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What we can learn from Blackbeard
Sometimes good ideas can be found in the most unlikely places. I was recently reminded of that when I came across an article, “What Pirates Can Teach Us About Leadership,” by my HBS colleague Francesca Gino.1
We usually think of the pirates of yore as being lawless and brutal. That was certainly the case in their predatory attacks on merchant vessels. But according to Fran, their principles and practices on their own skull-and-crossbone ships were quite the opposite. She says that pirates like Blackbeard who prowled the Atlantic in the seventeen-hundreds practiced “a revolutionary form of democracy.” Doing so was a practical necessity.
“To keep the ship running smoothly for months on end and discourage revolt, pirates voted on who should be captain, set limits on his power, and guaranteed crew members a say in the ship’s affairs.”
Instilling these values and principles kept crewmembers from being, quite literally, at one another’s throats. Fran says that Blackbird’s ship was “arguably more progressive and equitable than American or English society at that time.”
Jump forward to the present day. There’s growing awareness that top-down, my-way-or-the-highway leadership stifles trust, commitment, and creativity.2 Pirate captains, at least some of them, apparently realized this centuries ago.
Fran concludes:
“Our work lives would be markedly different if we embraced the same way of thinking, asking ourselves on a day-to-day basis the same question Blackbeard would: Am I the captain that my crew would choose as its leader today? This powerful question can center our attention and energy on the very conditions that will help everyone on our crew thrive—and make the conquests that matter.”
Housekeeping
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Fran is the author of Rebel Talent: Why it pays to break the rules at work and in life.
See the burgeoning work on “adaptive leadership” designed to foster collaboration. A good place to start is Ronald Heifitz’s The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World.