WonderTour

Welcome to Lead Wisely by Wondretour.

We're going to do something a little bit different with this series.

After 110 episodes of talking about leadership lessons drawn from the stories we tell each
other in popular media, we've been extracting lessons from the heroes and the mentors and

the people that we root for in our movies.

We're going to spend this next series of episodes talking about the villains.

We're going to talk about the people who

make terrible decisions.

The people whose leadership roles hurt other people.

The people who despite their best efforts are thwarted because they fail to understand
some fundamental truths about how the world works or maybe just because they were opposed

by an unreasonably talented hero.

We'll find out.

But I think it'll be fun to examine leadership lessons that we can draw from how not to
turn into the villain.

But I think it'll be fun to examine leadership lessons that we can draw from how not to
turn into the villain.

So...

being Wunder Tour, we are huge Star Wars fans, so we couldn't do anything other than start
this series by talking about Darth Vader, the classic villain from the many, many Star

Wars properties.

So we're going to have an episode about Vader today and as well as our next episode.

And we'll start by talking a little bit about his backstory, about Anakin Skywalker and
how he turned into the terrible villain and what his path looked like there.

We're start right out with a tough question about leadership as always.

Why do some leaders keep doubling down on their own mistakes?

So Drew, take us out.

What do we, what do we got here?

Yeah, we love to look at examples like that.

mean, heck, you probably don't have to look too far.

I don't have to look too far to see examples where I've doubled down on my own mistakes.

And I think at the surface level, there's some bias that results in us doing it.

It's the perspective that we see the situation from is only our own.

And when we look at things from our own perspective, it's too easy to.

kind of like Anakin does start to navel gaze.

You just look down at yourself and you start to see less of the world around you, see less
of the relationships, not able to fully understand the impact that what you're doing has

on somebody else.

The more you turn inwards on yourself.

So I think some of it is just that bias or even just outcome based bias where you're just
thinking about, well,

Yeah, it didn't seem good.

It was kind of painful.

But in the end, I got the job I wanted.

Or in the end, you know, we landed the deal.

So really, like what could have gone better anyway?

So think there's a little bit of that.

I just want to start by putting that over here and saying there is some of that.

Now, as it relates to Anakin, I don't see a ton of that outcome based bias here.

I'm just trying to speak a little more to real life.

Now to talk a little bit more about the story of Anakin and Darth Vader.

I want to do a little bit of like a why why analysis kind of dig deeper here into why does
Anakin because he again is kind of emblematic of a movie villain and unfortunately as we

talk about here on one for we all could become that type of a villain not necessarily
maybe wielding a lightsaber and force choking our inferior here's.

We'll get to that phase, yes.

Yeah, we could fall into that.

So I think we just have to consider we don't want to become like that.

We don't ever want to go down the path that Anakin goes down.

And we'll talk about his path.

And we'll talk about his path.

But why?

A lot of it comes from trying to protect ourselves.

I think we want to kind of double down on our mistakes because we feel like if we don't,
we're going to get hurt.

And it might be that our

public image is going to get hurt, that somebody's going to be let down by us.

I mean, that's a simple one.

It's we don't want to let down the people closest to us.

When in reality, if we keep doubling down and just shoveling our mistakes into the back
closet until it's spilling out all over into the yard where everybody can see it.

I mean, that's the issue.

We do not want to ego protect in that way where you're just trying to keep yourself from.

ever experiencing that loss of or that that humility that is needed in order to grow.

So if we just kind of keep going from there, well, why?

I think in the end for humans, it's about avoiding immediate pain.

That's one of the main reasons that we keep doubling down.

We just keep pushing the pain out and saying, I'll deal with that trauma later.

We just keep pushing the pain out and saying, I'll deal with that trauma later.

I know that that experience was painful, but I have so much on my plate right now.

that I can't possibly spend the time to process that and deal with.

think that's, you know, so yeah, let's talk about Anakin's journey a little bit here
because I think this is, it's fun to examine.

you know, the prequel movies get a lot of grief for being pretty clunky, For, you know,
there's epic, beautiful themes and all the cool stuff that's on the screen is beautiful,

but the acting's got some rough edges and the writing's got some rough edges.

But we start looking at sort of Anakin's journey here where he's like,

a beloved up and coming member of this organization and he gradually gets more and more
dissatisfied with his personal alignment with the Jedi Order.

