Effective leaders aren’t the ones you’d expect: A conversation with historian and professor, Martin Gutmann

Martin Gutmann [00:00:00]:
If you have a culture in which people who are always solving a crisis get rewarded, get the most attention, what you’re going to end up with is an environment, an organization, in which there’s always lots of crises. When we’re debriefing a situation, who do we applaud? The person who jumped in and put out the fire, but maybe cause themselves? Or the person who always delivers on time and under budget, but without a lot of fanfare?

Hannah Beaver [00:00:27]:
You’re listening to how to make a leader a leadership development podcast from Big Think+, where we take the best ideas from the biggest minds in learning and development and distill them into actionable insights. I’m your host, Hannah Beaver. In 2024, it’s estimated that the leadership development market is valued at $81 billion. In the next ten years, it’s estimated to grow to a valuation of $217 billion. But with the fast pace of modern business and evolving global challenges, are we really preparing our leaders for today’s complexities? And how can lessons from leaders in the past empower leaders in the present? Joining us to answer this question is Martin Gutmann, author of the Unseen Leader and professor of management at Lucerne University in Switzerland. He has dedicated his career to learning how leadership works across different historical contexts. Martin argues that many of the lessons we think we know about leadership, particularly those loud, crisis driven narratives we often celebrate, might not necessarily be the most viable examples for us to follow today. In this conversation, we talk about the ways that we can reframe the way we identify and develop leaders at our organisations.

Hannah Beaver [00:01:41]:
Martin shares lessons from historical and contemporary figures, giving us key takeaways on how to think more deeply about leadership in today’s unpredictable world. And we’ll start our conversation there with a historical look back. I heard in prior podcasts and prior conversations that you’ve had, I wrote down a quote because I thought it was great that you make it your business to untangle individual influence with broader historical events, finding secrets and stories and past leaders. And I just thought it was such a fascinating way to frame it, an interesting way to put it. And, you know, for that reason, I’m very excited for your perspective today because I think obviously, as you know, we can learn a lot from history, but you also have kind of that contemporary knowledge and leadership as well. So I think it’s going to be a really great conversation today. I’m very excited. So again, we appreciate having you here.

Hannah Beaver [00:02:34]:
So why don’t we just start out with a simple question that I think I already know the answer to, but is history a useful lens in which to examine and explore leadership? And if so, why?

Martin Gutmann [00:02:47]:
Yes, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Certainly my perspective at least, and there’s many reasons, but maybe, first off, I would say that leadership is important enough and complex enough that we really should use as many perspectives, as many disciplines and toolkits as we can muster to try to understand it. So I don’t think history is the, or necessarily even the best perspective or academic discipline to use, but it’s certainly one very valuable one, and there’s a couple of different advantages that I see to it. I know if I ask you, Hannah, about the Corfu incident of 1923, does that evoke any strong emotions in you?

Hannah Beaver [00:03:37]:
I can’t say that it does, no.

Martin Gutmann [00:03:39]:
Yeah, exactly. That’s probably true for most people. Right. But if I say the war in Ukraine or Israel, Gaza, we all have really strong opinions, emotional reactions to that, as we should, because this impacts us today, people we care about, we read about it in the news, we see pictures. And so this distance in time actually enables us to take a more scientific, I would say more neutral perspective on trying to untangle what was the actual influence of this one person on these bigger events without letting our emotions and other baggage we have in the present color our interpretation. So that’s one advantage, I would say. The other is that very often, and this sounds a bit counterintuitive, we actually have better sources at our disposal for events that occurred in the past, because if we’re talking about government records, for example, they’re often unavailable for 2030 years after an event. So, for example, we can’t really untangle the decision making process that led to George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, because most of the records aren’t available.

Martin Gutmann [00:04:59]:
Right. But in another 10, 20, 30 years, they will be. And we’ll also have all the memoirs of the people involved, and we’ll have that little bit of distance to where we can really understand and untangle what went on, what were the consequences, etcetera. So I think distance, to some extent, is actually enables a better inquiry than something that we’re kind of wrapped up in ourselves in one way or another.

