A Lesson in the Fury

What James Cagney and George Costanza taught me about Leadership

I’ve worked for some colorful people over the years and have tried to glean what lessons I can from each experience. One incident and how it played out stands out in my mind as it showed me true leadership under the most unexpected circumstances. Here’s that story…

The time and place are not important but my team and I had an incredible amount of work to accomplish to meet a critical deadline. We’d worked long hours for many months to develop and launch a brand-new system. Early mornings, dinner at the office, working past when the building air conditioning would turn off, and then a car service home only to turn around and do it again the next day. Weekends too. For months. That’s just what you do early in your career.

This was a high visibility project and we’d been crunching for months to get it over the line. The launch moment came and yada yada yada it was a complete fail. We’d missed a weird corner case that resulted in a highly visible outage right at the critical moment. An absolute gut-punch. The team was devastated and what happened next caught us completely off guard.

That afternoon the boss called a few of us together. We figured it was to discuss corrective actions, ask how we’d missed what we’d missed and maybe to do a mini retrospective. We were ready for that but instead the boss wasn’t interested. He wanted to see how we were feeling. We were exhausted and morale was low. We knew we’d failed and we each individually felt terrible but the boss met us with open hands. He wanted to ensure we were psychologically and emotionally ok. He asked how he could help? He vocalized what we were secretly thinking, that we’d all be fired, and assured us our jobs were safe. This boss acknowledged our effort and made us feel seen. He provided support in our weakest moment and although physically exhausted from months of burning the midnight oil we walked out of there restored, rejuvenated, brimming with confidence and eager to get back to work and fix the issues that had tripped us up during launch.

In the movie “ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938)” Jimmy Cagney plays Rocky Sullivan, a hardened gangster, tough as nails with no regard for the law. Rocky is adored by the local street kids who look to him as a role model. To a kid with limited opportunities in a gritty New York neighborhood Rocky’s path represents a way out. Rocky is ultimately faced with a choice. Grappling with his natural instincts versus his influence on the next generation he makes a decision in how to behave and carry himself at a critical moment in his life. Go watch the movie, then come back and read the rest of this…

And now the truth; That story I told? That was a lie. Not the part about the deliverable and the months of crunch, that was all true but rather the part about how the boss handled it. That didn’t happen. Let me tell you what really happened. It’s burned in my memory for so many reasons.

After our epic fail the boss pulled the whole team together in our shared space. Not just the leads, but the full team. He closed the door in silence, and then proceeded to unleash the full force of his wrath on us for over an hour. He called people out by name. He threatened firing. He talked about our Visa status! He slammed the desk, the wall, and indulged all his frustrations in a visceral display of anger. He roared. He ranted. He raved. It was performative. We were all stunned and unable to really respond. And he wasn’t interested anyway. That went on for over an hour, to the point where I marveled at the stamina. That’s what actually happened. It was cruel and ultimately pretty sad.

As I watched that boss rant and rave, I went into a disassociation where I could feel myself watching the whole thing play out, outside myself.

To me this was not a display of strength but of weakness. This was a weak person, resorting to their most base emotions. Anger. Frustration. This wasn’t a leader. This wasn’t a professional. This was a privileged man-child flailing about in a position of authority which they had no objective qualification to hold. In that hour they lost the respect of the entire team. Things were never fully the same and I think most of us decided to leave the team and company in that moment.

I decided to rewrite this moment in my life and reverse it. Like George Costanza; what would that moment have been like if they’d behaved the EXACT opposite of their instincts? What would’ve happened in the days and weeks thereafter?

There is a Lesson in Everything and as much as we learn good habits through experiences we can also learn the opposite; What NOT to do. How NOT to behave.

I won’t say I’ve never lost my temper or been frustrated in life or work, I most certainly have. I’m a work in progress. To steal from my friend Taq; “frustration is natural but we ought to be frustrated at the problem not the people.”

Life is hard, projects are challenging and involve risk and sooner or later things go wrong. When they do I try to keep that boss in mind. Reject your base instincts. Find objectivity. We all want to succeed but it’s up to the leader to own the failures and protect the team because just like in the movies, people are always watching.

P.S. Go watch “ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938)” - James should’ve won the Oscar.