About this episode
Look around you and you'll be inundated with — let's face it — dicks. [A montage of clips plays: "Immigrants, on the whole, create—" "Come on, try getting it out. Try getting it out." "I don't know if you're going to put this on television, but you don't even know what you're talking about."]
We're taught a lot about the multidisciplinary team and how important each member is — but that's not always the experience in the real world. What I really want to know is: do you need to be a dick to be a good leader? So I'm on a mission to ask this question of everyone I admire in medicine. Eric Topol is in the top ten most cited doctors in the history of medicine, and was commissioned by the UK Health Secretary to write the Topol Review. Here's what he said — and I've left some of the awkwardness of asking the question in, for your listening pleasure.
In this conversation
- Topol's verdict on the podcast's signature question: no, you don't need to be a dick to lead — and the fine line between challenging dogma and being nasty.
- The distinction that matters — be aggressive about pursuing the truth and standing up for your beliefs, but never hostile or full of animus.
- Why reputation is the real constraint: "that kind of image doesn't go away." Behave badly on repeat and you get branded, permanently.
- His practical discipline: sleep-deprived and ready to lose it, he bites his tongue and doesn't send the email — because he won't project that image.
- A two-minute Leadership Short lifted from the full episode 20 interview, with the awkwardness of actually asking the question left in.
Transcript AI-generated
Do you need to be a dick to be a good leader? Do you need to be a—
A dick, to be a good leader. A dick?
Yeah.
You mean a nasty person, or—
Exactly.
“You can be a nice person, and you shouldn't be a dick. You have to be someone willing to challenge dogma and stand out for your beliefs — but respectfully.”
Eric
Oh. No, no — I don't think so. Not at all. You can be a nice person, and you shouldn't be a dick — at least the way the connotation works for me. You have to be someone who's willing to challenge dogma, to stand out in terms of your beliefs — but respectfully. You shouldn't be nasty about it. So there's a fine line here. You want to be aggressive in pursuing your interests and your proof — telling the truth, telling it like it is, standing up for what you believe. But you don't want to be doing things that are seen as hostile, or that show animus. That won't help you at all.
There is a fine line, because you can't just lay down and fail to pursue your mission. But if you're perceived as a nasty person, that'll be ruinous. That kind of image doesn't go away. If you're seen as not having respect for others, and you do it on a repetitive basis, you'll be branded as a bad person — so you don't want to go there.
I've had times when I've been sleep-deprived and stressed out and ready to really lose it, and I've had to bite my tongue: you will not send the email, or whatever it is — because you just don't want to project that image. It's a bad image.
You can listen to episode 20 of this podcast to hear the full interview. And if you've been enjoying the podcast, please consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thank you.