The Rubber Band Theory of Leadership

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Adam Cheers: I'm very energetic, as you might hear. And I'm also good at making decisions and making them quickly. In that period, it was the flip side of my strengths. But I'm moving so fast that I'm not recognizing how to move them down into the organization or across to other people. It's the rubber band theory of leadership. The culture of a organization is the worst behavior you tolerate. We'd be in a wonderful place if the worst thing that happened is that the boss sometimes interrupts you. He says we have an institution every Wednesday morning reviewing our deaths and major complications for the patterns underlay them.

Renowned surgeon Atul Gawande spends his days in the operating theater and his nights writing articles for The New Yorker and bestselling books like Being Mortal. Today on the show, he tells our curator Adam Grant how he balances his passions for different fields, why he works with a coach, and how he's helping the White House end our current pandemic — and prevent the next one.

This is an episode of ReThinking with Adam Grant from the TED Audio Collective. For more episodes on how great minds don't think alike, follow ReThinking wherever you're listening to this.

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