The Great Asshole Fallacy
500ish.com
500ish.com
So it's worth remembering that The Last Dance wasn't Jordan's last time in the NBA.
MJ came out of retirement to play for the Wizards. Acted just as he did when he was Air Jordan with the Bulls, but could no longer back up his abusive behavior with his play [0]. Instead of elevating the Wizards, Jordan being an asshole now hurt the team in a number of different ways.
A person may be deemed an asshole for having high standards. They don't have to be abusive to hold those high standards though.
Ed Catmull and Pixar have high standards but are not abusive in the mold of Jordan or Jobs [1]. Kim Scott wrote an entire book, Radical Candor, about how to demand excellence without being abusive [2].
[0] https://slate.com/culture/2020/05/the-last-dance-michael-jor... [1] http://www.bugaj.com/blog/2014/9/14/you-sir-are-no-ed-catmul... [2] https://www.radicalcandor.com/
But yeah, to get to your other point, I recall Jerry Stackhouse saying he hated playing with Jordan (was sorry he did) and I figure Kwame Brown's career certainly wasn't helped. The repeated belittling of Krause by Jordan that comes up in the doc (height, weight) was that of a small mean person. His interactions with Kerr suggest that Jordan valued people standing up to him above all, which was also something he had in common with Jobs. I think this meanness is something that we should watch out for in leaders, it is a sign that something is broken and that brokenness can hurt others. Jobs, Jordan, and Musk all display it, the small ugly pettiness. It is destructive and dehumanizing to both the victim and the person doing it.
Phil Jackson (as others have pointed out) shows you don't need it. There's no way he is the coach he was without the humility and empathy he had. Jordan et al saw someone like Rodman as talent to be used for a time, Jackson genuinely cared about him. It's what drives me crazy when people ignore the destructive behavior of Musk - he's the kind of personality that has shown time and time again that peole are disposable, even his biggest fans. He'll dispose of you as soon as it is convenient. We should dispose of that leadership style.
Appreciate you bringing it up and contrasting with the "small ugly pettiness" of the MJ/Jobs/Musk ilk.
Behaviour that would be okay in some contexts (military training) would rightly be considered abusive in other contexts.
Two individuals can be subjected to the same treatment and have widely divergent ideas about whether it was abusive or not.
As for a well-defined line about abuse, I'll draw from Justice Potter Stewart's utterance about pornography [0]:
> I know it when I see it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio#Supreme_Cou...
"in person" - might have to change IP to TCP/IP nowadays
Abusive. That I understand. Asshole--what does that even mean. Even the author isn't consistent:
> "But it’s also largely bullshit. Now, to be clear, I don’t know if any of the above people were or are truly assholes, nor does it really matter. People are complicated. We’re all assholes sometimes. But it’s the connection that is often drawn — notably in the clip by Jordan himself — to the idea that being a jerk is necessary to achieve greatness."
It's all bullshit.
I don't know if it's true.
It doesn't matter.
Everyone has an asshole.
Life is complicated.
Jordan is now a jerk.
For the past four years people have been saying it's a waste of time to argue with the president on his terms. And here is an article trying to make sense of profane language--and failing. It's not good journalism or blogging.
Abusive? Ok. I understand that. Asshole? I'd rather _watch sports_ than talk about bullshit.
[1] - https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/lebron-james-says-he-and-... [2] - https://www.nba.com/history/nba-at-50/top-50-players
Your sure statement is quite the qualification. Three versus six rings is an enormous difference in the NBA. That's a Larry Bird of a difference. Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Reggie Miller, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin and Dominique Wilkins won zero rings.
> but he is an atypical pro athlete in that he wants to see his teammates score vs. himself score
Jordan's average was 5.3 assists per game (as a shooting guard, emphasis). That's good enough for #29 in the NBA this season and #28 last season. He was winning scoring titles while simultaneously out-competing some starting point guards when it came to assists.
Jordan ranks #45 all-time in assists, in 14 equivalent full seasons, ahead of a large list of point guards.
He averaged 8 assists and 32.5 points in the same season in 1989, during the height of his scoring capabilities. 8 assists per game is good enough for #5 this season (for those that don't know basketball well, that's typically elite point guard territory).
Lebron is #4 all-time in points per game. Your argument is pretty amusing to make given the numbers. He wants to see his teammates score vs himself? He has led his team in scoring for 16 years in a row, including his rookie season.
Lebron's scoring average per game is 27.1, Jordan's was 30.1. Lebron has averaged 20 shots per game, Jordan averaged 23. Your premise is plainly false, the gulf between them on scoring behavior is simply not that great. Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant won championships with Jordan and became renowned players - with Pippen being named to the all-time 50 list - precisely because Jordan had no problem with them scoring as well.
The scoring label was only partially true in the early years of Jordan's career where he was on a very mediocre Bulls team and attempted to do too much of the scoring out of necessity.
Lebron averaged 31.4 points and took 23 shots per game, with 6.6 assists, his third season in the league as a reference. Lebron clearly wasn't lacking in aggressive scoring behavior in his early years either.
Lebron's coaches have been pedestrian in comparison. That's one reason the comparison is so difficult between the two.
LeBron has been hand-picking his whole team for a decade now. If he was unable to find a decent coach, which is not subject to the same restrictions as stacking the team with all-star players, then that shortcoming is also entirely on LeBron.
And Phil Jackson's championships were on team's featuring arguably three of the greatest players of all times: Jordan, O'Neal, and Briant. I wouldn't argue that O'Neal and Briant's rings were a result of Phil Jackson.
lets not forget coaching. Phil Jackson has won 11 championships, more than any coach ever in the NBA. Who has Lebron had during his championships? Tyronn Lue and Erik Spoelstra, good coaches, but not one of the brightest minds to ever coach the game in Jackson.
Lastly, Lebron is still playing, he could pull off a 3-peat with this current Lakers team, we just don't know. I say all this as a die-hard Jordan fan who thinks people underestimate Lebron because he's "nice".
