Why Do We Keep Rewarding Evil Geniuses?

The other day I read about the Danish chef Rene Redzepi’s latest upscale culinary project. In a number of media reports, including a New York Times article entitled “Punching, Slamming, Screaming: A Chef’s Past Abuse Haunts Noma, the World’s Top-Rated Restaurant,” the chef’s egregious behavior has been widely exposed. It is now no secret that the highly acclaimed Copenhagen three star Michelin restaurant Noma, was the site of egregious abuse. Redzepi forced people to work for nothing, slammed them against walls, stabbed them with kitchen implements, and engaged in tortuous shaming and public humiliation of staff. Like all cunning abusers, he threatened to use his influence to blacklist anyone who dared to cross him, assuring them they would never work again in a high end restaurant, no matter where it was located. Even more despicably, he menaced his workers’ families with deportation. In other words, Redzepi was a Donald Trump or ICE agent in a chef’s toque.

In spite of all this bad press, Redzepi had launched a series of pop-up dinners in Los Angeles that cost an amazing $1,500 a person. Although some of the series’ sponsors pulled out, the dinners sold out almost instantly. I was shocked that anyone would reward someone who should be behind bars rather than a stove in a high-end kitchen.

Clearly, there are a lot of people who don’t share this view. While it has become unacceptable for great men to sexually abuse their subordinates, we still tolerate too much Redzepi-like behavior. “People need to have an edge in order to innovate,” many people still believe. They subscribe to the common cultural myth that being an asshole is a precondition of greatness. People thus routinely excuse chefs Redzepi, Silicon billionaires like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, and countless others because, they have been taught to believe that their great accomplishments were somehow fueled by narcissism, the narrow minded pursuit of advancement, and abuse of subordinates.

Indeed, too many of us believe that expecting ordinary, civil behavior from our resident genius would actually dry up their creative juices. If the extraordinary genius displayed ordinary good manners and concern for others, may even believe that we would forfeit our fabulous foraged meals, electricity saving vehicles, magnificent artistic creations, and astonishing medical miracles. At worst, like the eager young interns who accepted the deplorable conditions in Redzepi’s kitchens, some folks actually fight efforts to hold these so-called geniuses accountable. They not only enable their bad behavior insist it must be continually rewarded.

With an ethical shrug too many accept hideous behavior. We just have to put up with it. That’s life.

Do we? Is it?

No we don’t. And no, it isn’t.

To understand why this is true, I want to briefly review some of the literature that debunks the myth linking deplorable behavior and creativity and accomplishment.

I first became acquainted with studies of bad behavior when writing my book Nursing Against the Odds. I wanted to understand why so many physicians felt they could treat nurses and other so-called subordinates so poorly. I wanted to understand why so many physicians felt they could treat nurses and other so-called subordinates so poorly. I talked with Larry Harmon, who was co-director of the Physicians’ Development Program in Miami. Harmon defined disruptive behavior as “sarcastic comments, snapping at others when frustrated, or talking down to people.” It also includes yelling, throwing small objects --the usual repertoire.

Harmon explained that many physicians who exhibit this kind of behavior are high performing and want only the best outcomes. They yell, humiliate, throw things, and get those good outcomes. In their minds, their bad behavior is part of the process of creating good outcomes. Plus, they feel good when, under stress, they get to yell at someone and release their pent up anxieties. So now there is even more reason to continue being a jerk.

What these abusive doctors fail to understand is that the good outcomes they crave are not produced because of, but rather in spite of, their bad behavior. In fact, their behavior has a negative impact on those around them. It throws nurses, techs, and other healthcare personnel off their game, stresses them out, and impacts their feelings about their work. If they manage to soldier on, its because they are so highly skilled. (Imagine what they could help accomplish with a better leader?) This never becomes clear to the disruptive physician because their subordinates are too terrorized to tell them (and besides they never ask) and because the system never holds them accountable for their actions. This then allows new cohorts of physicians to adopt abusers as role models and reproduce this kind of behavior for generations to come.

My conversation with Harmon, as I said above, happened decades ago. More recent studies continue to debunk the myth that a higher percentage of geniuses or innovators are assholes, or as the psychologists and sociologists more politely describe them, have “disagreeable personalities.” One study, for example, showed that disagreeable people were not necessarily more creative or innovative but more willing to ignore negative criticism when marketing their ideas.

Other research conducted by two University of California Berkeley professors, tracked “disagreeable people — those with selfish, combative, manipulative personalities — from college or graduate school to where they landed in their careers. They found that being a “jerk” didn’t get them ahead.”

One of the authors of the study commented that, “I was surprised by the consistency of the findings. No matter the individual or the context, disagreeableness did not give people an advantage in the competition for power — even in more cutthroat, ‘dog-eat-dog’ organizational cultures.”

