When the Traveling Wilburys formed, they had a unique problem. The band was a supergroup of massive egos, but Bob Dylan was the untouchable deity. Everywhere Dylan went, people either wanted something from him or were too terrified to speak to him normally. He was isolated by his own status.
On the first day in the studio, George Harrison decided to clear the air. He looked at Dylan and said, "We know that you're Bob Dylan and everything, but we're going to just treat you and talk to you like we would anybody else."
Dylan’s response was pure relief: "Well, great. Believe it or not, I'm in awe of you guys, and it's the same for me."
I think about that exchange a lot when I sit down with founders and executives. When you reach a certain level of success, people stop seeing you as a person and start seeing you as a resource. Your board, your employees, your vendors—everyone approaches with an agenda. You spend all day being extracted from.
When someone finally walks into the room, refuses to be intimidated by the title, and just treats you like a regular human being, the nervous system collapses in relief. Well, great.
Harrison later said that his main job in that band wasn't writing hits. It was making sure that the guys in the room weren't abused by the process of making the record. He called preserving their friendship his "underlying contribution."
We get so caught up in the optimization machine that we forget what the actual work is. For 30 years in the tech industry, I thought my job was building software. In reality, my underlying contribution was just keeping the team sane while the building was on fire.
You don't get the best out of people by treating them like deities or machines. You get it by taking the armor out of the room, treating them like anybody else, and making sure they survive the process.