it'd become orders of magnitude better than it was when the auto industry made a consensus decision that electric cars weren't viable (back in the 80s). In the 80s they had a range of maybe 15 miles, and struggled to get up hills. Auto execs just didn't understand HOW much better batteries had gotten in a mere 10 years (in fact they probably assumed batteries weren't even really improving, and had reached their physical/scientific limits). Reusable rockets had been scrapped because of the space shuttle's failure; it'd been intended to be completely reusable, and they couldn't pull it off because ... reasons. The consensus was that those "devil in the details" issues would always come up. On closer investigation, though - most of what went wrong is the same procurement malpractice we're currently having with stuff like the F-35 fighter jets, and not something that had any real bearing on the actual engineered work itself. Similar thing with Jobs - computer GUIs existed, but the only companies that had developed them had been sitting on them and refusing to deploy them as a mass-market product. ---- The key difference with Holmes is the fundamental tech keystone (doing medical tests via micro-samples of blood) just wasn't viable. Some biotech researchers tried to sound the alarm about that, but once they were too far into the process of running the company, everyone had already laid down their financial bets and was afraid to pull out. What happened to them is very similar to what would have happened to SpaceX if it turned out that they were wrong about reusable rockets (for example, if SpaceX had tried to be a company in 1995, before modern computing was able to do all the differential-equation wizardry that lets their rockets land). Or if Tesla had tried to make an electric car company in 1988, and bitterly realized "oh shit, there's no humanly possible way we can make a vehicle with more than 30 miles of range." You have to take a bet that everyone else is betting against ... and then also be RIGHT about that wild, contrarian bet. ---- Choosing that bet was the smart thing Musk did. It's possible to make wickedly smart bets like that, and still be a mediocre manager, but win because the bet itself was just such a bullseye. One reason for this is that sufficiently good bets can often attract great managers; both Tim Cook, and Gwynne Shotwell, especially, may be great examples of people who've come in under the auspices of a "big idea guy", but have been able to make their companies excel because they replace the poor managerial skills of the idea guy with their own. But yeah; a guy like Musk's time is best spent not micromanaging their companies, but is best spent strategizing on big picture stuff (like doing the number-crunching to reveal that SpaceX could enable Starlink).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tremon 5y ago

a world class performer who doesn't have some "field" where anger and profanity are permitted That "field" should never be in front of, or directed at, subordinates. The best people have peers (or walls, or chairs) to vent their frustration at.

enumjorge 5y ago

I don’t buy it. Those folks throw fits because they provide enough value to their bosses (be it a company’s board or the NFL) that they can get away with it. Everyone else is expected to act professionally and keep their emotions on check. Outbursts of anger are not a sign of genius, but a sign that the person can’t easily be replaced.