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Welcome to LeadWisely by WonderTour.

We're back in a series talking about villains because we admit that we all have the
potential to become villainous and we want to instead become magnanimous leaders.

Today we're talking about Darth Vader.

Last episode, we focused on Anakin and his journey to become Vader.

Now we're going to be a little bit more practical, a little bit more business oriented.

So Brian, I'm going to ask you, it could potentially be a fun question here.

What would it be like to have Darth Vader as a middle manager at your company?

I love this.

This is going be so much fun.

So I'll frame this by saying in our first episode, 100 episodes of Wonder Tour, we talked
about our leaders.

We did some exercises where we extracted like what would the ideal magnanimous leader look
like?

And one of the things we, one of our phrases was like, okay, well imagine if you had a
leader who shared a clear vision and a roadmap for a better future that was better for

everyone that thought and acted as if you were the chosen hero.

everyone that thought and acted as if you were the chosen hero.

the of the people under them to take, know, to solve problems, not necessarily assume that
it was them themselves, then curated learning opportunities and sheltered the people that

worked with them to become better and better until they were ready to take on the really
tough challenges and was willing to take personal risks or even sacrifice themselves on

behalf of the broader mission and on behalf of protecting the people on their team.

Right.

What would it be like if you had that kind of

And I think if we look at Darth Vader in the, especially the original movie trilogy,
right?

The kind of leader that he is, the kind of influence he is on the organization around him.

The kind of leader that he is, the kind of influence he is on the organization around him.

If you imagine the empire is a big company that you work for, right?

He is exactly the opposite of all those things.

He does none of those things.

He is, Darth Vader is all about, you know, unquestioning loyalty to the boss, whatever the
boss asks him to do, no matter how immoral it is or how personally painful it is, he's

going to work really hard.

He is all about being solely outcome focused and punishing anyone that fails to succeed,
even if it's not necessarily their fault.

He lashes out in anger.

He has his own little special brand of secret knowledge that he's not sharing with
everybody, with anybody else.

And he sort of guards his position jealously based on that.

He's incredibly disruptive because he won't follow any standard processes.

he's, you know, he's just, he's always like breaking the rules and going rogue and going
off and doing things.

And so the other managers all hate him.

And he views all of his subordinates as both interchangeable and disposable.

So really, really the anti -pattern for the magnanimous leader.

Like he's not only is he a formidable opponent, but he would be a terrible person to have
on your team.

Yeah, we probably have seen individuals that aren't necessarily Darth Vader, but if you've
worked for long enough, you've come across people that have aspects of the Darth Vader

where they have their Palpatine in their role who's giving them orders behind the scenes
and they're not very clearly conveying those orders to you, but they're just trying to do

everything they can to make sure they look good in front of Emperor Palpatine and they
don't care how you look in front of him because they don't feel like they're going to be

rewarded on how you look.

So they have no issue at all diverting resources away from what the team actually needs to
do in order to make themselves look good in front of the president or whatever.

Right.

Yes, this is awesome.

yeah, so what that encourages, like if you were that kind of a leader, then what kind of
underlings do you get?

What kind of people, what do you end up with as your team?

You end up with, know, kiss -ups, people who are, you know, completely unwilling to say
anything that the boss doesn't agree with, right?

Because they're terrified to say anything else, right?

You get people that have no initiative because they're afraid of screwing up.

and you get people that are hiding anything bad that might be going on in the real world
because they don't want to be the ones to bring bad news, right?

You do not get the best and the brightest and you don't get the best out of the people
that you have if you're the kind of leader that inspires fear and appears to be only

interested in your own success.

So I think we can probably imagine examples of people like that that we've had in our
orbit, right?

People that you've seen in an organization who were maybe very powerful and very skilled
and very good at accomplishing things individually and had been put in a position of

leadership and had not made the transition to the team needs to accomplish things.

They were still like, I personally need to solve all the problems, right?

I'm in this role, like...