[1] - https://bleacherreport.com/articles/519667-defensive-legends...
In 1994 the Bulls were eliminated by New York in the second round.
Jordan returned in March/April after abandoning baseball in protest. The playoffs started in April 28th.
He's won 3 and also been to 9 in a row, not a small feat.
A little confused by the rest of your arguments, over their careers MJ averaged 30.1 pts and 5.3 assists per game and Lebron so far has averaged 27.1 pts and 7.4 assists per game so doesn't that counter your argument since clearly Lebron has done much more passing?
> He has led his team in scoring for 16 years in a row, including his rookie season.
How is that relevant? Lebron is number 8 all time in assists as a SF.
The numbers don't lie, its pretty clear he could lower his assist output and increase his scoring pretty easily.
Two of those 3 resulted from "the decision", which in practice meant he hand-picked a team whose starting lineup counted with 3 or 4 hall of famers arguably during their prime, with the notable exception of Ray Allen.
So to recap: Miami with Lebron = 4 Straight NBA Finals, Miami first year without Lebron = losing record and miss playoffs completel. They're basically a .500 dumpster team ever since.
Total assists per game don't account for usage rate or minutes played. If Jordan played all 48 every game and had the ball in his hands 80% of the time, of course he'd end up with a ton of assists, simply because every shot (besides the ones he makes) is most likely to have come after a pass directly from him.
Championships are a very overrated way to rate any player. Tremendous luck goes into winning any championship. Less impactful players can win rings by taking a lesser salary and "ring hunting" with contenders (as you already point out). Championships can be a factor in determining a player's greatness, but let's not make them the sole determinant.
There are factors that work in favor of your argument as well. The pace of the game has increased, so that accounts for a degree of statistical inflation alone (which again advanced stats help to account for). Not sure how these impact things, but hree pointers have become a much bigger part of the game, defensive hand checking is outlawed, and zone defense has been legalized.
This is hacker news, home of the nerds. If we're going to talk stats in sports, let's do it right!
lebron has anthony davis, who hasn't quite proven he's at that level, but he's well on his way. just a little more tutelage under lebron and he may go down as being a better 2 than pippen. i'm excited to find out, so let's get this season back on track already!
with that said, zion and the lakers-b-team pelicans are the most exciting thing in basketball right now. brandon ingram made no sense as a #2 to lebron, but he's blossoming in new orleans next to zion, jrue holiday, and an also-revitalized lonzo ball.
Dwane Wade is arguably more accomplished than Pippen, and LeBron also enjoyed the help of the likes of Chris Bosh and Ray Allen. This means that 2 of the 3 championships won by LeBron counted with 3 or 4 all stars and all of famers, either current or future.
While Wade and Bosh were seasoned leaders who respectively carried their teams single-handedly, Pippen never really reached that level. In fact, arguably he disappointed in that domain during Jordan's retirement.
And let's not forget, that unlike Jordan, LeBron shopped around rather intensely to hand-pick which players would pick up the slack.
If he was on a fantasy league that would be a kin of getting the cheat codes to the game and burying the competition.
lebro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyYmJnM9eQs
kobe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzwCh3qbpp4&pbjreload=10
Maybe I just miss kobe tho...
That counts as one championship, and a performance that's in line with the likes of Kawhi Leonard or Dirk Nowitzki.
Winning a single championship is barely evidence of being superior to Michael Jordan.
Lebron has definitely abused his teammates during games on live TV, those clips are a YouTube search away. He’s also been responsible for having multiple coaches fired in his career, which isn’t exactly a servant-leader move.
> Jordan also had the benefit of Scottie Pippen who is a all-pro/50 greatest player
Lebron has played on teams that will probably go down as on-par with some of those bulls teams, it’s not like Pippen was on another planet compared to Wade or Anthony Davis. They’re fairly comparable players. The Cavs also wound up beating that Warriors team that matched the Bulls single season record, which was also considered one of the most talented teams ever.
Also, Jordan never belittled opposing fans in a press conference the way Lebron did in 2011 that he wound up having to clarify[0]. This was truly one of the most distasteful things I’ve ever seen a pro athlete say in a press conference, but that’s clearly my opinion.
I don’t necessarily believe that one is more or less moral than the other, but I’ve never been convinced of the Lebron “nice guy” story. He’s always come across as more narcissistic than Jordan in my opinion, Jordan would never have done “The Decision” the way Lebron did.
0: https://www.espn.com/nba/truehoop/miamiheat/news/story?id=66...
siegler notes that we're all complex beings who can be assholes some of the time. he notes jordan also has a great sense of branding and image, and plays it up for the camera.
but there's no doubt that given the level of talent and relative parity at the top of any sport, you need to develop an edge, and jordan could do that, by poking, prodding, and pushing his teammates to rise rather than remain complacent.
“Winning has a price. And leadership has a price.”
the price jordan paid wasn't at the expense of the respect and friendship of his teammates, otherwise they wouldn't have won so much together. in other words, he wasn't just an asshole.
It also allows you to be revisionist in excusing you being an asshole as necessary in retrospect, even if it wasn't.
Some people will be assholes if allowed to, but I don't think it's (positively) correlated with success.
I imagine few people work better for/with an asshole, and if someone excellent/smart/1000x developer is pleasant to work with (but perhaps assertive) the results are probably even better.
Are there counter examples of success like that which don't have a severe asshole at the epicenter? Carmack and Tim Sweeney?
I got put off trying to improve Linux very early on when I tried to get help with a simple configuration issue in IRC and instead got dragged into a tedious debate about whether it's okay to call the OS "Linux" or "GNU/Linux." Ain't nobody got time for that. Not when there is a whole world of other projects one can choose to donate one's time to.
To go back to Jobs, obviously many people worked with him and he had his inner circle. Was everyone fine with him being an asshole, or did they just put up with it because he's the boss and that's what you had to deal with if you wanted to work at Apple?
Clearly, you don't need to be an asshole to be successful. But do you have to be near one?
