Tell me no more. As a woman, as a coach, and as a lifelong student of leadership, I am baffled by this collective fascination with such a violent series. Beyond the enormous investment in historical sets, elaborate aesthetics, original plots and - let's not be innocent - intensive and extensive sexual content, its ability to captivate executives and politicians of high intellectual level is quite ironic. Some aspiring ministers even boast of giving a season of the series as a gift to a national leader. Tell me what series you give away and I'll tell you who you are, right?
The problem of the leadership models of Game of Thrones is its sheer destructiveness. It's a reduction of leadership to its most showy qualities, like being the best warrior, or having an enviable reputation and family legacy, or having the money and resources to win a battle simply by crushing a poor opponent without enough men, or dragons!
When we identify leadership with triumphalism we end up voting for men - yes, especially men - as Trump, Putin, Berlusconi, Boris Johnson, or Cristina Fernandez Kirchnerto cite a woman with similar qualities. If winning at all costs, whatever the cost, is what we strive for, our countries end up in the hands of hyper-alpha-males: the bigger the better.
StarWarsBy contrast, he defined other, nobler and much broader models of leadership. Yoda, the five-foot-two master with green skin and huge pointy ears, spoke much more like a coach, or a spiritual guide, than any of the lying, cheating, manipulative counsellors of Game of Thrones. The aspirations of the protagonists of StarWars were less material and more human ... justice, truth, self-questioning, and most interesting of all to me: the proportional use of force. The bigger, the heavier the fall.
It is true that Game of Thrones creates heroic and noble-hearted, feisty, brave and non-conformist characters. The problem is that it then destroys or completely perverts them in favour of bigger audiences - tell that to all the poor parents who named their daughters Daenerys!
Simplifying greatly the eight seasons of Game of ThronesWhat we are offered are endless rivalries and competitions towards a single material goal: the throne full of knives. Even the vast majority of the heroines in the series are essentially alpha males. They rule because they can, not because they deserve to. They take a lot of risk, they destroy and kill left and right, and well, I'd rather not even go into their sexual preferences, far removed from romantic intimacy or vulnerability and unconditional surrender.
Indigenous Lives
Now let us remember the films of Star Wars of a lifetime. The jedi and their dedication to the service of "the force". Their simplicity, their austere attire and lives of hardened indigenous people who are not interested in money or power.
"Concentrate on the moment. Feel, don't think, use your instinct". y "Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those who are transformed into the Force", are phrases from StarWars honoured and remembered by millions of fans, as this Esquire article. Even the evocative romanticism of "I am a prisoner of the kiss you should never have given me". tells of leaders who love, suffer, make themselves vulnerable, or give themselves over to a passion that overwhelms them.
They are leaders who do not fight to win, but to serve, to improve the lives of their followers, and to challenge themselves endlessly. Competition with others serves more to prove to oneself what one has yet to train than anything else. And constantly this idea of strength as a superior or intelligent entity that cannot be dominated or exploited for one's own benefit. Something intangible, difficult to perceive and only within the reach of the truly noble heart.
At Star Wars women who lead do not sleep with their brother, cheat on their husband, wildly manipulate their daughter, or engage in manipulative and perverse games with envious and twisted nuns. The women of Game of Thrones are the least like a real woman I've seen in a long time!
In times of war, invasion and conquest, hyper-alpha males are very efficient at maximising objectives. But given that we are trying to live more peacefully and burden the planet less, more emotional, spiritual leadership models, more comfortable with their feminine side, should be considered. In the meantime, "may the force be with us!"
Pino Bethencourt
Coach and founder of Club Comprometidos