An article describing the research noted that,” The age-old question of whether being aggressively Machiavellian helps people get ahead,” long interested one of the authors. “Its a critical question for managers, because ample research has shown that jerks in positions of power are abusive, prioritize their own self-interests, create corrupt cultures and, ultimately, cause their organizations to fail. They also serve as toxic role models for society at large.

“For example, people who read former-Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ biography might think, ‘Maybe if I become an even bigger asshole, I’ll be successful like Steve,’ the authors note in their paper.

“My advice to managers would be to pay attention to agreeableness as an important qualification for positions of power and leadership,” one of the authors said. “Prior research is clear: Agreeable people in power produce better outcomes.”

Ryan Holiday, the author of an article that appeared in The Observer, asked the question “A little bit of ego is still important though, right?”

“Allow me to address that fear right now,” Holiday wrote, “One does not need to be an egotistical asshole to be successful. In fact, this is one of the most misleading and destructive myths in all of Western culture, right next to the idea that one must be a drug addict to be a successful musician or starving to produce great art.

“The idea that only the swaggering, all-knowing, and ruthlessly ambitious succeed is a lie. One that has discouraged so many people with so much potential—and worse, encouraged many more to crash and burn.

“History bears shows the truth. For every Douglas MacArthur or George McClellan, brilliant but laughably convinced of their own greatness and power, there is a George Marshall, a general who accomplished far more (far more quietly) and coveted far less credit along the way. For every Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian (who while successful are also spoiled and entitled), there is a Katharine Graham, who was born into greater wealth and did far more with it.

Ego is certainly there in many of the greatest and most dizzying tales of success—but it’s there in some of the greatest stories of failure and self-implosion as well. Howard Hughes. John DeLorean. Ty Warner. Lance Armstrong. Richard Nixon.”

This is why we have to reject the link between bad behavior and creativity/slash innovation and stop enabling this kind of conduct. Although there are few stories of what happens when people stand up to leader/bullies, I observed a very powerful example while researching my book about ballet as work, Off Balance: The Real World of Ballet. When I wanted to explore the culture of ballet in Europe, I spent a week with theI Swedish Royal Ballet. By chance, I happened to be in Stockholm when the then world -famous dancer Rudolf Nureyev was a guest choreographer with the company. Nureyev was not only renowned for his balletic prowess, but was also infamous for screaming at, hitting, and otherwise terrorizing dancers. Until he arrived in Sweden, no one ever stood up to him. This was, after all, the price of greatness.

Expecting the usual deference from Swedish dancers, Nureyev was stunned when, after a few days of his typical routines, the dancers walked out. They told Nureyev they’d be happy to dance for him, but only if he behaved himself. Otherwise, goodbye, see you later, or maybe never.

Guess what happened? Like most school yard bullies, Nureyev folded, even apologized. The dancers returned and the show went on. It did not suffer one iota because Nureyev acted in a civil manner.

It is important to note here that the Swedish dancers, his very distinct subordinates, never challenged Nureyev’s right to guide their pirouettes and fouettés. They were not questioning his, or their, position in the hierarchy. They were objecting, not to his power, but how he exercised it.

As a brief aside, I found the same dynamic decades later when I wrote a book, with pilot Patrick Mendenhall, called Beyond the Checklist: What Healthcare Can Learn from Aviation Teamwork and Safety. As a brief aside, I found the same dynamic decades later when I wrote a book, with pilot Patrick Mendenhall, called Beyond the Checklist: What Healthcare Can Learn from Aviation Teamwork and Safety. PlanesPlanes were crashing from the skies in the 1970s because no one dared to counter the way commercial airline captains (who had hitherto functioned as the kings of the cockpit) exercised power. Then, with the advent of the airline safety movement and the development of Crew Resource Management (CRM) trainings, this all changed. The great man theory of the cockpit was replaced with a very different definition of power relationships. Although captains maintained their position at the top of the aviation hierarchy, they were taught to view those they worked with as resources whose concerns and insights had to be considered in the decision-making process. Crews were trained to communicate effectively with pilots and pilots were taught to listen to those whom they considered to be subordinates. The number of planes that crashed was significantly reduced and lives were saved.

The kind of bad behavior exhibited by a Rene Redzepi, Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk is also deeply destructive. The people who work with serial abusers suffer immensely. Careers are poisoned. People die in hospitals because someone is afraid to tell the surgeon that he’s making a mistake. The tech innovator who thinks building a car is the same as running a country is allowed to shut down government programs upon which millions, even billions, depend for their very lives.

So let’s go back to where we began: with Rene Redzepi and his $1500 a person dinners. The take home message is not just don’t sign up. It’s don’t even think for a nanosecond about rewarding such egregious behavior. Don’t make men – or women – like these role models. Don’t allow them to believe that all is forgiven or at least forgotten.

And then, of course, there’s always the question, what meal could possibly be worth $1500 and why would anybody be dumb enough to sign up for one in the first place, even if it was prepared by Mother Theresa (unless, of course, it was a fundraiser for her orphanage).