When Jobs was right there next to him, his body 8% anus by mass, being asshole enough for ten ordinary men, how do we know whether Woz's success was due in part to Jobs' abrasive personality, or in spite of it? Didn't Jobs pull some dirty business tricks to cheat Woz out of some of his ownership?
[...]
> When Jobs was right there next to him, his body 8% anus by mass, being asshole enough for ten ordinary men
Normally, I wouldn't comment on something like this, but this phrasing is pure gold.
There are a number of stories where it generally sounds like Jobs knew how to take advantage of Wozniak, e.g.:
"...The original deadline was met after Wozniak worked at Atari four nights straight, doing some additional designs while at his day job at Hewlett-Packard. This equated to a bonus of $5,000, which Jobs kept secret from Wozniak. Wozniak has stated he only received payment of $350..." [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game) ]
That isn't incompatible with being an asshole. The open source community is famous for having many...let's say "abrasive" personalities. Different people value different things, and for some people that might not be money, but they can still be awful jerks.
If you can look past the sweatshop work environment.
One wonders whether Apple would be even further along if he hadn't been so unlikable the board ousted him.
They ousted him because he was costing too much money and not delivering (or likely to deliver) results (vis-a-vis Macintosh). Nobody in a position to fire Jobs cared that he treated employees like dirt, and that isn't anyone's version of the story. What they cared about that he was producing a competing product to the Apple II line which was the company's bread and butter at the time, that would be too expensive for the markets they were targeting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.#Macintos...
But companies are sometimes willing to work with someone who has a bad idea but is a good person. When they're costing the company millions and are also an asshole, canning them isn't a hard call.
Aside from the controversies that surround Jobs as a leader at Apple, there is one asshole move that sticks out in memory -- Jobs cheated Wozniak (who was his business partner and friend) out of his due compensation by lying to him about how much they earned from Breakout.
In contrast, I've met other very successful profs from other universities. Had a meeting with someone who is probably the top guy in his field. I felt like a total impostor, but he listened to everything I had to say, was kind and patient, showed genuine interest. I was really impressed. There really are highly successful people who are not assholes.. And IMO, the successful-but-kind prof is still publishing a lot of genuinely innovative papers, maybe because he's open to learning from others around him. Whereas the successful-but-arrogant guy who's trying to be everywhere has become out of touch and is coasting on his existing fame, but not contributing much anymore.
For all its protestant affectation, humility is very useful.
> Excellence awards you the choice of being an asshole.
I would go a little further here and say personal/individual "success" affords you the choice of being an asshole. Excellence is not always a requirement for personal/individual success, as personal/individual success is not always equivalent to holistic success (i.e. success of a company/product/idea as a whole).
> Some people will be assholes if allowed to, but I don't think it's (positively) correlated with success.
There are levels of both (assholery and success), but I would guess there's at least some correlation purely because a level of assholery is often (not always) required to overcome certain hurdles on the road to that success.
My point being that being an asshole may disimprove results for colleagues & collaborators, but may improve results when dealing with more oppositional / competitive situations.
There are plenty of jerks out there who aren't particularly talented at whatever their chosen field or profession is, but you don't hear about them because they don't become famous or (in a lot of cases), get hired at all.
It reminds me of this quote from The Simpsons:
>Aide: Sir, I'm afraid you've gone mad with power. >Russ Cargill: Of course I have! Have you ever tried going mad without power? It's boring. Nobody listens to you.
Same deal with jerks and success. A talented jerk will get listened to and became famous in spite of their toxic personality, an untalented one will go ignored and quickly get forgotten about.
If you're incredibly talented and have enormous success for most of your life then you probably have gotten away with being an asshole time and time again. What are you going to do, fire Michael Jordan because he's mean? You're going to kick Ellen off your TV channel because she's rude to her people? Over time they get reinforcement that being an asshole is acceptable for them. And it's so convenient to be a jerk.
Later on when someone asks about it, well, that was my secret to success of course. You have to be an asshole to get ahead. To heck with that!
Successful people being assholes is a sign of their weakness, not their strength.
Studies show this too[0]:
> When the defendant was attractive, there was a shift in judgments toward acquittal, but when the defendant was unattractive, there was no such shift. As a result, mock juries were more likely to acquit the attractive defendant than the unattractive defendant.
If people are more likely to acquit attractive defendants in criminal trials, they're certainly going to let more social "crimes" pass.
[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009385489001700...
My hypothesis is that no one wants to correct them, the way they would someone they don’t fear retribution from. Their friends might fear being ostracized for implying they’re stupid. Their suitors might fear pushing them away for the same reason. They just say it wrong for years while everyone nods and smiles.
I’ve made a habit of noting them in meetings and then privately informing them after. Have heard replies like, “Wait, really!? That’s so embarrassing, I’ve been saying that wrong for YEARS.”
Constantly getting a pass cuts both ways. It’s also harder to stand on their own, since they grow so accustomed to people constantly offering help, and free stuff.
> I’ve made a habit of noting them in meetings and then privately informing them after.
You have an unhealthy bias and condescension is not a solution.
I don’t believe it’s condescending to recognize a error, and offer assistance. We all make mistakes. It’s literally the first thing I ask every new manager to do for me if they observe something less than ideal in an interaction.
It's not a very flattering picture.
> If you know or talk to an attractive young woman you will notice that from her POV the world is usually filled with nice people who smile a lot and have 0 problems in accommodating her.
Sometimes people that live this are oblivious that others do not live this, and that in itself may be seen as, and may be being an asshole. "I don't know why you get speeding tickets, you must just be being mean to the police officer. I'm just nice to the officer and they always let me go, so it must be something you're doing..."
Many people seem to interpret being an asshole as causal for success, but they're not even corelated. Michael Jordan may or may not be an asshole depending on when and who interacted with him, but he demanded the same absolute perfection from others that he did of himself. The problem was no one was as good as him so he essentially asked for more than they could ever deliver, leading to him taking it all on his shoulders. This inevitably lead to tensions with the "second tier" stars on the team like Pipen and Grant who likely felt they could handle both the burden and benefit of the spotlight.