Hannah Beaver [00:05:27]:
Yeah, I suppose it provides more of a 360 more holistic view of all the accounts, what went on, the fax. And I feel like also historically, too, we’re removing a little bit more emotion associated with the event. Like you mentioned, current day events. There’s going to be more emotion and current dialogue that’s going on. So, yeah, I think that’s certainly such a fascinating point.

Martin Gutmann [00:05:53]:
What I term the action fallacy, our tendencies to associate good leadership with noise and sensational activity in dramatic circumstances. I use the example in the book of a river. Let’s imagine we have two, not leaders now, but two swimmers, and they’re going to try to cross a river. The first one just kind of plunges in. Hasnt taken the time to get to know the river, where the currents flowing, where are the hidden rocks and the dangers? So the first guy just jumps in, starts making his way across, nearly drowns, and then starts splashing around and fighting and making all kinds of noise and somehow manages to get back to safety, whether thats on the other side of the river or back where he started, were going to notice that person, right? Its hard not to. And if the second swimmer, if she has really taken the time to understand the river, knows how the currents flow, her swim across might be entirely uneventful, might not be anything worth looking at. And if we only see her, we might say, actually, that’s not that impressive. I could do that.

Martin Gutmann [00:07:00]:
And that’s the action fallacy at work. That is our tendency to focus in on the people who make the most noise, who get wrapped up in the most drama, even if a lot of that drama was caused by themselves or could have been avoided. And there’s lots of historical examples here. The one I start off with in the book is around these famous explorers from around 100 years ago. So there’s Ernest Shackleton, an anglo irish explorer who essentially failed every time he tried to, you know, mountain expedition, sometimes spectacularly right. A lot of drama, a lot of near death, some death as well. But he’s really well remembered. There’s lots of books.

Martin Gutmann [00:07:46]:
There’s even lots of business school case studies, leadership case studies based on Ernest Shackleton. And on the other hand, we have this Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, who is, if you use any kind of objective measure, the absolute rock star of exploration. He achieved all of the goals that there were in polar exploration, the north and the South Pole, the northeast and the northwest passage, without any fuss, without any drama. And I think for that reason, we overlook him. He’s kind of been forgotten. If we look at what the authorities on these periods, the historians who actually study these periods, have to say, the leaders who were the most influential have kind of remained unseen to some extent. And what was interesting was I started finding that this is not just a conclusion that I came to as a historian, but it’s a conclusion that lots of organizational psychologists studying leadership today have arrived at as well. There’s this Babel hypothesis.

Martin Gutmann [00:08:48]:
Neil McLaren from Binghamton is a big proponent of this, which essentially says, whoever speaks the most in any organizational setting will be perceived as having the most leadership potential. It doesn’t matter what the person’s saying. And similarly, whoever does the most, whoever seems the most busy, again, signals leadership potential to us, when in fact, I think we all intuitively know that just doing a lot doesn’t mean you’re actually moving things in the right direction. You could be backpedaling, for all we know.

Hannah Beaver [00:09:22]:
I think everyone can think of an example of a leader that they have interacted with or has been a leader in their life that definitely is perhaps the loudest, as you mentioned, speaks the most, makes their presence the most known. So I think that’s definitely something that’s very relatable.

Martin Gutmann [00:09:38]:
Definitely.

Hannah Beaver [00:09:38]:
I think it’s interesting, too, you mentioned with the two examples of the polar explorers as well. Those with the best stories, as you mentioned, are the most memorable. And it also makes me think of how, you know, I just feel like as humans, we are kind of drawn towards the drama sometimes the interesting story to tell. And that is a huge reason, I’m sure, as to why we do cling on to those leaders that have the more interesting story, the ones that were flailing in the water rather than calmly navigating their way through the stream. So I think that’s such an interesting way to frame it.

Martin Gutmann [00:10:15]:
And to be fair, that’s nothing that’s not in and of itself a bad thing. Great stories are fantastic. I think the key is just to be deliberate about what we’re trying to accomplish. So if you want to make a movie about a polar explorer, I would pick Shackleton. His adventures were always much more exciting. It follows the Hollywood plot. Amundsen’s diaries are not as exciting to read. It’s a lot of humdrum.

