The Cult of the Necessary Monster

There is a peculiar blindness in modern business – a loyalty to a particular archetype of leader who should have vanished long ago, yet continues to haunt boardrooms and startup floors alike. He arrives wrapped in the mythology of intensity, armed with an inflated sense of destiny, celebrated as the visionary who will bend markets and will his organisation into greatness. He shouts more than he speaks. He confuses loudness for leadership and obedience for alignment. And he constructs an organisational mirror that reflects only his certainties, never his limitations. This “necessary monster” is treated as indispensable precisely because he is destructive, as if brutality were a kind of genius misunderstood by ordinary minds.

What fascinates me – and disturbs me in equal measure – is how enduring this archetype remains. Even in a world where we have sophisticated management science, behavioral research, neuroscience, anthropology, and decades of organisational evidence, too many companies still fall for the illusion that greatness requires a leader who intimidates, humiliates, and overwhelms. It is a myth born not of strategy but of biology, psychology, and insecurity. And it is a myth that corrodes organisations from within long before the market ever punishes them.

To understand the persistence of these leaders, we must begin long before companies existed – back in our evolutionary past, in the dynamics of primate hierarchies. Human groups historically oscillated between dominance hierarchies and prestige hierarchies. Dominance was the realm of intimidation, where the strongest imposed order through fear. Prestige emerged when groups voluntarily elevated individuals whose competence benefitted the tribe. Dominance works quickly, but unsustainably. Prestige spreads influence slowly, but durably. The modern workplace often pretends to be rational, but under stress, it slips back into dominance patterns. Loud, forceful leaders feel effective because they activate ancient instincts – fear compels attention, and attention masquerades as respect. But fear-based structures break the moment real complexity enters the system. They produce movement without thought, activity without intelligence, compliance without understanding.

Many of the so-called “brutal” founders I’ve encountered are not villains; they are emotionally underdeveloped individuals who gained power faster than they developed the maturity to wield it. Hyper-growth environments become psychological pressure cookers. Insecurity hardens into arrogance. Unprocessed fear morphs into aggression. And because early success rewards extremity – “the louder I am, the more things shift” – leaders begin mistaking volume for clarity, force for persuasion, and dominance for competence. This is how narcissistic loops form : the leader acts with intensity → the environment reacts → the reaction is misinterpreted as validation → the intensity escalates. Over time, they build a self-reinforcing reality where dissent feels like betrayal and obedience feels like wisdom.

The loud leader surrounded by loud followers becomes the monarch of an empire of distortions.

And from here emerges another dangerous pattern : the loud leader gravitates not toward the most capable people, but toward the most compliant – and the loudest. Organisations under such leaders become echo chambers of noise. Those who speak softly, think deeply, or challenge assumptions are sidelined. Those who amplify the leader’s worldview, mimic his urgency, or flatter his instincts rise quickly. This creates a deformed meritocracy – a culture where decibel levels outrank intelligence. Slowly, the leader surrounds himself with performers, not thinkers; cheerleaders, not challengers; enthusiastic “yes-men” who validate his worldview while filtering out uncomfortable truths. What results is an organisation that operates inside a hallucination – an internally coherent but externally inaccurate map of reality. Decisions become misaligned with facts. Risks go undetected. Problems are softened, reframed, or concealed. The leader becomes the author, protagonist, and audience of his own fiction – and the company suffers for it.

This phenomenon is not anecdotal; it is systemic. Venture capital environments have historically rewarded founders who embody a particular performance of dominance – aggressive confidence, unshakable certainty, bold proclamations of world-changing potential. Investors often optimise for speed, and loudness signals conviction. This has created a market that inadvertently selects for toxic traits, because those traits create short-term velocity. Blitzscaling glamorized irresponsibility. Hyper-growth became a moral imperative. The “asshole founder” archetype emerged not because the world needs him, but because the economic incentives temporarily made him appear successful. We’ve all witnessed (or heard of) organisations built on spectacle over substance, where theatrical certainty eclipsed truth. We’ve watched cultures held together by adrenaline, secrecy, and internal hostility masquerading as “high standards.” We’ve seen enterprises engineered around a single charismatic personality, where devotion replaced due diligence and dissent was treated as disloyalty. We’ve observed ecosystems that rewarded velocity so aggressively that recklessness became a virtue, and environments where fear was packaged as focus. None of these were anomalies or isolated cautionary tales. They were the predictable offspring of a system that equates bravado with brilliance and mistakes noise for vision. You get it, right?

A dangerous pattern : the loud leader gravitates not toward the most capable people, but toward the most compliant – and the loudest. Organisations under such leaders become echo chambers of noise.

But biology has its own truth. Neuroscience reveals that fear floods the brain with cortisol, narrowing perception, reducing creativity, and turning teams into reactive organisms. Fear may produce speed, but it destroys discernment. Innovation collapses because creativity requires psychological safety – the freedom to explore, make mistakes, surface doubts, and voice dissent. Under fear, teams hide problems. Under pressure, they simplify complex issues into binary choices. Under intimidation, they stop thinking altogether, waiting instead for instructions. Fear produces motion, but never mastery.

