To Successfully Manage an Aging Superstar, Don't Battle His Ego -- Co-Opt It

It's a sad, sad day for the cheeseheads. Their hero, Brett Favre, the iconic quarterback who led the Green Bay Packers for nearly 16 years without missing a game, the lean, mean passing machine who came within an end-zone interception of winning last year's conference championship -- Brett Favre has been traded to the New York Jets.

Broadway Brett? Say it isn't so.

For the past six weeks -- ever since Favre let it be known that he'd changed his mind about retiring -- this melodrama has played out almost daily in the sports columns, on talk radio and on ESPN.

How could the Packers' management not welcome back their franchise player and give up their best chance for a shot at this year's Super Bowl? Didn't they realize they risked going down in the history books next to Harry Frazee, the Red Sox owner who sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, or Jerry Krause, the general manager who drove Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson from the Chicago Bulls?

But wait -- haven't we seen this movie before? The one about the aging superstar who can't let go, who has a falling out with the franchise with which his name has become synonymous and winds up playing out an inglorious end somewhere else. Johnny Unitas finished his career in San Diego rather than Baltimore; Joe Namath in Los Angeles rather than New York; Emmitt Smith in Arizona rather than Dallas.

It's not just sports. It happens all the time in entertainment, business, the law and even academics.

Five years ago, NBC was able to prevent Conan O'Brien, the hot young host of its late-late-night program, from bolting to another network by convincing "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno that he would be willing to pass on the baton in 2009. Leno explained that by then he'd be 59 and have done the show for 17 years, and it would be time to move on. But lately, the workaholic Leno has been regretting the decision and isn't interested in other opportunities NBC has offered. The betting is that he'll wind up competing head to head with O'Brien at some other network after the expiration of a six-month non-compete clause.

Steven Berglas, a psychologist at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, has studied the phenomenon of what he call "A players." What he has found is that they often turn out to be insecure overachievers who thrive on praise and adulation -- so much so, he says, that they become addicted to the adrenaline rush it brings. As they near retirement, they know that they are going to have to stop, but they can't. They need another fix.

That's certainly how the Packers President Mark Murphy sized up the Favre situation. Murphy is a former all-pro safety with the Redskins who also holds an MBA from American University and a law degree from Georgetown; he ran athletic programs at Colgate and Northwestern.

"No player leaves the game gracefully," Murphy told the media in early July. "It's the nature of what makes great players great. . . . They always want the next challenge, and it's hard to find that next thing that's going to give you that excitement and that adrenaline. That's what we're seeing a little bit here."

Perceptive as it may have been, Murphy's comments -- along with those of coach Mike McCarthy to the effect that the Packers had "moved on" -- infuriated Favre. Never mind that he will turn 39 in October and that his chosen successor, first-round draft pick Aaron Rodgers, had been dutifully cooling his heels on the sideline for three years. Favre simply couldn't believe -- and emotionally couldn't accept -- that the team wouldn't be thrilled to have him back as its starting quarterback. From that point on, a divorce was inevitable.

So what are management lessons from this fiasco?

The first is that, when dealing with popular superstars, it rarely pays to challenge them in public.

Consider how the Boston Red Sox organization handled the recent departure of its quirky slugger, Manny Ramirez. For reasons that are still unclear, Ramirez was unhappy being on the championship team and wanted to be traded rather than have the team exercise its option to extend his $20 million contract for two more years.

But the team's management, which had been remarkably tolerant of Ramirez's antics, knew that trading him would be unpopular. So they simply waited until Ramirez overplayed his hand -- pulling himself out of games because of what many believed were fake injuries, decking the team's traveling secretary in a dispute over tickets. By the time the mid-season trading deadline had arrived, even the fans and the press corps were willing to concede that Ramirez had become an enormous distraction, one that was hurting the team more than his big bat was helping it.

Back in Green Bay, Murphy's mistake wasn't in rejecting the "win-now" mentality of the NFL and focusing on building a franchise for long-term success.

His mistake was in not welcoming Favre back enthusiastically while simultaneously upping the ante on the loyalty issue by asking the veteran to help with transition strategy that would give Rodgers some serious playing time this season. If Favre had agreed, it would have been the best outcome for the Packers. And if he had refused, it would have been Favre who would have been the villain of the tale.

According to Berglas, the trick to managing aging, temperamental superstars isn't to try to restrain their egos but to co-opt them. How? By identifying another outlet for the superstar talent and a source of gratification, so that they aren't required to go cold turkey.

That could mean moving into a player-coach role within the organization that involves a gradual surrendering of what Berglas calls the "me" for the "we."

Or it could be identifying some other interest or passion that the superstar could embrace, and that the organization would support, as part of an ongoing relationship after retirement. That's what the Orioles did so successfully with Cal Ripken, who managed to retire with grace and create a whole new career for himself with youth and minor league baseball.

Relationships between superstars and their organizations don't have to end as badly as they often do. Whether you're talking Brett Favre, Manny Ramirez or Jay Leno, the issue isn't really money or titles -- it's about respecting and honoring superior talent, massaging big egos and dealing with the terrifying prospect of going from "Who's Who" to "Who's that?"

Steven Pearlstein will host a Web discussion at 11 a.m. today at washingtonpost.com. He can be reached atpearlsteins@washpost.com.