And so he keeps and he gets, he has terrible, terrible anger issues, know, childhood
trauma, whatever, right?

But he's terrible anger issues.

And so he keeps lashing out and making terrible decisions.

And then when he makes a terrible decision and hurts somebody literally or emotionally,
then he is unable to admit that he might've screwed up.

Like you said, he's protecting his own ego.

doesn't want to go back and say, I was wrong.

Right.

And so he's like, no, well, that's because somebody else was terrible.

so he keeps doubling down on these mistakes.

he's, so you've got this element of ego.

Like, why am I not, why doesn't everybody think I'm amazing?

You've got the, can't admit that the thing that I did was probably bad and I should
reflect on myself.

Like he's unable to take the...

you say avoiding pain, the pain of like looking at himself and saying, that was terrible.

Like he won't do that.

We all recognize that we've all done that.

Right.

and there's also, think, an element of fear here too, right?

Like he has got this recurring vision that's only in his head that some terrible thing's
going to happen in the future and only he can solve the problem.

Right.

Where we heard that before, right?

Only he can solve the problem and

So he can justify over and over again, doing increasingly terrible things to avoid this in
the real world right now, to avoid this nebulous bad thing in the future that is only in

his head.

And that's uncomfortably familiar to some of us, right?

Is that you can be so consumed by fear or by worry that you can do things that are not at
all skillful in the present moment.

and then like, well, that I have to, can't lose face by admitting that I screwed up or
that I was being fearful.

So now I have to double down on that.

You keep closing doors.

Yeah, it says digger digging a deeper and deeper hole.

That's the risk that we all don't want to fall into here, Brian.

So you started to lay up what we're going to talk about in the next section with the
mountaintop in terms of fear and the dark side.

But first, let's hit the intro.

Let's do it.

Hi, I'm Brian Notwell.

And we are on a journey to become better leaders by touring fantastic worlds and inspiring
lore by going on this WONDRA Tour.

We connect leadership concepts to story context because it sticks to our brains better.

You can find out more at wondertourpodcast .com or on YouTube if you're listening on
audio.

We're very excited about the pivot to video.

is great.

So yeah, so let's, so let's transition this.

We've got Anakin's journey.

We can see that he, he starts with a lot of promise and has, you know, all of the
mentorship and support that you could imagine.

He gets some bad advice along the way.

He maybe picks the wrong people to address, right?

But he, you know,

But he keeps doubling down on his mistakes.

He has these weaknesses of quickness to anger and egocentricity and fear and
overconfidence in his own abilities.

And those things seem to spiral him into a pretty dark place.

So...

Yeah, you can see the parallel there, Brian.

I mean, the simple one is just when he goes back to Tatooine and he finds his mother,
right, Shmi in the camp with the Sand People and they end up, you know, he is not able to

save her and she's brutally murdered and suffering.

And what does he do?

He turns around and he leans into his emotions, which we know is very anti Jedi.

And he just kills all the sand people.

And then you kind of have that parallel to the moment, which is perhaps the darkest moment
in all of Star Wars, right?

When he goes to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and there's the like weird, grainy hologram
video of him, you know, cutting down these younglings.

it's those moments.

It seems justifiable, right?

When it's the sand people who impacted your family member.

with that suffering and that loss eventually consumes you and the grief, if not processed
properly, leads him to become the type of person who can have that same type of moment

with completely innocent people because he has let the anger and the contempt build up in
him over time.

He's channeling his emotions as a way to what he thinks accomplish a mission or objective.

But in the end, he can't see anything outside of himself anymore.

All he can see is

his own self and his own flaws and it just consumes him.

Yeah.

And he's, he's not happy about it.

Like, you know, he knows that he did a bad thing on Tatooine.

He's he, he has angst about that, but then he doesn't change the way he makes decisions.

Right.

He doesn't get any ability to harness himself.

He just keeps doing it more.

Right.

And again, this is maybe a thing that's familiar to some of us from our own lives.

Right.

Like this, you know, like, wow.

Look, I made that terrible decision again.

look at that.

I got angry again in a meeting and I said the thing I shouldn't have said.

And I laughed out at somebody that I shouldn't have laughed out at.

Like that's a thing that we do.

