Foreward
Fair warning: If you haven’t yet seen the new Top Gun movie – and plan to – you may not want to read this post quite yet. I’m not digging too much into the weeds of the movie, but some details of the movie are mentioned, so, read on at your own risk. If you haven’t watched it… Go watch it (because it’s awesome) & then come back.
Background
Here is a brief background of the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it but is still curious about this post. Tom Cruise or ‘Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell’ returns to Top Gun, which is an elite fighter pilot program, but this time as an instructor. During the movie, Tom Cruise is set to train a new group of young & determined fighter pilots and then hand-pick a select few to carry out a seemingly impossible mission at the end of the movie. Throughout the movie, you meet and get to know most of these young fighter pilots – some a little more than others. This is where you meet Hangman & Rooster.
Now The Actual Post
As mentioned, throughout this movie you see several young fighter pilots training, and auditioning to an extent, for the opportunity to be picked to go out on this big mission. Although they are all going for the same goal, a few of them take very different approaches. Two of the main characters that get the most attention are ‘Rooster’ (Myles Teller) & ‘Hangman’ (Glenn Powell).
Hangman. Hangman is the obvious ‘Alpha’ of the group. From the beginning of the movie & throughout, both inside the aircraft and outside of the aircraft, his character oozes unmatched confidence. During the movie, Hangman shows time and time again that he is the most skilled pilot in the group, and everyone in the group seems to know that – especially Hangman. Although undeniably skilled, Hangman is what is known in sports as a ‘Me-Guy’. Throughout a majority of the training exercises in the movie, Hangman constantly passes the challenges with flying colors and in a dominant fashion but there is one issue… His team doesn’t. Hangman is seemingly unconcerned with his team’s lack of success and constantly tells his teammates and the instructor that ‘they will have to learn to keep up’ if they want to roll with him.
Rooster. Rooster is seemingly the group favorite in the movie. From the very beginning of the movie, you can tell that he is well-liked among his peers, social, well-known, and also a very good fighter pilot. There is also some perceived tension between Rooster and Maverick, but that doesn’t necessarily relate to the point of this post so I will let you watch and see that on your own. Throughout their training, Rooster makes it a point in every mission to make sure that his team members always finished together, although I am sure he could finish ahead of them if he wanted. This seems honorable but there is one issue… His team doesn’t always finish the mission within the time constraints. They finish together, but they fail together. Another issue that Rooster seems to continually run into is his abundance of self-doubt and his limiting commitment to do everything ‘by the book’.
So that begs the question – Who is right? When you are trying to form a team or trying to become a leader yourself… Do you want to be Hangman? Or do you want to be Rooster? On one hand, you get to be the alpha. Everyone wants to be the alpha. You are better than everyone else and you know it, and they know it. When you work within a team, you continue to pursue self-improvement without consideration of others in hopes that they learn to keep up. If they can, you can potentially build a very high-functioning team… but if they can’t, you may lose the trust and respect of your team which will inevitably lead to its downfall. On the other hand, you can be the ultimate team player. You get to be the person that everyone likes – and who doesn’t enjoy being liked? When you work within a team, everyone in the team knows that you are down there with them, and you aren’t going anywhere. Win or lose, you are there. The only issue with this is… people don’t enjoy losing. In the real world, teams also tend to die out if they aren’t performing well enough. So, who is right?
Herein lies a few of the many dichotomies of leadership & success. You have to be some combination of both to lead successfully, and this combination varies. In the book ‘Extreme Ownership’ by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin, two former US Navy Seals, they discuss several leadership dichotomies that are present here in the comparison of Rooster & Hangman. A few of these are noted below.
- A leader must be confident, but not cocky.
- A leader must be attentive to details, but not obsessed with them.
- A leader should be close with the team, but not too close.
- A leader should be humble, but not passive.
You can’t be the full-blown alpha male without any consideration for the performance of the rest of your team, because when there is leadership required, that means that there are followers. No matter how good you do, it doesn’t matter if your team as a whole, fails. You also can’t be the lackluster and self-doubting leader that cares more about the feelings of the team rather than the team’s success because contrary to popular belief, winning matters. Sure, you may be well-liked, and the team has a good time… But in the real world, a majority of the time the team will cease to exist if the team doesn’t perform. So… What is the correct combination? What is the winning formula for the ideal, successful leader?
The answer is that there is no concrete answer. This is a dynamic question in which the answer changes depending on a few factors. A few of these factors are the environment you are in and the people you are leading. In some environments, performance is the driving factor and is often a necessity. In these environments, typically you are leading very high-performance people that thrive off of intense leadership and can be inspired by the ‘Alpha’. But even in these environments, you have to have a little bit of Rooster in you. You have to consider your team and ensure they are with you because even the most high-performing people still need leadership and need to know that their leader is with them. In some environments, the intensity is not as high. The people you are leading aren’t there to be intense, and likewise, they don’t want an intense leader. They do not respond well to aggressive leadership. These environments are more suited for a Rooster. They prefer a leader that lets them know that they are with them, who leads with positivity, and who follows the rulebook. Similarly, the leader of this environment could still use a little Hangman. There comes a point in time when any team leader is going to have to lead from the front and make some tough decisions, and it is hard to do that when you aren’t confident and are entrenched at the same level as your employees. There is nothing wrong with either environment – you just have to know which one you are in.
In reality, most teams have a combination of all types of team members. Some will like to be led with intensity and aggressiveness and some with compassion and calmness. One of the most necessary skills of a leader is to be able to view these two ends of the spectrum on a sliding scale and to be able to change proportions depending on where and who you are leading at the time.
Sometimes you have to be a Hangman, sometimes you have to be a Rooster. Learn to be able to slide the scale.
