How to Be a Work Rebel

Got a contrarian streak in you? Harvard’s Francesca Gino shares the right way to be an unconventional leader

- DORIE CLARK

“REBELLING” AT WORK ISN’T usually thought of in positive terms, Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino admits. “Usually if we close our eyes and think about the rebels in our business,” she says, “we think about the jerks, the showoffs…people who are troublemakers, people who break rules just for the sake of breaking rules, or the contrarians.”

No sane company would actively seek that out.

And yet Gino, the author of Rebel Talent, believes that cultivating your own rebellious edge might be crucial to helping your company—and your career. She recently joined me on my weekly Newsweek interview show Better (Thursdays 12 pm ET/9 am PT) to discuss what it really means to be a rebellious leader, and why we need rebels now more than ever.

As she says, “Being rebellious can be constructive, rather than destructive.” The best rebels, according to Gino, leverage their distaste for the status quo to “bring about positive change.”

Here are four ways that you can do it yourself.

Lose the arrogance.