Yeah, mine is oftentimes saying something to my wife in a tone that, as I'm saying it, to
me in my own head seems like it's gonna sound okay, because in the end my intention was

not to be, you know, mean, and my intention was not to be condescending, but apparently,
you know, I am not capable of saying it in a way that was that way, which tells me that I

need to reevaluate, because if it comes out that way into the world, then there's
something in my head, there's something in my mind that is...

leading it to come out that way.

Yeah, yeah.

There's, there's the, there are those moments when we're ignorant of the, our impact we
have on others.

There's moments when we're so angry that we just don't, you we don't care.

Like we're enjoying being angry, but there's also the fear moments where you maybe should
be addressing a problem and you're not because you just don't want to, or you don't, don't

want to deal with it.

And so you just let something go and go and go, and then you, know, it gets out of control
and that's, that's probably my failure mode.

But I think the thesis of this whole, you know, of this whole series is that we all have
this capacity to be villainous.

Like you said, we all have this in us, just as we've been preaching for the last 110
episodes.

We all have the capacity to be tremendous, magnanimous, caring, nurturing leaders.

Right.

And it's just, it's just different choices.

It's just different habits.

It's just different patterns over and over again.

but this is a really, it's an illustrative, as you said earlier, an anti -pattern.

Right.

It's an illustrative pattern of like, and it can, and it can mix all the wrong choices and
keeps doubling down over them.

And so it leads them to a really dark place.

So, so set us up where does it, where's this lead him?

What's our, what's our mountain top moment for this?

Alright, so the mountaintop moment to me is the pinnacle of the prequel trilogy.

Now I know there's a lot of different opinions on this, but we talked about kind of the
doubling down, doubling down, doubling down that he has on these, you know, the battle

with Mace Windu, all of these different moments basically, the turning to the dark side.

And I think it all culminates in the...

he can never go back moment, which is the lightsaber duel on Mustafar between Anakin and
Obi -Wan.

Everything in this movie kind of builds up, builds up, builds up to the point where now
you have the mentor who has continually in Obi -Wan bent over backwards to try to bring

Anakin back.

knows that at first Obi -Wan is blind to it.

We do see that, but eventually he does know exactly what's happening and he is

trying and trying to bring him back.

He's giving him forgiveness.

He's going to continue to try to teach him.

And it's builds up to this moment where the two of them duel on Mustafar and we get the
classic, were supposed to be the chosen one.

Yes, you were my brother, Anakin.

Yes, there's a lot of emoting going on in that scene, you know, and along with lava
spewing everywhere, lightsaber duels on floating pods.

Yeah, it's over the top as only Star Wars can do, for sure.

It is right.

And you get the, you get the build up to the moment where it's over Anakin.

I have the higher ground and yet he still can't give up, right?

He still can't concede.

He just keeps doubling down.

No, I'm right.

No, I need to be vindicated for all of these things.

Even to the point where he has his mentor who's willing to sacrifice himself to help
Anakin and Anakin can't see it anymore because he's so blind now.

by the dark side, he's so blinded by the anger and contempt he's been building up.

Yeah.

And he's all about himself.

Right.

And so this is, yeah, this is the natural end of this arc is that even the person who is
the most committed to him, even the person that is the most willing to forgive him, the

most willing to face the, you know, face all of his crap and try to step in anyway, you
know, it ends up in open conflict with him.

Right.

And that's

exaggerated to the point where it's a lightsaber duel in the lava fields, but it's also
like, that's a thing, right?

Like, you know, if you, if you're, if you're committed to fighting all the time, if the
whole world is black and white and you have to be right and therefore anybody that

disagrees with you is wrong, you're going to end up fighting with everybody.

And I think we've all seen people like that, right?

We've all, we've seen, you know, we've had those patterns.

And we've had, we've probably seen relationships that either could have gone that way or
we know people who have let relationships go that way.

Now I'm not saying stay in a harmful relationship if it's, if it's traumatic for you and
continues to be unapologetically harmful to your life.

There's definitely times where we need to cut ourselves out of relationships.

Certainly.

But I think we've all probably met people or been people that have had 20 year rifts with
a parent over a situation that never got resolved.

or something like that, that lost a friendship that they had for decades over, you know,
money or something like that, where they're just, nobody went back and resolved the

situation.

Neither party was willing to have the humility to just have a conversation about what
needed to happen to go forward.

