Here is an excerpt from an article written by Sydney Finkelstein for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, obtain subscription information, and receive HBR email alerts, please click here.

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This past February, when Jon Stewart announced his impending retirement from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show after sixteen years, the collective mourning began almost immediately. “I have this irrational feeling of sadness, bordering on hurt,” a commentator for Entertainment Weekly said. “I feel wounded. It’s not like a romantic break-up, per se—more like a childhood best friend announcing his family is moving away right before sixth-grade starts.”

“Sixth grade” referring to, of course, the upcoming Presidential election. How would the nation possibly cope without Stewart around to skewer the candidates? “Jon Stewart, we need you in 2016,” pleaded a headline in the New Yorker. His departure, said the magazine, killed the “last hope for bringing some rationality to the 2016 Presidential field.” Stewart’s opponents on the right disagreed, with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly proclaiming, “I don’t think overall he’s been a force for good.”

But a proper assessment of Stewart’s legacy shouldn’t just focus on politics. It should also take into account the business of entertainment, and more specifically, talent generation. In this area, Stewart most certainly has been a force for good. I’ve spent the last ten years studying individuals who are unusually good at helping others build careers and make contributions to their fields. It all started when I discovered a striking pattern: If you take the top fifty most prominent or influential people in many industries, just one or a few top people mentored a disproportionate share of that talent.

Wondering about the secrets of these “superbosses,” I set out to methodically study them. Sifting through mountains of interview transcripts and secondary materials, I identified dozens of superbosses in a wide array of industries, including Alice Waters in food, Oprah Winfrey in television, Michael Miles in consumer packaged goods, Ralph Lauren in fashion, and Bill Walsh in football. Although their personalities varied, these bosses all demonstrated an unusual, even legendary ability to develop the best talent in their industries.

My research turned up two clear superbosses in the field of comedy. The first: Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. His protégés — Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Fallon, to name a few — comprise a Who’s Who of comedy superstars. As my research continued, I realized that another superboss had come onto the scene: Jon Stewart. In a very short time, The Daily Show had discovered and launched a surprising number of comedy stars, including Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Ed Helms, and Rob Corddry.

What was Stewart’s secret? Superbosses are exceptionally adept at developing talent because they share particular character traits and adopt a set of common practices that, taken together, are both rare and extraordinarily effective. They are unusually intense and passionate—eating, sleeping, and breathing their businesses and inspiring others to do the same. They create impossibly high work standards that push protégés to their limits. They are geniuses at motivation, inspiring people to do more than they ever thought possible. Remarkably, they can be intimately involved in the detailed work their people are doing, while at the same time lavish responsibility on inexperienced protégés, taking risks with them that seem foolish to outsiders. They encourage the creation of strong, emotional bonds and loyalties between protégés as well as between protégés and themselves.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Sydney Finkelstein (sydney.finkelstein@dartmouth.edu) is the Steven Roth Professor of Management and Faculty Director of the Leadership Center at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. His forthcoming book is Superbosses: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Networks of Talent (Portfolio). Follow him on Twitter @sydfinkelstein.