If there's a lesson here it's likely more on delegation and success of the team over individuals. Phil Jackson gets discounted as they guy who sat and watched Jordan do all the work, but he's won more NBA titles than anyone on the Bulls dream squad. He is someone who definitely does not present as an asshole.
I agree with this summation fully, having said as much in many conversations on the topic since "The Last Dance" documentary aired and I discovered many of my friends were suddenly experts on the 90's era Bulls. Even the fans who swore they hated professional sports and couldn't separate Tony Kukoč from Tony Parker
Phil Jackson gets discounted as they guy who sat and watched Jordan do all the work...He is someone who definitely does not present as an asshole.
That's because the people who do this probably haven't bothered themselves to know anything more about Phil Jackson than the one they see on the court; a common malady of critiquing the human machinations of sports and sports personalities.
Read any of his books (but maybe especially "Sacred Hoops"), enter his head space and see his motivations as player turned coach-they're amazing. Phil Jackson the younger wasn't quite the same man, but in 'Sacred Hoops' it's really interesting how Phil Jackson the older didn't rebuke his younger self, merely embraced him, molded him and constantly reflected back on that young man while coaching Mike. Phil says as much and cites especially when his father passed away, as the moment that allowed him a certain "freedom" to be himself. I'm taking a lot of these same lessons and applying them to my team at work, while reading my second Phil Jackson book, "More than a Game".
Even taking his philosophies out of it, Phil Jackson was and I think still is an enormous student of the game-going all the way back even before his days playing for the Knicks, like you said-the man didn't just happen upon success because he found himself coaching stellar players, his willingness to buck traditional thought at the time in the NBA and embrace his assistant coaches "Triangle Offense" and successful integration of that into the Bulls played just as much a part in that team becoming who they did as Air Jordan's ability to defy gravity and hit buckets from just about anywhere on the court (except from the perimeter[1], consistently at least).
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[1] https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/5/18/21260106/michael-jor...
It's an interesting take. But give Jordan one or two off seasons to adapt to the modern game, and he would be a good to great 3-point shooter. The article even mentions the NBA Finals game where he made 6 threes in the first half, just because.
There are no DNA mutations between the players in the 90s and players today that made so many current NBA players better 3-point shooters. The owners and coaches favoring demanding those skill sets led to players practicing them more in order to increase their value.
(And I've considered before blogging a take on Jordan-Pippen-Rodman playing the 3-4-5 could be the core of an amazing modern small-ball line up.)
Although regarding mutations I dunno I think Zion Williamson might be the next player to evolve the game, or continue the evolution its been undergoing since the Golden State run.
The 6 threes are a little weird because Portland insisted on guarding him with tons of space, essentially daring him to take what they viewed as a low-percentage shot. It's doubly weird to watch them repeatedly concede open 3s now -- it's not even a result of scrambled defensive rotations, they just watch him spot up and shoot.
I think I agree with you though. The fact that he had such a lovely midrange game suggests he'd have picked up the 3 if he tried. Plus that first step and the need to pack the paint to guard against those weird hanging double clutch layups, he would have had space to shoot too.
So I guess I'm making the tiresome argument that "your claim is probably right, but one specific bit of evidence is weak".
Game is completely different now, guys like Kerr (current all time leader) and most recently Steph Curry has made perimeter defense more important than it ever has been.
(Holy crap basketball analysis on HN, I’m loving this thread)
He certainly wasn’t above taking a shot right in your face if you dilly dally’d around from the field. First time I saw Jordan just rip one off after toying around with a 20 year old Kobe Bryant struggling to keep pace, then stop dead in his tracks to put one up from what felt like MILES behind the line I knew I was watching peak basketball
And after Michael left Krause didn’t just put together losing teams, they were the worst teams in the NBA.
When all those Steve Jobs biographies came out there was a population who thought if they just became really picky about design and impulsive about personnel decisions their business would become another Apple.
Just being a jerk isn't really a strategy, even in sports.
An NBA bench player can't behave like Michael Jordan and expect to stay in the league, even though an NBA bench player is probably one of the best 400 basketball players in the world.
Even then, I would argue that guys like Jordan and Jobs succeeded in spite of being assholes, not necessarily because of it.
This is such a good point.
It's so hard for most people to contextualize this.
Pro Sports athletes are basically 'life dedicated' to something, these are deeply competitive people in general. And then take the top 0.1% of those, put him with people that actually can be pushed to the top.
Jordan was no the branch manager of your local bank selling mortgages, who could not get away with such tactics.
I think Patrick Mahomes is an exemplar of this - he is very aggresive and high performing, but when things don't work out, he's immediately able to switch into the mode where he can congratulate the person that beat him and then again turn around and start kicking ass.
Basically, high performance in sports does not require you to be an asshole, and we're seeing more and more examples of that.
His body language betrayed no frustration or negativity, the very opposite of the asshole management mentality.
You can also be an all time great like Magic Johnson, who smiled constantly and seemed to love everyone and never show any frustration.
(I'm sure he had his moments, but everyone seems to love Magic and haven't heard about former team mates holding a grudge against him.)
These places typically have very limited upward mobility, and their only requirement for future operational (i.e, not corporate) "leaders" would be results from working at the ground floor.
This means that they tend to hire people that aren't necessarily the best leaders, but the best sellers. It's basically the Peter Principle in action, but often with only one step up on the ladder.
And because these people, or leaders, have very limited training or exposure to good leadership (their old leaders got to the same place, the same way), they perpetuate the same sh!tty anti-leadership practices - which is very much something one could call asshole management. And what's more, there's often such a extreme level of power asymmetry / imbalance, that lower-level workers are completely at the mercy of their middle-managers.
