The Case of the Classic Co-Leaders
from Summer 1999
by David A. Heenan and Warren Bennis
In their Co-Leaders: The Power of Great Partnerships, David A. Heenan and Warren Bennis describe a variety of such arrangements, not only in business but in politics, sports, and social work. In one chapter they turn to fiction, examining the great partnership that enabled Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to detect together. Excerpts:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle conceived Holmes and Watson as very different halves of a successful whole—in short, as classic co-leaders. The stolid, level-headed Dr. Watson was the perfect counterpoint and complement to the sometimes overpowering and unnaturally brilliant Sherlock Holmes. Watson is predictable, where Holmes is unconventional; Holmes cerebral, where Watson is physical; Watson is disciplined, while Holmes indulges his many whims. Watson exudes humanity, while Holmes is as coldly logical and as above the tug of human emotions as “Star Trek’s” Mr. Spock. Each brings different assets to their partnership, allowing both to succeed where one might fail, not unlike such real-life co-leaders as Intel’s brilliant but prickly chairman, Andy Grove, and his less volatile but no less talented CEO, Craig Barrett.
Mutual respect—one of the hallmarks of genuine co-leadership—is key to the bond between Holmes and Watson. “For this to succeed, Watson has to be a person one can visualize sharing lodgings with Holmes over many years,” literary historian Michael Pointer points out. “He must be able to tolerate Holmes, with all his idiosyncrasies, and be tolerable to Holmes.”
Watson also serves as a useful sounding board in the course of solving various mysteries. Regarding the facts of one case, Holmes tells Watson: “I shall enumerate them to you, for nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.”
Only rarely does Holmes praise his co-leader. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes says, “Really, Watson, you excel yourself … I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements, you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light.”
Watson knows how important he is in their enterprise. But like other great, more modest co-leaders, he has the ego to let Holmes have the glory. In one of the last stories, Watson describes his role in the partnership: “As an institution, I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books … But apart from this I had uses. I was the whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence…. If I irritated him by a certain methodological slowness in my mentality, that invitation served only to make his own flame-like intentions and impressions flash up more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance.”
Excerpted from Co-Leaders: The Power of Great Partnerships. Copyright © 1999 by David A. Heenan and Warren Bennis. Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. To order a copy call 1-800-CALL WILEY or visit the Wiley website at www.wiley.com.
