Jordan, Jobs and Axe from Billions

This is not your typical article about leadership style. If you search Google for leadership style you will get a number of well thought out and categorized styles of leadership. This article looks at leadership more so from a binary lens and contemplates a really small sample size of facts for context.

Leadership in the Binary Sense

Look at style as hard vs. soft — pursuing excellence vs. pursuing status quo.

Look at style as output vs. likability — overachieves vs. meets the standard.

Look at style as memorable vs. unmemorable — provocative vs. pleasing.

This list could go on, but let’s get to that small sample size that is nothing short of interesting.

Michael Jordan

If you’ve been watching the Last Dance series on ESPN you’re getting some insight into the way Jordan led his team to six world championships. He exhibited what a Harvard Business Review article might phrase as a strong blend of “Autocratic, Authoritative, and Pacesetting Style of Leadership.”

In a binary sense we are going to call Jordan’s style hard, focused on output, and memorable. These are facts as evidenced by the film footage, the way his teammates speak of him, and his own self admission. His output is evidenced by the championships. The provocative nature of this leadership is being talked about across social and journalistic media today — so certainly memorable.

Should Jordan be attacked for his leadership style? Certainly debatable — if you think professional sports is about something other than winning.

Steve Jobs

Jobs was not paid to win sports championships — he created his own vision for changing the world through products that he got people under his charge to build. According to many (or most) accounts he used “harsh” tactics to motivate people to move with velocity while adhering to flawlessness.

Output for Jobs was far more important than likability — visionaries are not aiming to meet a standard they are aiming to create one that is unlikely to ever be achieved by another.

Jobs won on so many levels (in and out of the time he was here) and is certainly one of the most memorable visionaries of any time.

How about the attacks on Job’s style? Should greatness be left alone in how it was obtained or should academics, journalists, and other non-doers critique and challenge how it was achieved?

Bobby “Axe” Axelrod

We’re going to use the fictional character of the Showtime series Billions instead of playing with fire and using Trump in the sample. If you’re not familiar, Axe runs a hedge fund (he’s a billionaire) and pursues winning every minute of his day by leveraging all the angles, his grit and his intellect to edge across the capitalist playing field.

Output for Axe is simple — making money — exploiting what capitalism offers. Axe acquires and accumulates for power. He does it without the upbringing and institutional pedigree that most in the high finance space have been afforded.

His style is unconventional to the space and he gets 100% from his employees with no consideration of being likable for any reason other than him giving them the opportunity to make money.

His success is attacked in this fictional drama by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and subsequently the Attorney General of New York.

If you’ve seen Billions from episode one — would you say that those prosecutorial powers were just in their pursuit of Axe?

Threading this Together

Jordan, Jobs, and Axe pursued excellence in what they did for a living (which undoubtably doubled as their purpose in life). They brought people along with them on their journey (teammates, employees, etc.) and demanded a rivaling commitment from them as a cost of carriage.

Their style was without debate “hard”. The only “output” that made sense to these guys was to overachieve. Being “memorable” was the byproduct of pleasing themselves before anyone else (because they set the bar higher than anyone else ever could).

There is a very true and transparent notion that “working for or with me is not for everyone” that is most often associated with people that achieve (win) on a level that makes the ordinary person uncomfortable.

Leadership is a topic that can be examined in many different ways. However, output is likely to be the core element of any equation — otherwise what’s the point of leadership?