It is something you can draw parallels to in sports. You're being measured by KPI / performance measures, and get more responsibilities the better you perform. Everyone who's ever played any competitive team sports knows or has experiences this - some star player(s) that have can rein freely, because they exceed at some important measure (score goals, or whatever) - while rest of their teammates are walking on eggshells.
But to tie it all together: The problem is that entities (businesses, sports teams, whatever) become dependent on these stars, even though it could completely destroy morale, and create toxic cultures within.
I think that if you identify these following points in some environment, there's a great chance you'll meet on great asshole bosses / leaders
1) Great power imbalance between worker and leader.
2) Leadership compensation is dependent on worker performance.
3) Levels of compensation is driven by a very few measures / KPI.
4) Upward mobility is squarely tied to your KPI performance (from 3).
Basically - if the only way to succeed within is to be a rainmaker, and being a rainmaker makes you the king, then that could easily foster assholes.
Would anyone try to claim there is a shortage of asshole managers, owners, or bosses out there? It's just a fact that many jerks exist, and a portion will inevitably end up at the top despite this behavior.
Would YC have been more successful if it better emphasized seeking out this behavior in founders? If this behavior is critical to success then shouldn't we be training people to be jerks?
We do. It's called an MBA Program. There's even an "accelerated" option for maximum jerktitude.
Company got purchased and it became clear some team members were not going to be hired by the new owning company. Team was trying to knock out a few last big-ticket TODOs before the handoff of projects. So the boss is going around the room in the scrum, and the DB lead announces he missed his target on some work remaining to be done. Conversation went something like this:
Boss: "How are the DB changes?"
DB guy: "Not done yet. I should be able to knock them out this week."
Boss: "You had them on the calendar as ready by Monday."
DB guy: "I know."
Boss: "Didn't knock them out this weekend?"
DB guy: "Nope."
Boss: "What happened?"
DB guy: crosses arms behind the back of his head and leans back in his chair "I spent the time polishing my résumé and setting up interviews for new opportunities this week."
The whip-cracking approach to project management utterly collapses if the whip no longer stings.
Is this similar to patio11 saying that charging more for a service makes it easier for people to value the service? Is this an innate property of the way some people think? Can we change our system of values to appreciate value based on non monetary terms, and leadership based on non degrading terms?
I don't have answers for these questions, but I think they're important...
Steve Kerr (who played for him) had success with a similar coaching style in Golden State (at least up until this season!). These guys are known as a player's coach because they are most definitely not assholes.
Yes, but when it comes to having someone represent them (i.e., lawyers, agents, politicians, etc), I tend to think that people are attracted to bullies.
1. People start lying to you and cutting corners so you don't go off on them. 2. They quit, and you'll never realize their "great opportunity" was getting as far away from you as possible. 3. They tell their friends, some of which are great, not to get involved. 4. They don't forget this behavior, and while they may smile the next time you cross paths, they will quietly shut doors without even thinking about it.
And of course, if you are the asshole, nobody is going to tell you that your reputation precedes you.
People who push for this will always be called assholes because they force team members to stretch themselves which is never a comfortable proposition.
The corollary to this is that to win by not being an asshole, find something that is needed/wanted but no one else does or that which you can do 10x better than everyone else. Without competition you won’t need to push you or your team that hard.
(The only catch with having no competition, is that, having no competition will slow down the rate at which you can improve or stop all improvement in most people.)
It's entirely possible to say "we need to work harder, or take a risk, or be bold" while understanding where your colleagues are at in terms of what they need to do that, or what has or hasn't been communicated to them about how that will happen, or how things have been done in the past to change them.
Too often bad management or administration is justified by saying "well things needed change" or "things needed to be shaken up." There's a way to implement that while bringing others on board, giving credit where things are due, etc.
Put another way, it's easy to ruthlessly level an organization and rebuild it in the way you want to if you have the power to do that, but it doesn't mean the fairy tale you tell yourself about it having been necessary is actually true. More often than not you're just rationalizing away being inhumane and destructive, and probably even losing out on even better possibilities in the process.
Great leaders, in my experience, haven't asked these questions or pushed performance in this way - they led their reports through soft management to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to increase performance. They framed questions that led people to the conclusions they had already made. Of course, this also requires that the reports are capable enough of being led in the right direction.
It is hurtful and painful to hear however put.
...so no, I don't plan to stop screaming at our kid's little league team. You'd understand that if you'd ever won anything, loser.
I think “asshole” has too many different meanings, it makes the discussion difficult in a way.
Michael Jordan was an ‘asshole’ in that he was harsh and impolite, and arguably most people don’t care if elite athletes or top level professionals are harsh and impolite. Michael Jordan’s teammates seemed pretty happy to have him being harsh and impolite.
That’s pretty different from Uber’s former CEO being a asshole because of utter lack of morality and illegal behaviors, or Elon Musk’s lack of restraint and common sense.
Putting everything under the ‘asshole’ umbrella makes it look like Michael Jordan was on the same plane as Travis Kalanick, which would be a mistake.
Agreed.
> People who push for this will always be called assholes because they force team members to stretch themselves which is never a comfortable proposition.
The biggest problem with this is that leadership will inevitably realize that some of his team is just not capable of doing better, and he can't get rid of them, so he focuses his attention on those that are capable of upping their skills and doubles down on it. Scottie Pippen got it worse than the guys at the bottom of the roster. Put yourself in Scottie's shoes -- you're better than everyone except one person, and yet you're treated the worst. Scottie Morale quickly goes to shit.
It happens with tech teams, too. Bad hires kill companies because they cause assholes to act inequitably, driving the best of their supporting cast away.
Th asshole is praised as leader, is assumed to have greater technical skills, is generally rewarded.
Is it really endemic, or do isolated cases get undue attention?
A mutual fund portfolio manager once told me she would avoid investing in companies where the CEO was an asshole, because such people end up surrounded by others eager to see them fail.
I'm not going to go around being a jerk, but if I see somebody getting stepped on unjustly, I'm going to step in.
