As the head of an organization, it’s not enough to just have great ideas. A good leader needs to be able to problem-solve, to understand situations as they arise, and to guide their team through treacherous waters. Carol Burnett understood what it meant to be a leader. Burnett served as the captain of The Carol Burnett Show. The series bore her name, and the actor served as the ringleader of the variety show.

But everything wasn’t smooth sailing during the show’s eleven seasons. Lines were missed, and mistakes were made. Sometimes, a bad sketch made its way to the air. Burnett didn’t take these mishaps lightly, seeing them as lessons and learning from them.

In an article for Interview Magazine, Burnett confessed that when working on The Carol Burnett Show, she often took an unorthodox approach to fixing a sketch that she felt wasn’t working. Despite Burnett’s talent and work ethic, she was not immune to bias in the industry. Often, when offering constructive criticism, women can gain an unwarranted reputation for being "difficult." The actor acknowledged that this was an uncomfortable truth.

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“I would have a way of getting around that when I was doing my show,” said Burnett. “If a sketch wasn’t working, I would call upstairs to the writers, and instead of saying, ‘Come on, guys, this isn’t working,’ I would say, ‘Hey, guys, can you come down and watch us do this? I’m having a tough time, and I need your help.’ And they would come down, and we would talk about it very nicely, and they would fix it. But I had to massage it.”