And so you end up with this lightsaber duel on Mustafar type moment where, you know, the
two brothers are fighting and

And in the end, Anakin gets left for dead there and Brian, what does that turn him into
that he can't, he never concedes in that situation?

What does that, what happens next?

Yeah, that's, he, turns into like this, you know, he's locked himself into, there's only
one path available to him, right?

He's closed off all of the doors that would have potentially let him reflect or improve
or, know, be a, be a positive force in the life around him, the world around him.

And so the only thing that he's got left is to turn into Darth Vader, right?

Is to turn into sort of this embodiment of this, this ego and anger and...

using your skills to sort of discomfort on everyone around you.

and isn't it interesting that Darth Vader and the way that the costume is designed, and we
can argue this was not intentional, obviously, with what we know of how Lucas created

Vader, but Lucas does masterfully, even in the prequels, kind of weave a story about
characters that is transcendent.

And Vader, right, his emotions, everything that's inside of Anakin comes out in Vader and
it becomes the only thing left.

It's this black and white version of Anakin now.

where all he can be is the angry executioner that pursues single, with single vision, his
purpose, and nothing can get in his way.

There is no shades of gray.

There is no balance.

And he is literally wearing the shell, right?

He's wearing the armor.

Like he is nobody, he doesn't expose his human face.

He doesn't, you know, he doesn't interact with other people as a human.

He only interacts with people as the shell, as this avatar character that he's
constructed.

Right.

And I think that's a, know, we, we all do that to some extent, but when, when the only
tools you have to construct your interactions with others or to filter your interaction

with others are based on.

hatred and fear and exerting power when you can, that's a pretty limited life.

That's a pretty limited kinds of impact that you can have on the world around you, right?

You pretty much, you pretty much narrowed yourself down to one possible kind of career
style and one possible set of...

Yeah, there's a, we talk about character as destiny.

There's a quote that I'm going to absolutely butcher that says like, we start with the
ability to make choices that you can choose life or death.

Like you said, you you always stand at the door.

Are you going to choose life or are you going to choose death?

It's not always that clear, but in the end as a human, your character is formed and your
character is your destiny.

And by the time that you have been formed for decades and decades,

Those choices are not easy to make anymore.

You don't have as many options.

Once you've put on the Vader mask, your option is very clear.

You execute the mission at the cost of whoever is in front of you, and you're now a slave
to Palpatine.

That's what it has become.

And I love what you just said, the character destiny framing.

Like we see it, we see the contrast between Obi -Wan, who was one of our classic
magnanimous leaders in our previous episodes and Anakin's behavior here is simply the

ability to say, I screwed up.

Like I was wrong.

I'm sorry that I didn't see what was happening.

I'm willing to change my behavior.

Let me help you.

Right.

In this, you know, in these movies, Anakin's totally unable to do that.

and that's the...

If character is destiny, if you want to nurture a character in a specific direction,
you're never going to make all the decisions right.

You're never, know, none of us are going to conduct our lives so that we never get angry
and we never piss somebody off and we never lash out and flame somebody or, you know, ruin

a relationship that would, would have been really good for us.

Like none of us will ever successfully navigate our whole lives without doing those
things.

We're all going to do the Darth Vader moments forever.

We're all going to just be, terrible beings at some point.

Right.

But if you don't have the ability to look at that and go,

Wow, that was terrible and unskillful and I shouldn't do that again.

And I'm going to either apologize to the person that I hurt or at least look critically at
myself and say, I shouldn't do that the same way.

Next time I'm going to look, you know, I'm going to look at myself in the eye and go, all
right, you know, how do I not do this again?

If you don't have that ability to course correct, then there's only one direction you go.

And so that's kind of what we see is that, you know, the, you know, Obi -Wan in this, in,
in this series is portrayed as being able to say,

I'm sorry, I failed you, but I still want to help.

Right?

Like, I'm sorry, we're in this terrible situation, but you know, let me help, you know,
let's do, let's solve the problem together.

And, and Anakin is sort of the avatar of not being able to do that.

I'm being able to say, no, I'm going to solve all the problems and my black and white view
of the world was the only one.

And I'm really enjoying being angry right now.

And I'm going to go solve the problems with my power.

There's only one, there's only one what that only develops your character in one
direction.

If you don't have the ability to course.

Yeah, there's not any nuance there.