That sets me up as an asshole to about 10-15% of the human population that I refer to as "social manipulators". They're very good at getting their way because most people simply won't oppose them. Those people bounce off me like a brick wall, and they detest it. They consider me an asshole and vice versa and we avoid one another.
In addition, I try really hard not to be a jerk when I'm genuinely angry (and that happpens VERY rarely--I think I can count purple face/seeing red rage about 3 times in my entire life). I leave and cool down because I'm likely to do something really stupid otherwise.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/gates-is-a-ru...
I am not preaching that you should tolerate abuse, far from it. But you should be aware of your own dark side and recognize it for what it is.
I would rephrase to: "The characteristics necessary to be noticed above your teammates are very likely to also make you an asshole."
The best professionals I have ever worked with are kind, willing to help and growth themselves and their teams. And too often are missed by management, the self-promoting assholes are noticed and promoted by management.
Great leaders are kind, great leaders are smart, great leaders help you, great leaders go unnoticed because are one of you working within the team.
It's hard for many people to fathom different environments, but sports, sometimes startups, the Army for example ... different communication styles.
Even mild 'Military Communication' would make many people uncomfortable, because of the almost total lack of emotional empathy in most scenarios. But - it works, really well. To the point that some people (maybe myself included) feel that we should all learn to be a little more in control of our emotions and less 'needy' of our peers and managers.
When a manager tries too hard with empathy frankly is feels patronizing, like I'm a child or diva whose ego needs to be managed. I feel that it's coddling, and it shouldn't be needed with professionals, other than the very occasional kudos and only when warranted.
There are instances of Jordan in public life being a 'real jerk' ... and maybe some instances of him doing that on the court - but this is not unreasonable for such a long career.
Also, here is a good example: Pippin seemed nice, but then famously refused to go on the court once after he didn't like the coach's call. Some might argue that this is the absolute height of arrogance and jerkoffness, because it's the most self-centered thing possible. I don't think Jordan ever did this.
I watch junior Hockey players get reamed out by their coaches after the 1st period, and they're just utterly calm, it's just words to them.
We need to contextualize what we consider to be real arrogance from merely more aggressive communication or communication that is assertive and lacking in emotional empathy.
After watching the special, I'm not so sure if Jordan was an asshole. Obviously self-centered, and assertive, but that's not being an asshole. He was also one part of a unit of other types of characters that seemed to blend.
I know I am more productive with an understanding manager than being screamed at, and I am more efficient with a manager who values my ideas and encourages taking risks than one who forces me to do things exactly by the book. Admittedly, I don't have military experience, but it seems like it's more akin to a manager I would hate to have than one who would help me grow.
It's almost entirely not 'yelling and screaming' this is something that exists in basic training, or maybe in the movies.
The military is excruciatingly more operationally effective than the nearest civilian entity for the things that it is designed to do.
For most of the things the forces do, there are barely any civilian counterparts that could even contemplate the job.
That said, for a whole host of regular, garrison tasks, the military is probably the least suited. I'm thinking of peacetime IT services, etc..
For example, if you want a field hospital built with 100-400 beds? It can basically be done anywhere, almost instantly. Aside from the operational limitations of most civilians entities (i.e. they don't have easy access to Chinooks), it would take them months, and/or extraordinary complexity and expense. The COVID hospital beds were coming in at $500K each, which is massive money required to overcome the extreme inefficiency we have normally in that area. The same thing for an airfield, for example, the Air Force Engineers are ridiculous, they will build an airstrip, anywhere, in no time and have operationalized flights in and out ... like in the jungle or Himalayas.
A few things that make it different:
1) It's existential. It's the most dramatically 'real' operating environment one can imagine, both in terms of one's own life, but also the lives of others, civilians (both sides) and in many ways the ultimate consequence of entire nations being ruined/turned upside down. This is hard to grasp until one has lived in that world, it's very 'heavy' and I think the issue that weighs down service members psychologically over time. Your civilian buddies are having a 'good life' but many service members cannot escape the heavy consequences of their daily lives.
Can you imagine having to coddle a group of Engineers, balance personalities, staff reviews, people demanding 'more money and promotions', internal culture wars etc. when the 'build going out' is really a 'sortie' in support of some ground forces under fire? No. When the consequences are much bigger, and people realize this, they start to change their tune.
2) It's the most egoless job. This subject pains me the most, especially when I hear civilians talking about service people in a negative light when they see violence in particular. The level of selfless dedication in the service is incomparable. Though some individuals might be drawn in by salary or 'cheap college' it's basically impossible to continue to motivate oneself on that basis. It's the hardest work you'll ever have to do, with by far the least pay. It's ultra communitarian. On operation and in the field, even money becomes an abstract concept, almost irrelevant.
You'll see regular people, coming together, putting aside their petty, selfish desires, doing their absolute best, and it's just remarkable. Sad to say but it really brings out the best in people.
Having a limited military experience, it pains me that most people have no idea how self-oriented the civilian world is, and though we are all capable of greatness, it's very rare that we are in conditions such that we see this come to the fore. We're seeing it to some extent now with COVID.
In terms of what might be perceived to be 'ugly communication' but which really is not, consider that rank and role become a function of group need and not individual desire. You play some role, ostensibly because you are trained and suited to it, not because you are 'competing with others for the best pay'. You 'respect the rank not necessarily the person' which means an internalized understanding that it's not 'some petty ego bossing you around', rather, it's someone communicating the group needs that they are very legitimately authorized to do, and it's your job to understand and execute well. It's your team's responsibility to act in kind. Sometimes you're leading, sometimes you're following, you may go up and down in power depending on the situation, everyone is just 'playing a role on the team'. Obviously, most things in the military are done on an operational, time-constrained basis, and in the field, it's not academic, it's execution-oriented.
So if your 'Michael Jordan' boss was getting intense, there probably was a very legit reason. "Hey, listen up, there is a company-sized group of Taliban on patrol less than 1km away fro this waterworks we are building, so we need to A, B, and C and don't f* it up". It doesn't seem so 'a&&holish' in that context.
