Leadership Secrets from Game of Thrones
The Game of Thrones entertainment empire has expanded into the Columbia University Business School. The school’s Advanced Management Program is lead by GoT enthusiast, Bruce Craven. Bruce teaches a popular course for MBA students on Leadership Through Fiction. Now he’s put a special emphasis on the lesson from GoT and published his latest book on the topic, Win or Die: Leadership Secrets from Game of Thrones.
To prepare for my upcoming podcast interview with Bruce, I read his book and observed these five key ideas.
1. Don’t be Ned Stark! Values are everything and nothing. Your values play a tremendous role in your life. Values will influence decisions in ways that you don’t consciously realize. It’s extremely useful to have a clear understanding of your values and make your actions consistent with your values. It’s also dangerous. Values can blind us. If you believe too strongly in your own values, they will paint your perception of the world around you. You will lose touch with reality. Ned Stark makes this mistake in GoT, projecting his own values onto other people. If you can see other people’s values, rather than being a slave to your own, you will be better at collaborating with them. It could save your neck.
2. Leadership is difficult but necessary. In the preface to Win or Die, Bruce discusses Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of The Hero’s Journey. At the start, the hero refuses the call. The hero will come around and realize that there is something great in the journey. The hero must rescue the princess and save mankind. For the leader, the journey may be to rescue themself or save the team. It’s a quest to enrich your life and do something meaningful. The day to day of leadership can feel like drudgery. The antidote is the long-view that Bruce suggests, seeing your career as a leadership journey.
3. See True! Get a coach or mentor as soon as possible. The value of a mentor is beyond measure. A coach can guide your training and save you thousands of hours on your journey to mastery. A mentor can introduce you to their circle of friends and colleagues. A good mentor will even help you to understand your mistakes and build self-awareness. Early in GoT, Daenerys makes mistakes in her alliances, but survives. Through these trials, she is primed to make better decisions and choose alliances that help her make a rapid ascent to power. If you don’t have a mentor, get one. If you can’t find a mentor, at least let your mistakes teach you.
4. Practice fighting against great odds. The phrase Bruce likes is, “Be a player, not a piece!” It’s natural to let yourself become passive “piece” under difficult circumstances. It’s also dangerous. Passivity can become a trend that prevents you from taking necessary action. Learn to push and take an active role in your life. I know it hurts. I just pushed hard on a contract negotiation this morning. I wanted to keep the contract and accept the terms, but I knew I needed to press one issue. My heart was pounding and I felt nervous, but we came to a good agreement for both sides. There is actually more trust between us than before, because the negotiation brought some important issues to the surface. On a greater scale, look to examples like Frederick Douglass and holocaust survivor, Dr. Viktor Frankl. Even when others were literally enslaved, these men retained their sense of being a player and resisting, rather than being a piece.
5. Don’t get assassinated! The leader must know how to persuade people. If you use brute force, you may get results, but resentment will brew. In Game of Thrones resentment turns into assassination attempts, often successes. In your company, it will probably turn into passive aggression. People will show up late, turn in below average products, and conveniently “forget” stuff. Better to rally people around your vision and show them how they will benefit. Jon Snow has an opportunity to cast a vision for why things will be better with Wildlings inside the wall. Instead, he just expects people appreciate that he’s doing the right thing. He even has a discussion with a boy who lost his entire family to the wildlings, but Jon uses logic instead of a deep emotional message. Eventually, Jon is knifed to death. He would’ve had a better chance if he’d used a strong emotional argument for his case. Call it the, “Heaven if you do, Hell if you don’t,” method.
For more leadership secrets from Game of Thrones, check out Win or Die by Bruce Craven.