Martin Gutmann [00:10:42]:
I planned it this way, and this is exactly how it worked out. That was not true for Shackleton and a lot of the others. So, looking for a good story? Yeah, there’s lots of great people to go to, but they might not be the people you want to look at if you’re trying to extract leadership and management lessons.

Hannah Beaver [00:10:59]:
So to kind of bring this to leadership development and organizations today, how do we solve this action fallacy that we see in organizations? And how would you say that we can apply this and really think about this in the context of leadership development?

Martin Gutmann [00:11:16]:
Well, I think there’s a couple different ways to answer that question. The first thing is to say that I think the action fallacy both applies to how we select or who we identify as having leadership potential. So it’s something we need to guard against when we are looking around for promoting somebody or picking somebody out from the crowd to lead our team or whatever it might be. But I think it’s also we’re often trained to behave this way ourselves as leader as well, because a lot of the leadership role models we have behave exactly this way, that when in doubt, do something right. If the ship is sinking, then start making a lot of noise, et cetera. It’s not always the wrong reaction. If there really is a time sensitive emergency, you can’t sit around and deliberate forever. You gotta do something.

Martin Gutmann [00:12:08]:
But very often, I think we should guard against this inclination to jump in to make noise, et cetera, especially if we want to cultivate and enable a team to actually be proactive, to work well together. If we’re always rushing in with the solutions and the answers and instructions, people will just defer to us and stop kind of thinking along. So I think that can be quite destructive, that form of leadership. The other thing I would say is that the strength of a historical perspective for leadership studies, I think, is that historians really privilege context or take a lot of time to understand the context. And I think there’s a temptation to come up with these generalizable, one size fits all leadership truths. So I think that’s the other lesson there, that we really need to understand the context that we’re in before we extract any general leadership truths.

Hannah Beaver [00:13:19]:
What do the best leaders have in common, both from a historical and contemporary standpoint? And I’d love if you could maybe break down some of the attributes that we see in the most successful leaders, again, from both a historical and contemporary standpoint.

Martin Gutmann [00:13:35]:
As I said before, I’m generally wary of these truths that apply universally. I think, again, first, understanding the context is key. And maybe one concrete example here is that in the book, I look at these explorers, Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton and a few others. I also look at the political leaders during the Second World War kind of profile, the role that Winston Churchill played in creating a winning strategy and a winning alliance in that conflict. And in Churchill’s case, communication is, it’s not the only key to success, but it’s one of them, right? He’s both coordinating the work of lots of different government offices in the military, et cetera. So it’s a communication challenge, right? You have to get all these people aligned around your vision and kind of understanding the tasks that you are putting to them. So he really is a master communicator, and that’s something he takes advantage of, of course, also his communication to the population as a whole. But from that, I wouldn’t extract communication as the sort of the key that every leader needs to perfect in every scenario.

Martin Gutmann [00:14:47]:
Because if you look at Amundsen, he’s leading a crew of six or seven later on in his expeditions, a few more. But these are kind of really small teams in very confined quarters. Of course, he still has to communicate with them, but it’s an entirely different communication channel from what we can glean from the people who are around him. He wasn’t a particularly good communicator. Kind of had an awkward style of speaking. His writing isn’t that captivating. If we’re perfectly honest, that was not the key to his success, but it didn’t have to be either. With that said, I think something a lot of great leaders have in common is that they find a balance between confidence and humility.

Martin Gutmann [00:15:30]:
And incidentally, this is not something that I’m the first to highlight. A lot of contemporary research highlights this as well. And being too far on one or the other end of the spectrum is not productive for you as a leader. If you’re overconfident, that’s, of course, no good. You need to have a little bit of humility. You need to accept and acknowledge the fact that you might not have all the right answers in all the circumstances, and your first opinion may be wrong, etcetera. So having a little bit of doubt, I think, is quite healthy, but too much of that. On the other hand, if you second guess everything you do and say, and you’re too worried about what other people are going to think, that’s not good either.

