Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent

Some leaders seem to have a gift for nurturing talent, creating high-performing teams, unleashing potential, and inspiring others to do great things. They might build successful organizations or design great products. But they also create disciples and leave a legacy of brilliant individuals who excel in their fields and motivate others to do the same. Their influence and impact is far-reaching. These people are what author Sydney Finkelstein calls "superbosses."

So what makes a superboss? How can we become more like one? And how can we find one to learn from? This book answers all these questions and more.

"Superbosses" examines the characteristics and management practices that great leaders share. It explores how superbosses encourage, motivate and inspire those around them to fulfill their unique potential, and it offers practical steps to help us emulate their success.

This book is for anyone who wants to be a better leader or who wants to find a great leader to work for. If you're a senior manager, you'll learn how to spot talent, how to motivate people to do exceptional things, how to strike the right balance between hands-on and hands-off management, and how to let go of your most successful protégés when the time comes.

If you're lower down the ladder, you'll hear how to identify superbosses so you can work for them, and how to get the most out of idiosyncratic leadership styles.

More broadly, this book is for anyone interested in leadership and management theory, and who wants to understand the difference between a good boss and a superboss, according to the author's extensive body of research.

Sydney Finkelstein is a renowned author, speaker and coach on management, leadership and talent development. He's the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, the director of Tuck's Center for Leadership, and he's consulted at companies including Boeing, General Electric, and JPMorgan Chase. He's published 19 books on leadership, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller, "Why Smart Executives Fail." And he's listed in the Thinkers50 world ranking of leadership experts.

So keep listening to hear about the three different types of superbosses, how they spot and hire the best talent, and how to give your protégés freedom to innovate, while being relentlessly clear about your vision.

Finkelstein certainly didn't scrimp on research when writing "Superbosses." The book is based on more than 200 interviews conducted over 10 years, across industries ranging from fashion, sports and the arts, to hospitality, politics and business. It's a systematic, rigorous, empirically-based study of what really motivates people and enables them to achieve their full potential – the first of its kind, the author says.

From his research, Finkelstein picks out 18 primary superbosses. These are leaders whose employees or mentees went on to achieve extraordinary success, often winning awards, starting successful businesses, or becoming superbosses themselves. They include fashion designer Ralph Lauren, Star Wars creator George Lucas, American football coach Bill Walsh, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

He also identifies a few dozen secondary or likely superbosses, including media mogul Oprah Winfrey and politician Hillary Clinton.

He then pinpoints the personal characteristics and working practices that unite these individuals, looking at how they spot, hire and nurture talent, how they lead, and how they inspire others to achieve remarkable things. He compares them with one another and explores why they're different to traditional managers.

Finkelstein's superbosses have very different personalities, backstories and lifestyles. Jazz musician Miles Davis, for example, struggled with drug addiction and served jail time for domestic violence, while Michael Miles, former CEO of Kraft Foods, had a relatively stable personal life. They have different motivations too, and the author splits his superbosses into three distinct camps.

Some superbosses are wholly focused on their work and their passion. They don't set out to inspire or teach others but they naturally do so, intuitively and organically. These are the creative geniuses whose raw talent, passion and single-mindedness are infectious.

Finkelstein calls these people "Iconoclasts." George Lucas and Ralph Lauren fall into this category. So does Alice Waters, chef and owner of the organic restaurant Chez Panisse, based in California. Waters' disciples now run many of America's best-known restaurants.

Other superbosses are committed to winning, over everything else, no matter what. The author calls these individuals "Glorious Bastards." They understand they need the best people in order to win, and they push their employees to their limits, driving them to achieve more than they thought they were capable of.

Unsurprisingly, Glorious Bastards aren't the most loved of superbosses, but they inspire respect, and talent flocks to them because they help fast-track people's careers. Oracle founder Larry Ellison fits in this camp. Businessweek named Ellison one of the most competitive people on the planet.

Finally, there are "Nurturers." These superbosses deliberately go out of their way to help their protégés succeed, and they take pride in developing others. Nurturers actively and regularly engage with their employees to help them reach great heights. In this category, you'll find Bill Walsh, head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, Kraft's Michael Miles, and Norman Brinker, who founded the casual dining restaurant chain Steak and Ale.

So superbosses differ considerably in their motivations and management styles, but they share a basic set of character traits: extreme confidence, to the point of fearlessness; competitiveness; an imaginative nature; integrity; and authenticity.

We like the way the author differentiates between his chosen superbosses, making it clear they come in all shapes and sizes and can have quite diverse agendas, but that they also share some core characteristics.

Let's now look at how superbosses spot, attract and hire the best talent.

These leaders have unconventional hiring practices. They don't necessarily ignore résumés, qualifications or psychological testing, but they base their decisions on intuition more than anything else. For a start, they're often hands-on, making hiring decisions other bosses tend to delegate to Human Resources or executives lower down the ladder. That's because they know exactly what they're looking for – usually somebody creative, original, different, flexible, and incredibly smart. And if they do delegate the recruitment process, it's because they've taught others how they like to hire.

