I’ve been reading entertainment agent Ari Emanuel’s newly released memoir, Roll the Calls.

And it’s certainly a fun read if, like me, you have an interest in the intersection of business and media/arts/entertainment.

But while enjoying it, I also couldn’t help but waver between admiration for his path to success and discomfort with his particular brand of leadership.

If you’ve watched the HBO show Entourage in the early 2000’s, Emanuel was the basis of Jeremy Piven’s excitable, angry and “take no prisoners” character Ari Gold.

In real life, Emanuel has built an extraordinary career in entertainment, not just as Hollywood’s most successful agent to celebrities, but as a CEO as well, of the parent company of the UFC and WWE, among other enterprises.

He also is quite proud of his lifelong propensity for rage, seeing its merits in a willingness to fight, refuse, push back, and make himself difficult to ignore. As he writes in the very first pages of his book, many of his loyal clients refer to himself as their “ragent” and mean that as a compliment.

Now, depending on which side of the table you’re on, you’re likely to have varying perspectives on whether Emanuel is a fierce advocate or a toxic bully.

And this is a dynamic I came to reflect on, from both my experiences working for leaders in corporate life, and as a trusted coach to CEOs and senior leaders.

I once worked for someone very much like Emanuel. He was a leader in his industry’s niche, a sought after expert in the media and financially well off. But he also was someone who was very good at buttering up clients and external audiences while berating employees, often in humiliating and upsetting ways.

His company was privately held with no outside investors or a board. There wasn’t an HR officer or a higher-up to go to when things got toxic. He was successful because his clients loved him, as did the media he gave commentary to, because he treated them like royalty. But they didn’t know what went on in the office or how many times his staff turned over, replaced by the next eager apprentice.

After a few months on the job I was too exhausted by the anxiety of working there and quit with no other opportunities in hand. Most of my colleagues weren’t as bothered and were unwilling to give up a chance to hopefully follow in his footsteps.

Deep inside, I knew he wasn’t a leader I wanted to follow, but at the same time I kept asking myself, “why couldn’t I just tolerate him while everyone else seemingly could? And why did I feel like such a failure?”

In making this comparison to Emanuel as a boss, I don’t claim that that his employees suffered at all like I did. But in reading how he saw rage as his strength in reaching such levels of power and success, his book brought an old question back into focus for me:

What are we supposed to make of leaders who violate so much of what we teach about leadership, and keep succeeding?

As an executive coach, I encourage leaders to listen, build trust, and make it possible for people to disagree with them. In most settings, this matters for sustained followership of the leader and for inspiring high performance of teams at scale.

Our profession often makes this implicit promise: treat people well, and you’ll succeed; treat them badly, and eventually you’ll pay for it.

But is that really true? I’m not so sure.

Someone can build a valuable company and make working there miserable.

These days, we see countless executives in the finance and tech world creating wealth for investors while leaving employees anxious and exhausted.

And whatever your politics, there are stories of leaders on both sides of the aisle who get on TV or introduce policies meant to inspire meaningful change, then suddenly are outed as diva-like bosses who treat their staff like dirt.

There’s no doubt the achievements of such successful people are real, but so is the damage. It just depends on where you sit in relation to them that determines how offended you are.

Some might feel like I did, needing urgently to get out of the orbit of a toxic leader. But many others will take the side of such a leader, believing that their success is in itself evidence of effective leadership.

To that end, I came across some interesting research related to this. In a 2024 study (Lount Jr., Choi, Tepper) researchers looked at how a leader’s performance influenced employees’ interpretations of abusive supervision.

Higher performance made employees less willing to label the leader an abuser. So their outward success made employees more likely to describe the behavior as “tough love.”

This leaves the person on the receiving end of leadership that feels toxic to some but is seen as “having high standards” by others, in a difficult spot.

You start to think, is this the price we have to pay in order to work with exceptionally successful people? And worse, you start to use their accomplishments as evidence against your own experience.

Of course, it’s not that anger makes someone a villain. We all have the capacity to feel rage as well as the choice on what to do with it. Indeed, without anger, many injustices may never be eradicated.

But there’s a difference between having someone fight for you and having to protect yourself from them.

And this is why when we think about “effective leadership”, we must ask ourselves, “effective for whom?”

When a client gets an extraordinary advocate and an investor gets an excellent return, we don’t often see the employees in the entertainment agency, law firm or private equity fund who may be enduring constant berating and bullying while the leader enjoys the praise.

The CEO or senior executive can often be seen as a hero, a mentor, and a trusted advisor by one stakeholder and an absolute nightmare by their own team.

Perhaps there will never be a perfect answer to this conundrum because even those on the team that have the choice to leave if they want, often don’t.

But for those who are working for an admired but toxic leader and are finding that no one else seems to be as bothered as they are, it’s worth remembering:

You don’t have to prove that they’re bad at business or wait until they lose their success before you’re allowed to question how they treat you. And it may even be worth checking the halo effect many of us place on people merely because they are rich and powerful.

When you’re growing on the job, you absolutely can learn from your boss’s judgment and be appreciative of opportunities they’ve given you. You can even recognize that some of their forcefulness serves a purpose.

But at the same time, you can decide if a certain behavior is unacceptable, or that the personal cost of staying is becoming too high.

Acting on that judgment may take time, support, and options you don’t yet have. But the judgment itself is still yours to make.

The threshold question

Where have you let someone else’s success talk you out of taking your own experience seriously?

Until next week,

Nihar

Nihar Chhaya coaches senior leaders on navigating the transitions that come with business, leadership and personal success. 

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