And I think that leads us well into our practical application.

So now how do we use this based on talking about this duel on Mustafar?

We talked about kind all these different pivotal events in Anakin's journey.

And we all have pivotal events in our own stories.

So how do we avoid at least this one trap?

We will talk about how to avoid different villainous traps, but how do we avoid this one
trap of anger?

And of course, this is going to be overly simplistic.

because it's a movie, Star Wars, and we're only going to be talking about this for a few
minutes, but I want to leverage a model, and I think this model was from John Mark Comer.

He may have taken it from somewhere else, but very simple, know, six and a half, maybe
seven steps model of anger, because I think we can watch how this plays out in Anakin's

life.

yeah, number one, you get angry because your will is thwarted.

We all have experienced that.

I don't have to sell you on.

We get angry because we wanted something one way and it happened another way.

which results in our ego being wounded.

Now you yourself feel like there is something like a briar in you basically.

There is something that is not right.

You're not complete.

So you end up playing the self -righteous villain.

Sorry, you end up playing the self -righteous victim in this situation if you cannot
process that pain to your ego.

And there's a great quote,

else has hurt me, the world has hurt me, yes, okay.

Yes, yes, there's a great quote here from C .S.

Lewis, the pleasure of anger, the gnawing attraction which makes one return again and
again to its theme, lies.

I believe in the fact that one feels entirely righteous when one is angry.

Then the other person is pure black and you are pure white.

Yeah.

And that's, that's, I don't know if fun's the right word, right?

But it's very engaging to be angry, to be like, I'm going to solve this problem.

This is a problem in the world.

And I can't believe that this injustice to me exists.

And so I'm going to go crush it.

Right.

That's, that is, it's, it's, it's a little bit empowering.

Like I get to go do, I get to go do the thing.

I get to go solve the problem.

I get to exercise my power.

Yeah.

The self -righteousness is a hundred percent.

one of the reactions to, well, I couldn't possibly be wrong, therefore.

Yeah, Anakin, of course, right, he defies the Jedi Order and having this relationship that
he has with Padme and then she ends up being pregnant.

And of course, now he's doubling, doubling, doubling down on things until he is the self
-righteous victim.

Well, the Order is the one who's wrong.

And so what can he do except follow Palpatine and destroy the Order so that he can be left
as the one who's in the right.

And that's where we're going here, right?

So what happens next?

Well, once you position yourself as a self -righteous victim in a black and white world,
then you can allow contempt to control your heart.

There's a David Hume quote on this.

take a piece of something and make it the whole, and then view the whole person through
that lens.

So now, again, Anakin views the Jedi Order as completely wrong.

He now sees that piece of them as the whole thing.

lack of the ability to display emotions or to have relationships, well, because I don't
agree with that, the whole thing's off.

They're all bad.

Well, and he really, he views everybody through that lens, right?

And that's, we all do that all the time, right?

We all simplify, but he views everybody through that lens, the people that he loves, he
views as only potential victims that he has to shelter.

The people that he used to love, he views as not trustworthy and so opponents, the people
that, you know, that he, you know, the one, the one mentor that he trusts is like, well,

he must be on my side.

So everything he says must be true.

Right.

And you lock yourself into this.

Yep.

Okay.

I'm in, I've done, I've done all these things.

Check, check, check and check.

Yeah, these will be on screen by the way.

yeah, the number five is materializing the contempt.

So this is when it starts to be contextualized for this specific situation in your brain
through events.

Now, okay, well, what am I going to do about this?

This is where you start to think, how does what's inside of me come outside of me?

You know, this person doesn't deserve this.

So I'm going to undermine them.

I'm going to take it from them.

We see that with Anakin, obviously in multiple different ways with

You know, he executes order 66 with Palpatine.

There's so many different examples where he then turns and undermines the people he views
as wrong so that he can be vindicated.

And finally, where you end up with is reality is bent.

You create a hell on earth around you where there is no like you.

We talked about it's a narrowing of the abilities that you have to make decisions.

It is a cutting off of your relationships where the only way you can see the world now is
they are wrong.

I am right.

Why aren't they adhering to the way that I think things should be?

And that ends with our, what I call the final half step, which is the action that's taken
into the world where you actually, you know, assault somebody.

It mean as far as murder or other horrible things that can happen.

And like, how do we think those things happen?