So in a 'very legitimately authoritative, time-constrained environment with very high stakes' people learn to communicate fairly plainly and effectively, which means there are no expectations of coddling or need for emotional empathy because that would an unprofessional expectation.
The 'yelling' might happen in basic training, but outside of that, it would generally happen in scenarios where you might expect it to happen, and it's not something that would upset most.
Finally, I would say that most in the service are absolutely not blind automatons. While operationally, there tends not to be a lot of back and forth, the focus really is on mission orientation, and always so much the details. It's initially micromanaged, but once in the field, most commanders have immense latitude and this implies a kind of 'out of the box' thinking one might not expect. Even for the tiniest, smallest mission of 'taking a machine bun position' - no two approaches are even the same, they vary wildly and success depends on the training and operational intelligence of the team. On a bigger scale, your 'mission' may be to build a bridge by a certain time, at this location so the 5th cavalry can cross a river and join the rearguard or whatever. You'd actually have a tremendous degree in latitude in pulling that off, and in some ways, the only thing that matters is that the bridge gets built and all other things are kind of secondary. You may not have a 'long strategic back and forth with your manager', but these are generally not the types of conditions that call for this kind of communication.
In fact, depending on the circumstance, you would have more 'latitude' in building that bridge than is maybe even comprehensible to most: you may have to knock down buildings, power lines, infrastructure, you may have to call in support, you may have to draw a lot of blood to get that thing built. All the regular, civil aspects of our lives, things like 'driving down the right side of the road' or 'social rules about private property' go out the window, the only thing remaining is the chain of command, the communications and the mission.
Sorry for that long diatribe, but it's an interesting subject that depends almost entirely on perspective, which is to say seeing the world through an entirely different lens wherein different operating modes become more obvious.
The thing that 'pains me' - is that some groups of people simply cannot comprehend the notion of 'duty'. They have an inner cynicism that is so deep, that they cannot believe the notion of 'True Boy Scout'. It's not possible in their worldview.
I'm not referring to civilians legitimately concerned about 'war crimes', I mean to say, civilians who think that 'soldering = murdering' and that's it, i.e. the 'only people who sign up must just want to be killers' or something along those lines.
The 'excessive violence' problem - which will happen - this is altogether another thorny issue. There, it's much more understandable that civilians have a hard time grasping how 'someone was killed' and that it's not outright murder, that the situation is more nuanced when you put 19-year olds with guns 1/2 across the planet and ask them to do hard things.
I respect Michael Jordan's style and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt from what I saw. He was a hyper-exceptional pushing hyper-exceptionals, who probably saw himself as the center of the universe ... but I don't see arbitrary or demeaning behavior, rather, a hyper-competitive attitude.
It takes a different worldview I think to see how his behavior is within the range of normal.
Excellence and leadership requires strength, and determination, no doubt about it.
But do you then ruthlessly impose those values on everyone else, or help them get there?
To me, that's the difference between a leader and an ahole.
MJ, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk etc. They're not everyday a-holes. These guys are/were arguably at the top of their game during the peak of their a-holery, so to speak.
The acceptance of their a-holery is going to be much broader than it is for some random wannabe who thinks they are greater than they really are.
It might be important to note that with the exception of Musk, the examples I used came up in a different time, and the tolerance for some of their behaviour would be much lower today.
The people who suffer most are the ones closest to you
It's meant for family and friends
It also applies to an extent to your work colleagues
If you pursue excellence, people around you are going to get pulled along with you
Some of them will think you are a dick or a jerk or an asshole
You can't be nice to everyone
Even if you are, a fraction of people will still think you're a dick
Now take that same person and give them success
People suddenly have TWO reasons to think they are a dick
A) They are more focused than you
B) They are more successful than you
*
I don't ever see people complaining about someone they are more successful than, but almost always about people who did better than them
There is a non-zero set of people in this person's life who will necessarily decide this person is an asshole anyhow. In the early days, you invite this person to social events, and they decline because they're practicing. Maybe someone's even crushing on this person and consistently asks them out and consistently gets declined. However polite they are in declining, there's one person who is going to decide they're an asshole. Whoever it is in second place on the team, who under normal circumstances would talented enough to be the star player on the team but is getting shown up by the fact they're on a team with Michael freakin' Jordan... they're likely to harbor opinions of assholery, because if we humans are good at anything, it's rationalizing our pre-existing beliefs and finding reasons why we're right.
When professional and financial success is obtained in later years, people who want a piece of it but are denied will decide this person is an asshole. A coach who tries to control this person to take credit for their fame but is rebuffed because what the coach is saying to do is not what it takes to be great will decide this guy is an asshole. The reporter who tries to weasel their way in to hitch themselves to this rising star and asks for interviews but gets rebuffed because it's not what is necessary to become great may do a hit piece around convincing everyone they're an asshole.
And so forth and so on.
On the Internet, if you simply express a strong opinion, of any kind, no matter how politely, some subset of people will take as proof you're an asshole. If someone posts disagreement and you decline to instantly and totally agree with that person, a somewhat larger group of people will decide you're an asshole.
The upshot is that there's two different kinds of assholery; actually being a jerk, in as objective a sense as possible, and people who will decide you're being an asshole because you've done things that are (again as objectively as possible) not assholery, but because you are resisting doing what they want or some other thing that is really entirely on them.
From where we sit at a distance, it is often difficult to borderline impossible to tell which is which, or to tell the difference between a genuinely nice guy and someone who got advised to hire a PR firm.
In a previous career, I was responsible for delivering timely and accurate information to people who then went and put their lives on the line based off of that information.
I was regarded as "brash" and an "asshole" because I would correct my colleagues information as they were giving it to those individuals who were going to put their life on the line.
I wasn't doing it to demean or belittle the people who I was correcting, I was doing it because had those operators gone out with wrong information, it could lead to their deaths. And I would much rather be thought of as an asshole than quietly and kindly "talk" to my colleagues AFTER they had delivered bad information and corrected them in private.