Martin Gutmann [00:16:15]:
So you really need to thread the needle there between confidence and humility, and here maybe to make a link to contemporary scenarios. There was a great paper just a few years ago by Basima Tefik, who is a professor at MIT, and she found that medical students who have a little bit of doubt, who have a little bit of imposter syndrome aren’t sure, do I really have what it takes to be a doctor? They actually did no worse in diagnosing patients correctly than the medical students who had no doubt about their capabilities. However, those with a little bit of doubt with imposter syndrome were rated much higher by the patients in areas like professionalism, empathy, etcetera. I think there’s a strong case to be made for this need for some humility. Empathy, the skillset and emotional intelligence. Yeah, exactly.

Hannah Beaver [00:17:13]:
Yeah. I guess my follow up question to you, and I guess we’ve kind of just covered this, but I’m thinking of those listening to our conversation today, that their role is to create leadership development programs at their organization. And part of that is going to be around focusing on core skills and which competencies to develop amongst rising leaders and existing leaders, too. You know, we’ve touched on two of them. I know we talked about communication with exception, you know, not just the blanket communication, and we’ve just gone over emotional intelligence. I’m curious if there are any other skills that you can think of. Again, feel free to use examples, both historical or contemporary. Any other skills that if you were in their shoes creating this leadership development program, that you’d think, this is a key skill that I’ve seen across history and across contemporary examples that really is applicable and universally is a skill that we should be developing in leaders today.

Hannah Beaver [00:18:11]:
Do you have one or two skills that you would share there?

Martin Gutmann [00:18:14]:
Well, I think another one that we find in a lot of successful leaders, both of the past and today, is a contextual fluency, a deep familiarity with the area that they’re working in, especially if we’re thinking in more complex endeavors like politics, like leading large companies, et cetera. I do think a lot of leadership, a lot of the leadership toolkit is transferable. If you’re a good communicator in one area, you can probably, with slight changes or adjustments, be a good communicator in another area as well. Empathy, I think, transfers well, but those things are often not enough. You really need a fundamental understanding for the problems and the challenges that you are facing in the industry or the scenarios that you find yourselves in. I saw this, the historical leaders I looked at who were very successful in their arenas, the explorers Churchill. And I also look at Gertrude Bell, who, the primary facilitator of arab independence in the aftermath of the first world War. They had all spent a lifetime trying to understand.

Martin Gutmann [00:19:29]:
They really had a passion for this area that they would later work in and be so influential in. And I think that’s not to be underestimated because often good leadership involves creating structures or creating a work culture that aligns with the challenges that you’re facing. And that’s not something you can replicate from somewhere else. You really need to understand the environment you’re in. And interestingly, here, too, there is contemporary research on this as well. I immediately think of the book by Amanda Goodall, who’s a professor at work in the UK, the power of expert leaders. So she looks at doctors who become administrators, for hospitals tend to do better than administrators who are not doctors. University administrators who come from the academic side tend to lead the universities better by all metrics that we have coaches who are players themselves, etcetera.

Martin Gutmann [00:20:26]:
So there really is something to be said for somebody whos fluent in the area that theyre working in.

Hannah Beaver [00:20:32]:
Great. And what would you say makes leadership more difficult today compared to in the past in historical examples that weve talked about?

Martin Gutmann [00:20:44]:
I mean, this is a question we could debate endlessly. Is our current point in time unique or are the challenges we face today with AIH, with the climate catastrophe, with geopolitical tensions around the world? Are we at some kind of unique moment in time? Some things point to yes, I mean, there are some things that truly are. It’s the first time we’re seeing them as a human race. But many things, I would say, while not in the details the same, have a lot of echoes of the past. So the term that’s really in vogue these days, or has been for the last decade, is vuca. To describe an environment as variable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. And that does capture the world today quite well. Right.

Martin Gutmann [00:21:33]:
A lot of things we take for granted today are different tomorrow. It’s like a constantly evolving landscape. Churchill used all four of the vuca words to describe the challenge he faced during the second world war. He just never put them together and called it vuca. But if you look at his writing, they’re all there. They’re there for a reason, because this was the reality of what he was facing as well. So I think if we look historically, there are periods of stability and there are periods of instability, of kind of a Vuca world. And I think leadership is, of course, unlike management, which is kind of how do we deal with the predictable things, the things that are complex but predictable.

