Talent and leadership are naturally complementary; they should go hand-in-hand. Great leadership can be built upon great talent, but only if it works to develop it; to set it free. Great talent relies upon strong leadership to recognize it, nurture it, and imprint values and vision. But, not all leadership is talent-enlarging; some, unfortunately, is talent-diminishing.
Miles Davis, Sid Caesar, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Thomas Edison and John Bolton: what could this group possibly have in common? Well, to start off with, they were all extremely successful in their fields; they were all, also, obsessed by a dramatic vision of what could be achieved; and they were all extremely tough, demanding bosses. But, here, the similarities end, and the “nuts” – Caesar, Robbins, Bernstein, Edison and Davis – separate from the Boltons, on the basis of how they exercised the role of leader; the “nuts & boltons” of playing the leadership role, so to speak. Read more.
This post originally appeared on Forbes.com on April 2, 2018.