Labor / Employment, On The Job

Leadership Lessons From Westeros (Part II)

Tommen Baratheon is a people pleaser. Does your boss use his leadership style?

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(Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images)

In Part I of this series, I discussed how organizational leadership and different management styles impact workplace culture. I talked about how certain leadership qualities bring out the best and worst in subordinates and peers, using Cersei Lannister from the HBO television series Game of Thrones as an example of a “success at all costs” leadership style.

In this second part of the series, we’re going to look at another (very different) leadership style: The people pleaser.

Tommen Baratheon – People Pleaser

Tommen was a super nice guy. He loved cats and was very even-tempered. He tried to be fair to everyone and seemed to genuinely want to do the right thing. His leadership style was obviously in stark contrast to that his older brother and predecessor to the throne, Joffrey, and it seemed like everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief when Tommen took the Iron Throne.

On Game of Thrones and otherwise, however, these types of leaders usually aren’t in positions of power for very long.

While Tommen was a good dude, his fatal mistake was trying to please everyone. Once he was king and married to Margaery, she immediately began manipulating Tommen into trying to send his mother, Cersei (who was Margaery’s chief rival), back to the family home at Casterly Rock. Tommen tried to make his wife happy and began taking steps to send his mother away.

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But, when Cersei refused to leave and insisted on staying, Tommen’s will faltered. Instead of firmly taking action, he wavered and allowed his mother to remain in King’s Landing where she (successfully) plotted to bring down Margaery and the rest of Margaery’s family (House Tyrell).

Then, when Cersei was taken prisoner by the Faith Militants, Tommen’s will again faltered and he retreated into solitude and took no action, allowing his mother to be punished and humiliated by the Faith Militants. He then later sided with the Faith Militants and their leader, giving them power and legitimacy. After watching his mother destroy the Faith Militants and Margaery, Tommen took his own life by jumping from a window in the Red Keep.

Tommen’s efforts to please everyone (and his chronic indecision) ended up costing him, his wife, and many others their lives.

In the workplace, when people pleasers achieve leadership positions, their subordinates are often annoyed with their inability to make decisions and stick with them. Their superiors are frequently frustrated by their seeming inability to manage their employees and areas of responsibility effectively. Although they’re usually liked on a personal level by most everyone, they have trouble getting things done.

If you work for a leader like this, however, you’ll probably have a great working relationship with him/her. You’ll enjoy working together and will probably connect on a personal level. You’ll probably feel like you’re being heard and that you can always raise any concerns.

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But you’ll also probably be frustrated at times because the people pleaser will invariably have to change course into another direction after telling you something different. This is because they’ll want to tell you what you want to hear when they’re talking to you, but their boss might wind up telling them something else. The people pleaser probably won’t be great with breaking bad news, and so you’ll probably learn indirectly from someone else of the change in direction since people pleasers usually try to avoid negative interactions.

You’ll also likely be frustrated because people pleasers will not only want to please you, they’ll also want to please your coworkers. Thus, people pleasers often aren’t very adept at managing conflicts between their subordinates because they tend to avoid confrontation or being seen as picking sides.

To have a successful career under this leadership style, I think it’s important to get a clear understanding of the overall expectations for your role beyond just your own department or section and to see your place in the big picture of your organization. This way you can ensure that you’re always rowing in roughly the same direction as the rest of your firm or company even in the event of the occasional (likely well-meaning) misdirection by your leader.

I think that working for a people-pleasing Tommen Baratheon is much more preferable on a personal level to working for a Cersei Lannister “success at all costs” leader. I think there’d be less anxiety about work in general and that work would be more personally engaging and enjoyable. The downside is that a people pleaser likely won’t hold a significant leadership position for very long and consistency would probably be lacking.

In the next article for this series, we’ll look at another leadership style: the delegator. Can you guess which Game of Thrones character embodies that style?

evan-gibbsEvan Gibbs is an attorney at Troutman Sanders, where he primarily litigates employment cases and handles traditional labor matters. Connect with him on LinkedIn here, or e-mail him here. (The views expressed in this column are his own.)

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