171. The Absurdity of Leadership

and other lessons we can learn from my 9th grade English class

My 9th-grade English class with Mr. McGarvey was a little bit of something special. Decades later, my friends and I still talk about it.

It was Mr. McGarvey who sparked my love for writing.

It turns out that a surprising amount of students in that small class went on to become highly successful writers. Here’s a sampling of a few:

Paul Lieberstein is a multi-Emmy-winning writer who, among other things, ran such popular shows as The Office and Newsroom.

David Grann is an award-winning writer for the New Yorker and a #1 NY Times best-selling author, whose books have been turned into major motion pictures.

Nichole Bernier is a novelist and writer for a whole bunch of places including NPR, Sports Illustrated, Men's Journal, ELLE and Conde Nast Traveler.

And then there’s some schmo who writes a sassy newsletter about leadership.

As I told you, that class was a little bit of something special.

Mr. McGarvey inspired us to be great writers. He taught us how to find the voices in ourselves and make those voices palatable to others. Then he let us go out into the literary world and use those tools to improve our craft.

That’s what made him a great teacher: he taught us the skills we needed and then let us flourish.

Now imagine the opposite.

Imagine if we were good writers in Mr. McGarvey’s class but we all became terrible writers right after that year. What if the only good writing we could ever do was with Mr. McGarvey.

Would you judge him to be a good teacher or a bad one?

I think we could all agree that something would be suspect in his teaching. After all, the implicit goal of teacherhood is to provide students with the skillsets to grow. If we all got A grades in his class but F’s in the next year’s class, well, Mr. McGarvey may be reprimanded for being too lenient. His class would be known as “the easy A”.

But what if the opposite were true - if our ongoing failure as writers was proof positive that Mr. McGarvey was an incredible teacher? What if McGarvey got a promotion and received accolades because a great group of young writers turned out to be useless when not under his guidance?

Sounds absurd, right?

Well... read on.

The Most Important Need

Humans want to be wanted. At least I do.

According to the counselor, researcher, and Ph.D-er, Steve Rose, “the most important basic need is our need to be needed.”

Did you ever leave a romantic relationship and hope that the ex’s next partner is not as good as you? Less smart, less pretty, less fun, less sexy, less whatever - you just want that next person to be a couple of Crayola colors less bright than you.

It’s our need to be needed. This behavior helps validate our worth.

The same thing happens in the workplace.

We want people to say “she is such a great leader, we simply can’t succeed without her.” We want the accolades.

It feels great to be wanted.
Just don’t mistake this for a positive trait.

In many ways, the need to be needed, is simply stroking our respective egos. And when it comes to business, that behavior can put you in deep kimchi.

Imagine the leader that is so fearful of their perceived worth that they keep important knowledge secret. If they are the only ones that know the answers, they feel needed - and the company risks failure if they leave.

I can think of at least five people right out of the gate that act that way, how ‘boutchoo?

Successful Behaviors of Successful Leaders

Because people need to be needed, I never ask a departing leader for recommendations on their successor. Most of the time, whether consciously or not, a departing leader’s recommendation will be somebody who simply isn’t as good as them.

In most every company these days, it is still a leader’s absence that proves their worth. Which brings us full circle back to Mr. McGarvey, and hopefully helps prove the absurdity of this philosophy.

The success of any great leader should be judged not on whether the team fails because of their absence but on whether the team succeeds despite their absence.

Successful leaders are meant to ensure their company is on the trajectory for greater growth. It’s their job to meaningfully improve the business by guiding others towards being great at their role. It’s the leader’s job to teach people how to set goals, prioritize actions and make informed decisions.

Like Mr. McGarvey, the job of leadership is to help your subordinates hone their skillset to such a point where they can still succeed, despite your absence.

David Marquet, the author, former nuclear submarine commander, and overall leadership bada**, calls this the “leader-leader mentality”.

In a leader-leader environment, the top-tier leaders teach each person how to be a leader in their own role and to make their own decisions. This is opposed to a leader-follower mentality, in which the leader tells subordinates what to do, and they obey,

The world should be full of companies with a leader-leader mentality. But it isn’t. Which is why I have this newsletter and why I do consulting work to teach leaders how to excel.

You’ve heard me say this a billion times: leadership isn’t about a title. It’s about behavior.

It’s time to reset your behavior as a leader. Find the Mr. McGarvey in you and bring greatness out of your team, even when you’re gone.

---

Editors Note: About 5 years ago I tracked down Jack McGarvey (then living in Arizona) and sent him a note thanking him for the impact he made on so many young lives and letting him know about the ongoing success of his former students. I received a short acknowledgment back from him. He remembered me after all these decades. It meant a lot. I was thinking of him recently and looked him up again. Alas, it turns out Mr. McGarvey died a few months after I had contacted him. It turns out he wasn’t immortal after all. RIP Jack McGarvey