Well, some of it is because people are mentally ill and some of it is because that's it
all in a quantum entanglement that goes on of mental illness and contempt and all of these

things that kind of build.

and build and build until you read these terrible stories on the news.

How could somebody possibly do that?

Well, how could I possibly have lashed out at somebody in that meeting?

Right.

Yeah.

The, the, the, you say, the cycle of anger is it builds up to these things are easier and
easier to justify because of your context, because of your framing, because of the way

that you've narrowed the view of the world around you.

Yeah.

That's, know, yeah, that that's, we can all see ourselves doing that in little ways,
right?

And we can all see, you know, sort of where that goes and

One of the reasons we do this podcast is because these big splashy on -screen examples of
doing it to the nth degree, they penetrate, they stick to our brains.

okay, anyway, I'm not going to go murder a classroom full of kids, but I am absolutely
able to be angry and to depersonalize other people in my self -righteous anger and to then

behave very unskillfully in a way that's very much not going to help everybody that's
around.

That's a hundred percent of the thing that I can do and have done and have to be able to
recognize when it starts to arise, when I start to ride that merry -go -round.

Yeah, so what do we do about that?

mean, if we can see a cycle and it's a cycle that when it completes ends in tragedy and
ends in even more pain, then the only thing that we can do is try to stop the cycle.

And that goes back to what you were talking about with Obi -Wan.

You we want to stop.

We're not going to be able to stop number one necessarily getting angry because your will
is thwarted.

There's going to be a moment where somebody cuts you off in traffic and you're like,

Like you gotta be kidding me.

I, of course I know how to drive better than everybody else.

Everybody should adhere to the way that I'm driving currently and not cut me off.

Right.

But stopping it there and as the ego can tend to get wounded there, allowing for a moment
to reflect, don't let it escalate to becoming the victim in this situation.

And instead, okay, do I need to just in that situation?

I can just verbally or mentally forgive that person right now in my own head.

and be done with it.

I don't have to worry about this.

I could just keep moving.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

There's the, from the very simple things like take a deep breath, like just one in, one
out.

Have you actually been hurt?

Really?

Have you actually been hurt?

Right.

You know, right.

You know, that's, that's a simple thing to do.

Right.

But there is, but also all the way up to kind of what we see Obi -Wan doing, right.

Is the, is the, I must have been wrong, right?

I must not have handled this well or wouldn't have gotten this bad.

So what can I do better next time?

How can I reach out to that person and try to do it better together next time?

Like the willingness to be potentially wrong, right?

That when you, this conflict has happened, when you got angry, when something went
terribly, when you had some negative interaction, at least be open to the idea that it

might be you that had screwed up.

Yeah, yeah, or even, it's at least some shade of gray in what happened in the situation
and making it black and white is, is the biggest possible risk and going and having that

crucial conversation with somebody one -on -one.

This is what I noticed has lost most in the world of today is people are less and less
willing for one reason or another to have these difficult conversations with each other.

And I mean, in a workplace setting, I've had to get better about that.

I've had good mentors that have taught me to get better at that, that when somebody wrongs
you and you feel like you might start this cycle of anger, you know, sometimes the only

thing to do is to pull them, go pull them aside in a one -on -one and just, you know,
reflect beforehand, compose your thoughts in a way that's kind and just share that with

them.

And maybe, maybe like you said, maybe am I really wronged?

Am I really hurt?

That's, that's the first step.

But then if you feel like you are,

It's okay to go address that with somebody.

And even more importantly, if you feel like you may have done that to somebody else, then
even more impetus on me that I need to go have a conversation with that person and make it

right.

I don't want this cycle of anger for anybody.

Well, and then in this context, and we'll talk about more of this in the next episode, I
think, but in this context of a leadership podcast or leadership lessons, if you're in the

position of leadership and you feel you may have been the person that, you know, that hurt
somebody, if you feel like, you know, or if least you just acknowledge that there is some,

some conflict, some negative interaction you're having with somebody, if they are
subordinate to you or have less influence than you or less position of a privilege than

you, then they are likely not going to feel comfortable.

bring it up.

They're not going to feel comfortable addressing it or challenging you, right?

It's going to be on you to decide, you know?

And it might be that they did something incredibly terrible and needed to be flamed and,
but letting the resentment linger about that, letting unclarity linger about that is not

necessarily going to be better, right?