Perhaps this is why companies built on humaneness consistently outperform those built on brutality over time. (an example) Microsoft under Satya Nadella rediscovered its soul only when fear was replaced with curiosity. Psychological safety, once dismissed as “soft,” became the hidden engine of innovation. Airbnb navigated catastrophe by relying on collective intelligence, not authoritarian decree. Patagonia proved that integrity scales. These organisations demonstrate that trust generates far deeper performance than pressure ever could. A humane culture does not dilute ambition; it amplifies it by multiplying the cognitive and emotional resources available to the organisation.

Toxic cultures, by contrast, accumulate silent forms of debt. They lose exceptional talent because great minds do not stay where their autonomy is assaulted. They accumulate decision-making residue – choices made in panic, shortcuts that bypass critical thinking, errors concealed rather than addressed. They degrade ethical reflexes, normalising behaviour that erodes internal trust. They collapse into groupthink because dissent is punished and conformity is rewarded. And they produce leaders who, over time, cannot distinguish truth from the curated narratives fed to them by their own loyalists.

The loud leader surrounded by loud followers becomes the monarch of an empire of distortions. He believes things are fine because no one tells him otherwise. He believes his instincts are flawless because no one shows him a better way. He believes he is necessary because the culture has been conditioned to behave as if he is the sole source of direction. This is the tragedy of the necessary monster : he becomes both the cause of the organisation’s dysfunction and the barrier preventing it from seeing the dysfunction.

Urgency often exacerbates this pathology. The modern workplace suffers from what I call the urgency-industrial complex – an ecosystem that equates frantic motion with effectiveness. Hustle culture celebrated exhaustion as a virtue. Media glorified leaders who operated in a perpetual state of crisis. Venture expectations compressed timelines into unnatural shapes. Even employees started participating in the theatre of urgency, wearing stress as proof of commitment. But urgency is a cognitive narcotic – it creates momentum that feels meaningful but suppresses independent thought. Under the tyranny of urgency, organisations lose the ability to distinguish between real priorities and emotional reactions. Teams default to what is immediate rather than what is important. Decision quality collapses because thoughtfulness takes time, and time becomes scarce.

Great companies operate with an entirely different rhythm. They separate the speed of motion from the speed of judgment. Bezos’ distinction between Type 1 and Type 2 decisions is not a management trick; it is an epistemological stance (Type 1 & 2 meant : know which decisions need deep thought, and stop slowing the entire company for the ones that don’t, is. Type-1, rest is type-2.). Nadella’s calm intensity is not personality – it is strategy. These leaders understand that sustainable greatness requires pacing, not panic. They create environments where truth flows upward, where disagreements are not threats but data, where silence is not interpreted as weakness but as space for thought. They build cultures where the leader is not the loudest person in the room but the person who listens most deeply.

Over the years, I have come to believe that a company’s culture is nothing more than the externalization of its leader’s internal state. The leader who is loud, insecure, reactive, and intolerant of dissent creates a culture of loudness, insecurity, reactivity, and conformity. The leader who fears being questioned creates a culture that fears questioning. The leader who needs applause creates a culture of sycophancy. And the leader who mistakes intensity for intelligence will end up with an organisation that confuses noise for value.

Conversely, a leader who has cultivated inner stability radiates that stability outward. A leader who has confronted his own chaos does not project it onto others. A leader who is comfortable with silence does not need to dominate every meeting. A leader who can hold complexity within himself can allow complexity to flourish in the organisation. Internal mastery becomes external coherence.

This is why (I strongly believe) the future belongs not to the necessary monster but to the leader who refuses to lead through fear. The leader who knows that human beings produce their best work when they are trusted, not intimidated. The leader who builds systems rather than cults, clarity rather than confusion, dialogue rather than monologue. The leader who understands that the real competitive advantage is not speed but the collective intelligence of a psychologically safe organisation.

Complexity punishes loudness. Innovation punishes fear. Reality punishes delusion.

I believe, the cult of the necessary monster will soon start fading because its economics won't work any longer, its biology seems outdated, and its psychology is brittle. Complexity punishes loudness. Innovation punishes fear. Reality punishes delusion. And people, increasingly aware of their worth, refuse to serve tyrants.

The companies that will endure are those led by individuals who have mastered themselves before attempting to master others. Leaders who speak softly but think deeply. Leaders who choose truth over theatrics and coherence over chaos. Leaders who understand that culture is not built through dominance but through dignity. The necessary monster was never necessary. He was simply loud. The future will belong to leaders who build without shouting – and build organisations that do not need to suffer in order to succeed.

Human beings produce their best work when they are trusted, not intimidated.

Thanks for dropping by !

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Disclaimer : Everything written above, I owe to the great minds I've encountered and the voices I’ve heard along the way.