I wonder why the author did not feel persuaded to mention our current poster child of arseholism, the quintessential kind: Donald Trump.
Here's a good video essay on the same subject by a filmmaker, Max Joseph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRRvjZ_XNog
I find this stuff very suspect to begin with. Sure we can all grew Trump is an asshole, but in smaller scope, what really matters is who gets to decide who is an asshole. That’s the whole game.
Most assholes are not great. Many greats are not assholes. Some of the greatest were assholes.
Is there anything special about the level of asshood we’re willing to put up with? Is this some kind of global maximum?
AFAICT, it’s merely a local maximum of “as big of an asshole as you can be without the general public realizing that you’re an asshole“. Maybe we should aspire to be better, and ask more of our leaders. That’s a pretty low bar.
Of course one thing nobody recognizes about canceling the assholes is tbat the ability for society to control itself means being worse off. There is now an additional axis for manipulation by to take out tall poppies deservedly or not social manipulators will abuse it no matter how pure or reasonable the original motive or metric may be. Or even just natural culture turnint against those not fitting with the toxic norms. And the extreme successes are always outside the norm by definition. Not saying to excuse everything but to have a sense of proportion for the offenses and that society doesn't know jack shit about how to regulate itself historically - its attempts to do so have a track record of causing far more harm than good. "That Semelweiss guy is an asshole saying surgeons should wash their hands! A gentleman's hands are always clean!"
(For my money, personally, the highest praise I can hear of a team leader is "That person doesn't ask more of the team than they demand of themselves, but also, be warned that person does not sleep.")
Goes with the topic I suppose...
I do not know the author, and taking shots at him on an internet forum is small, but as a general principle, Jeffery Pfeffer talks about this retroactive continuity of virtue in success stories in his books. Everyone wants to think their luck made them good. Riding growth up to the top is a different set of skills than setting off the chain reaction that creates the energy behind it. In fact, malleability is precisely what you need to ride growth, but I'd argue you need a force of will to be the one to create it. That carries asshole-risk.
The stories successful people tell about how they became successful are almost exclusively about how virtuous they were, and how their path was noble. A critical view of success and its factors is very much the "loser's" view, as telling it from outside means you don't have it, but it still has some value because the one told from inside is not the one that will get you there. They aren't in the business of building (ungated) ladders behind them. The story successful people don't tell is the one where they leveraged someones trust, scandalizing, discrediting, and isolating someone who lacked their mendacity, or put people who trusted them at more personal risk than they may have perceived.
Nobody likes an asshole, and it's a good thing to build things that select against them, but the definition has to be better than what the losers just call the person they lose to, or as a foil for back-fitting a story of skill and virtue onto some really grisly work and luck.
It's like Ray Dalio saying he's a billionaire because of transcendental meditation. If that sentence causes your middle finger to involuntarily leap into the air, you can appreciate how these other auto-hagiographies are received.
Anyway, not to take pot shots from the cheap seats, but it's better to be suspicious of free advice that tells you to be nice. Not because being nice is wrong, but because when someone gives it to you free, it is probably worth more to them than you.
Hive minds create cohesion and work better as teams..but they squash excellence.
Both are needed
Sure, assholes can sometimes shake up hive minds. But it doesn't require an asshole to shake up a hive mind and bring excellence.
What it requires...is a leader. Like the article says, someone who can recognize what each person or group actually needs to be brought to excellence, which is not always an asshole.
An asshole.. usually just kinda ends up there and elbows people out of the way. An asshole exists regardless of the organizational culture or the institutional pressures.
Whereas you have to sit around and wait for said organization to bless you with such a leader at their discretion.
One of Jordan's coaches said in an interview, "[What most people don't understand about Jordan is that he isn't there to play, he's there to win.]"
Meaning the game of basketball wasn't important, winning was important.
Tiger Woods said the same thing in an interview, "if I can't win, I won't play,' he said. 'I simply couldn't stand it and I will walk away when I can no longer play at the highest level."
Winners are there to win, not to enjoy the game. So in that respect they have no problem acting or being perceived as assholes, since winning is all that matters.
If you pay attention to the media, you'll see that most champions don't just play and hope to excel, they are driven to win, regardless of their sport. Often they'll say, "I wanted to go out at the top."
(I'll let the hard-core sports fans research the Jordan quote and fill in the verbatim version.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/golf/article-1097074/If-I-...
Blogger -> VC blogger.
One, whatever you do, isn't memorable, and has no glory. 90s Chicago Bulls took the world by storm. Jordan is perceived as one of the greatest athletes ever. Him being that asshole may very well have secured multiple championships. Which is a big thing, something millions of people care about and still talk about decades later.
Not so much for your soulless corp few even know exists at all. Nobody cares about your performance but yourself. There is no glory to pushing people to the very edge, therefore it's not worth it or justifiable. In business, people shouldn't be expected to deliver super human effort or endure this behavior.
The situations just don't compare.
Two, you're not Jordan. And not Jobs. Nor will you become one by being an asshole. A handful of people have the character, vision and skill to touch, change and inspire the world, and you're not it. Not even close.
Quality content folks.
There is no fallacy - if you want to work as much as Jordan or Steve Jobs did, you've gotta be a lunatic to begin with. Why would you expect a lunatic to not be eccentric, in most cases?
One of the ways a lunatic can be eccentric is being an asshole - media loves to blow them out of proportion. Another way a lunatic can be eccentric is being extra quiet and extra nice aka Steve Wozniak. It's hard to write blog posts and get clicks about how nice Steve Wozniak is, people love drama far more than they love nice.
So what do we have, writers creating a myth of these tyrants where in reality they are just eccentric most of the time, and then other pathetic writers writing about what another set of writers has created.
Pathetic - journalists are largely such low life, talentless scum, oh well, at least they're nice, oh wait, or are they, with all the misquotes and poorly researched trash they publish on a daily basis, is that nice?