As your leader, whether or not you were in the wrong, you're probably going to have to be
the one to initiate those crucial conversations, whether to course correct yourself or to

course correct somebody else.

that's part of the leadership responsibility is you can't expect somebody else to come and
tell you that there's a problem that needs to be fixed.

Right?

You can't expect somebody else to come and tell you that you were wrong because sort of by
definition, they don't have that authority or they will, they will very, especially if

you've demonstrated your anger in the past, they will very reasonably expect that this is
not a thing that's going to go well.

And so it just makes it harder, right?

It makes it harder and harder when you're supposed to be the one that knows what's going
on.

When you're supposed to be the one in control and you're supposed to be the more mature.

more professional, more accomplished one.

If you screwed up and then it's extra on you to figure it out.

And if you haven't screwed up, sorry, but you're the leader, it's still on you.

Wow.

And it brings us all the way to the end of the podcast almost here with again, bringing
back character is destiny because if you're, if we're able to make these decisions, if

we're able to forgive, if we're able to reflect, if we're able to have those crucial
conversations, what it does is instead of going down the Anakin arc where we just keep

doubling down, doubling down, doubling down on the internal struggles that we're having,
but just make us more and more naval gazers, we can have the opposite effect.

where you can have a narrowing and narrowing and narrowing of your ability to make good
decisions and it becomes the default response when you're damaged by somebody or you're

hurt to stop and reflect before you allow yourself to become angry to go and address it
with them directly and then more importantly as a leader even than that is to teach others

to do likewise.

If you're a trustworthy partner to have those conversations with, whether you're a direct
leader or not, then you can be that, you know, that model of the magnanimous leader that's

in the space.

and you can at least minimize the damage that you're causing personally on a daily basis,
which is, which is a good place to start.

yeah, doubling down on the mistakes is I think the lesson we, we take from Anakin as an
emerging, emerging villain, right?

Is the, is the cycle of.

The cycle of fear and ego and simplifying your worldview so that you're the victim and
then feeling justified in lashing out.

Right?

That cycle is a thing we can strive to break.

Yeah.

And for us, it's not necessarily always as simple as it's going to be for Anakin.

So setting up rituals where we, you know, journaling, reflecting, giving ourselves the
opportunity.

mean, there's a lot of practices these days around kind of like rehashing situations that
we have emotional, you know, memories of to go back into that situation and try to

understand what is my perception of the situation.

What do I think actually happened in that situation?

What does the other person think happened in that situation?

Okay, what should have happened in that situation?

How can we then take that information and use it to go forward?

mean, yeah, this was a really concise key takeaways, honestly, because it's all about this
cycle of doubling down on our anger, more, looking more internally and less externally.

And in the end,

That is the lesson that we're probably going to touch on over and over in this series on
villains is whether it's about anger or about a different path to that, but the, the, the

navel gazing and the con allowing your emotions to become the primary means of controlling
you that can result in you going down the wrong path.

And then it becomes very hard to get back on the right path.

Right.

Well, and we talked a lot about the individual's responsibility and the individual's
behaviors here, which I think is the lesson from this, from these movies and from this

episode.

But just to touch on it briefly at the end, the other big thing that happens here is Enik
is just listening to the wrong people, right?

Is that he has people in his life who are clearly examples of kindness and caring and
mentorship and success and skillfulness and all the things you would want in a leader.

And he's not listening to those people because they're not telling him what he wants to
hear.

Right.

And so at the very least, if you're in this situation, if you feel you're on this cycle of
anger, like look around and think about who's really behaving in a trustworthy way, who

may be challenging you out of love, you know, and, and, you know, be open to listening to
the things that you don't want to hear from people that, you know, have evidence that they

have your best interests at heart.

Beautiful.

That's a great way to close that.

All right.

Well, that was really, that was really cool.

I like where we're going with this.

think the villains is gonna, the villain sequence is gonna let us examine from a different
angle.

Some of the things about leadership that we've been talking about for so long.

So next episode, I'm really looking forward to this.

We've done, we're done talking about Anakin Skywalker's journey.

We're gonna talk about Darth Vader.

We're gonna talk about what it would be like to have Darth Vader in middle management at
your organization.

So we're looking forward to that.

Thank you for joining us for this episode.

just remember, until next time, as always, character is destiny.