Superbosses don't feel threatened by candidates who show the potential to outshine them – they welcome them on board, surrounding themselves with the brightest and best. They're also willing to take a chance. Oracle's Larry Ellison was happy to hire someone who'd dropped out of college, as he had done himself, provided he saw a spark of talent. And they're opportunistic in their hiring – sometimes setting out to recruit one sort of candidate, but ending up with somebody completely different who catches their eye.

Superbosses also use unorthodox interview techniques. Take music legend Miles Davis. When he became interested in pianist Herbie Hancock, he invited Hancock to his house and left him in his basement to play with two other musicians while he listened in over an intercom. He did this for a few days before hiring him.

Similarly, American real estate mogul Bill Sanders would invite prospective candidates to his ranch outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, and take them on a long hike in the hills so he could spend time just talking to them and getting to know their personalities.

Finally, superbosses aren't worried about churn. They're more interested in prize talent and creativity than retention, sometimes hiring people who show signs of not staying around too long. But the irony is many people do stay around because they love working for superbosses, often turning down offers of great jobs elsewhere and only leaving when they're ready to set up on their own.

Finkelstein suggests we adopt some of these hiring techniques, but he advises we take tiny steps rather than plan an instant overhaul. For example, have a second look at candidates you'd normally dismiss on the basis of their credentials or lack of experience, he says. Loosen up your interview structure to incorporate some unconventional elements. Try choosing a few unorthodox candidates alongside your usual picks. And don't get too obsessed with churn – your former employees may make names for themselves elsewhere, building your reputation as a talent magnet and as someone who helps protégés go on to great things.

We like the author's tips on hiring and especially his measured approach. He's wise to advocate small changes and learning through low-risk experiments, rather than aiming to turn yourself into a superboss overnight.

As you heard earlier, superbosses have an uncanny ability to unleash their employees' potential. They act as launch pads, enabling their protégés to innovate, create and achieve things far beyond what they imagined they could. So let's look at how they do this.

Superbosses are uncompromisingly open. On the one hand, they have a clear vision of what they want their project or organization to be and they drive their people hard toward that goal. On the other hand, they give their employees free rein to rethink most other aspects of their work.

For example, when George Lucas asked film production graduate Ben Burtt to create the sound for Star Wars robot R2D2, Burtt knew Lucas wanted the sound to convey a humanlike personality but, beyond that, he was free to experiment. He had the autonomy to come up with his own solution, provided it remained within Lucas's overall vision.

Likewise, chef Alice Waters was unrelenting in her commitment to serving only the highest quality, organic ingredients, but she left plenty of room for her employees to innovate. She'd leave her team of chefs more or less alone, only popping in to the kitchen now and then to suggest minor adjustments.

Superbosses encourage constant risk taking and rule breaking. Their vision is sacred but, within that, they give their employees lots of wiggle room. They also create safe environments, where creativity and innovation can thrive and where failure is allowed. And they're constantly curious, encouraging employees to keep changing and challenging norms. Many bosses talk about innovation, but really they just want their employees to get the work done as quickly as possible, while following set rules. Superbosses walk the walk.

Finkelstein makes a strong case for combining a clear vision with freedom to innovate, and he suggests managers take a health check of their organizations to see what kind of environment they're creating.

For example, do the performance indicators you use reward innovation? Do your employees feel free to explore new avenues, or are they anxious about failure and its consequences? And do you encourage open discussion about the pros and cons of a particular strategy or initiative?

Ultimately, are you creating a safe place where healthy risk taking is encouraged? We think these questions will help readers make small, practical changes, or at least start a conversation about what could be different and better.

Finkelstein does a great job of analyzing the behaviors and personalities of superbosses, identifying best practice, and compiling key lessons and tips into what he calls a "playbook." And what better way to improve your leadership and talent management skills than learning from the masters?

There is a problem, however. The author has chosen real visionaries for his case studies – natural leaders and innovators with extraordinary talents and abilities. We wonder if their level of success will feel out of reach to the average reader, especially as Finkelstein wants to appeal to mid-level team leaders, as well as those at the top of the tree. Including the stories of some more accessible, lower-profile individuals might have made his lessons more relevant and easier to apply.

We also think Finkelstein glosses over the negative traits of some of his superbosses, particularly those who push their employees to their limits. But it's good that he at least mentions the possible downsides and unhealthy character traits of incredibly successful, single-minded leaders.

Finkelstein uses the term "superbosses," but ultimately this is a book about leadership and you'll have come across many of the qualities and working practices of his superbosses in business books before.

That said, Finkelstein puts forward an incredibly powerful thesis, based on 10 years of interviews and research, which gives readers unique insight into some of the world's most successful leaders – people who've built remarkable organizations or produced great work, and have also nurtured extraordinary talent.

"Superbosses," by Sydney Finkelstein, is published by Portfolio Penguin, part of the Penguin Random House group.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.