Martin Gutmann [00:22:14]:
We create budgets, we create organizational charts. That’s where we use our management toolkit. Leadership is, of course, exactly for these times where there is a lot of uncertainty. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So I think if we look at the flow of time, there are times where there are organizations or moments when you could really manage your way through this, and other times where it’s really a leadership challenge. And I think we’re definitely in a leadership moment again, whether we’re talking about industry or politics or society in general. And what is unique about today, I would say, is that the pace of change is truly unique, where the capabilities of generative eye for example, that we saw just last year have been fundamentally transformed in a year. And next year is probably going to be the same and the same with the climate crisis.

Martin Gutmann [00:23:08]:
I think we’re used to it both in industry and in policy to plan in quarter century timeframes. If were going to build new bridges and roads, thats not something you do overnight. But our environment is changing so rapidly that we do need to find ways to be a bit quicker about it. So I think those are characteristics of the present day that are truly unique.

Hannah Beaver [00:23:35]:
I wanted to bring up a statistic that you opened your book with. You shared that in 2011, us companies spent $14 billion, billion dollars on leadership development. By 2018, seven years later, that number increased to $50 billion. So like you mentioned, leadership is very much in vogue. I mean it’s always been, you know, a popular topic, but it’s very much a focus. And I think obviously you mentioned, you know, the concept of Vuca and how everything is changing. There’s always some sort of crisis to manage or everything is changing at such a rapid pace. And so I’d be curious to hear what are you seeing in terms of trends and which way this is going? Are you seeing more organizations investing more? Have you observed any shifts in the way that we’re approaching leadership just in the past few years, perhaps post pandemic even? Anything you’re noticing right now that’s particularly glamorous, trendy, those new terms that you found interesting that you’d like to share.

Martin Gutmann [00:24:37]:
The trend is upwards, right? Companies and organizations are spending more on leadership development. Depends on which report you consult. You’ll arrive at slightly different numbers for the global investment there. But it’s certainly something that remains a hot topic. And I would say for good reasons. We need better leadership capabilities in organizations and politics, in society, not just because the world is complex, but I think also because this is a very good thing. The standards that we expect have increased. I think in the sixties and the seventies there were a lot of unhealthy work environments, certainly if you were not a white man, and thats no longer acceptable for good reason.

Martin Gutmann [00:25:19]:
But that means we need more and we need better leaders who can lead in an empathetic and inclusive way. So I think the investment, I dont think its a fad. I think its a good thing that people are investing in it and it is something that can be learned.

Hannah Beaver [00:25:34]:
If you had to distill all of your knowledge and research on leadership into one piece of advice, what would that be?

Martin Gutmann [00:25:40]:
One of the things that one of the running coaches I really like has said that I think applies to leadership as well, is that it really is an experiment of one. That is, I can use all these insights and all this data and all these tips, but my body is different from everybody else’s and the terrain I run on and it’s all unique to me. And so at the end of the day, I have to be willing to kind of run this continual experiment on myself and with myself. It doesn’t make sense for me to invent or kind of experiment my way forwards to the best nutrition. It makes sense for me to consult all the science that’s out there. But I have to be open to the fact that it might not work with me the way it did for most of the people in the study that I’m reading, etcetera. It is an experiment with me and I have to continually try these things out and see how does it work in my environment. I think that’s the best approach to leadership development as well, that there are a lot of truths out there, but it’s about one human relating to other humans, and we are all unique and you really have to find the way that fits best with who you are and the people that you’re around to.

Hannah Beaver [00:26:59]:
Kind of take theory to practice. Again, how can we develop powerful leaders at our organization? And I’d love to ask this in the context of in your book, you mention what we call in business innovation literature, the reframe. So could you dig a little bit into what the reframe is, why we need to reframe our thinking about leadership, and how we can then go on and develop powerful leaders within our organizations?

Martin Gutmann [00:27:24]:
The reframe comes from design thinking literature that came out of the Stanford design school a decade, two decades ago. And it’s this idea that at the start of an innovation journey, you should really question the assumptions that you bring to the table and question the assumptions you have regarding the problem that you’re looking at. And maybe there’s a. A healthier and truer way of looking at this issue. Can you reframe it? And that’s essentially what I’m trying to do with the action fallacy. It’s trying to reframe who we see as the people with the most leadership potential, who are best in the best position to develop into strong leaders. And so there, I think it’s a matter of unbiasing ourselves. We need to stop looking always for the loudest people, for the white Mendez, the people who are kind of making a lot of noise and trying to find those who actually maybe in more subtle and quiet ways, are moving their teams or enabling a team culture that promotes true collaboration and promotes collaborative solutions to the problem that a team is facing.

Hannah Beaver [00:28:37]:
I’d love to dig into the point that you make around we tend to kind of put on a pedestal and promote those individuals that are perhaps louder. The, I believe you called it captains of crisis at one point in the book that love to have a crisis, resolve the crisis, perhaps be a little bit louder and more in your face, if you will, about their leadership capabilities, what they’re doing, and showing that to the team. So who should we be looking to among teams that perhaps exemplify stellar leadership qualities, but perhaps aren’t as loud about it? Where should we be looking and how should we be looking for those types of people?

Martin Gutmann [00:29:14]:
I think, to be honest, it’s not just a matter of looking in different places, but it’s a matter of creating a different culture in your organization. So I think it starts with hiring. I’m not an expert in HR policies and hiring, but I know there are a lot of biases. And if we tend to put in these action oriented words in job ads, we need somebody who can drive change, who is powerful this and that. You’re going to get a lot of these kind of action oriented men applying for the job, and those are also the people you’re going to hire because they fit the description that you wrote yourself. So unbiasing ourselves starts with how we hire people in the first place. It doesn’t even have to be in leadership roles. But I also think if you have a culture in which people who are always solving a crisis get rewarded, get the most attention, what you’re going to end up with is an environment, an organization in which there’s always lots of crises, or people are always describing things as a crisis.

Martin Gutmann [00:30:11]:
And I don’t think creating a crisis.

Hannah Beaver [00:30:12]:
If you will, exactly.

Martin Gutmann [00:30:14]:
Yeah. And as you mentioned before, I refer to some of these action oriented types as captains of crisis. In my book, they’re always finding themselves in a crisis because they failed to plan properly or failed to circumvent it when it first appeared, or they’re simply just describing things with a sense of urgency that might not even be necessary because they’ve learned this is how I get get the attention from my boss. So it kind of starts with the culture that you said, who gets rewarded, whether that’s monetarily, but perhaps even more so in recognized. When we’re debriefing a situation, who do we applaud? The person who jumped in and put out the fire, but maybe cause themselves, or the person who always delivers on time and under budget, but without a lot of fanfare. So I think it starts there. And I was also gonna say, we were talking before about leadership development. I think a lot of that also has to do with the climate, with the culture in an organization.

Martin Gutmann [00:31:14]:
So if there’s not psychological safety, if people feel like, I can’t make mistakes, I can’t take risks, that will really hamper the leadership potential and the leadership development that you have in the team, because people will be really busy trying not to mess up, or if they do mess up, having you not notice it and they’re trying to conform, when, in fact, maybe what they can contribute might not look exactly the same way that your leadership style does, but it fit perfectly with the team that they’re leading. So the psychological safety, I think, is key as well. It’s, of course, easier said than done.

Hannah Beaver [00:31:52]:
Yeah, I agree. We went to a conference a few months back, and we asked folks at the conference who are all leadership, leadership development and learning and development and HR professionals, about kind of the most important attributes that they believe that a leader should possess. And psychological safety popped up a lot, you know? And, as you said, easier said than done. We all want to create that psychological safety on a team, but it’s clearly something that, you know, is extremely important and allows teams to thrive under leaders that can create that psychological safety. So it’s definitely something that I hear and talk about a lot and definitely agree with you on. Okay, my last question for you, and I know we don’t necessarily like to pick favorites around here, and everything comes within context, but I’m curious, do you have a favorite leader that you’ve studied or one leader that you believe everyone should try to emulate as they progress on their own leadership journey or elevating others into their leadership journeys?

Martin Gutmann [00:32:52]:
I’m gonna pick somebody who’s, I guess, kind of a historical figure by this point, but still a bit contemporary. It’s Bill Cartwright. Do you know who that is?

Hannah Beaver [00:32:59]:
I don’t. Please tell me.

Martin Gutmann [00:33:00]:
Most people probably don’t. I will tell you who Bill Cartwright is. So this is a bit of a longer story, but I’ll try to keep it. Keep it somewhat brief. So, Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls in the early 1980s. I think it was 83 or 84. High performer from day one. Right.

Martin Gutmann [00:33:18]:
A scoring average that I think some people have surpassed but is hard to surpass. But the Bulls weren’t winning championships. Phil Jackson comes on board as the coach in round 85, plus, minus and one change that Phil Jackson as the coach makes, that really enables the Bulls to become this dominant, this fantastic team that wins six championships in the nineties. It’s a phenomenal feat, right? Is that he promotes Bill Cartwright, who is, by this point, if I can be honest, a bad basketball player. He’s got a bad knee. He’s totally past his prime, doesn’t hit many shots. In fact, Michael Jordan often singled him out in practice. Michael Jordan was really hard on people.

Martin Gutmann [00:34:08]:
He singled out Bill Cartwright in practice and would say, if you passed Bill, I’m never going to pass to you again. That’s something Jordan actually said. Phil Jackson makes Bill Cartwright co captain with Michael Jordan.

Hannah Beaver [00:34:20]:
Wow.

Martin Gutmann [00:34:21]:
And that season, they start winning and win their first championship. So this is in about 1991. And so what is it that Bill Cartwright has? Right. He’s not the greatest basketball player anymore. He has this ability to relate to all of the other players. He’s very empathetic. He kind of creates an environment of psychological safety and to balance out. I think the other thing you need for a high performance team is this emphasis on performance, on always wanting to win, which Michael Jordan has.

Martin Gutmann [00:34:55]:
But together they’re this perfect combination of on the court leaders. But of course, we tend to zero in on Michael Jordan. He’s an amazing athlete, so why not? But Bill Cartwright’s kind of the forgotten, the forgotten hero of the Chicago Bulls. And that, I think, makes him one of my favorite leaders.

Hannah Beaver [00:35:15]:
I love that. We love an underdog story, too. So I’ll definitely have to look him up after this conversation. Great. Well, thank you very much for your time and insights today. I certainly learned a lot. I really enjoyed hearing the historical examples and how we can apply them in the modern context. So thank you very much for your insights today.

Martin Gutmann [00:35:35]:
Thank you so much, Anna. It was a pleasure.

Hannah Beaver [00:35:38]:
For more from Martin Gutmann, check out the show notes for a link to his book, The Unseen Leader. For more from How To Make A Leader, make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’ll be back next month and every month with another L&D expert. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time on How To Make A Leader.

What can the leaders of the past teach us about leadership in the present?

In this episode of How to Make a Leader, historian and management professor Martin Gutmann challenges our conventional understanding of leadership with a look back at leaders throughout history. In many organizations, we often associate leadership with the loudest voices or the most dramatic actions, but Martin argues that true leadership is often unseen and underestimated. Drawing from his book The Unseen Leader, Martin uses historical examples to demonstrate how the most impactful leaders are often those who move quietly and strategically behind the scenes.

In this episode, Martin pulls insights and lessons from historical figures and contemporary leadership studies, highlighting the need to rethink how we identify and cultivate leadership talent today.

You’ll learn:

• The most common traits among successful leaders
• How the “action fallacy” misguides leadership selection and development
• Why contextual fluency is a crucial leadership skill to develop
• The importance of psychological safety
• How to identify and support effective leaders within your team

Things to listen for:

(00:00) Introduction to Martin Gutmann
(01:58) What history teaches us about leadership
(05:52) The action fallacy and its impact on leadership
(15:02) The common traits among successful leaders
(20:10) The value of deep familiarity in your field as a leader
(29:22) How to develop powerful leaders in our organization
(31:08) How to identify and support quiet but effective leaders

To learn more about Martin and his work, check out his website or order Martin’s book, The Unseen Leader: How History Can Help us Rethink Leadership.