Why are they on that role?

Why do we promote people like that?

Why do we put Darth Vader's or, you know, people with some of those attributes in
management in the first place?

Yeah.

And I like how you framed it as middle management because it depends on how big the
organization is.

At like a small company, this person can easily be the CEO or president, but at a large
company, this person doesn't last as the CEO or president very long.

Definitely not a publicly traded company because this person is probably not going to be
very good for the shareholder returns because they're really after things for themselves.

So we do see leaders get ousted at public companies who

seem to exhibit some traits like this.

But I think at the middle management levels, right?

Of course, somebody gets it put in this position.

Why?

Because they are good at accomplishing the mission of their superior, of their direct or
whoever the most important sponsor in the organization is or whatever.

That's how this person gets to be at a director level or something like that.

And then, of course, what we normally what I normally find is that the person can't get
above that level within a decent organization because the people above that in the

And then, of course, what we normally what I normally find is that the person can't get
above that level within a decent organization because the people above that in the

organization

are more skilled and more capable of seeing what it requires to be there and they're not
going to allow it.

So you end up with this person kind of getting, topping out in the organization at a
certain point of their effectiveness is no longer.

This maybe is one of the reasons people kind of reach that like one level above their
competence situation.

It's because they got there by not necessarily riding any coattails, but just being a good
individual contributor that knew how to respond.

hastily to the exact requirements of their superior and that's it.

Yes, I was hoping you were going to get there, right?

This personality, right?

The powerful problem solver, right?

The person who is very good at getting angry at things and going and working infinitely
hard to fix the problems is responding.

They are reactive.

They are very good at firefighting.

They're very good at like, you know, throwing all their weight around to try to resolve
some problem that has been created.

Right.

And so, yeah, we absolutely...

Sometimes those people are great to have on your team, right?

If you're boarding the other starship, it's really great to have Darth Vader be the first
guy through the breach.

Like, okay, great.

You go clear all the place out.

I'll be the stormtrooper that runs up behind.

Like, I'm in, sign me up.

I'd love that guy to be on my team, right?

But if your only skillset is reacting, if you're never proactive, if you're never making
plans, if you're never investing in the team, if you're never taking time to train, if

you're never doing any of those things.

If the only thing that you're good at is waiting for a problem to occur and then being
really angry and working really hard to fix the problem, then you end up sort of bouncing

around and causing drama and letting things fester until you get around to paying
attention to them.

And, and that's not, like you say, that's, that's not really executive management,
publicly traded company, professional leadership level, but those people absolutely do get

promoted to certain levels in middle management.

because they are the boss's pet or because they've solved a really public problem and they
got put in a new position of authority or something like that.

And so we, this is a real thing.

And that's one, think the challenges of an organization is to curate a management culture,
curated decision -making process about your leaders, about how you develop your leaders

that you don't just promote the firefighters or if you do promote the firefighters, make
clear that there's a different set of behaviors around the people that are supposed to be

looking over.

Hill and preparing for the next problem rather than waiting for it to show up.

Right.

That, know, who do you empower and how do you empower them and what do you message to
them?

Yeah.

If you have a culture that creates Darth Vader's, right.

Then you're going to get, you know, a certain kind of behavior as an organization, but
that has certain implications, both for the experience of people that work there and for

how the organization acts in the world, that are, you know, maybe, maybe not long -term in
your best interests.

Yeah, so let's talk about the practical application of this on the other side.

Let's hit the intro.

Hi, I'm Brian Nutwell.

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

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

You can find out more at wondertourpodcast .com or if you're listening on audio, check us
out on YouTube at Lead Wisely, all one word.

So let's go right into the mountaintop.

So we're talking about Darth Vader in middle management.

So what is our what scene in this in this movie is emblematic of Darth Vader in middle
management.

In the whole trilogy of movies, we have a bunch of these examples, but honestly, the one
that I love is very early on in episode four in the first Star Wars movie is like this

middle management.

you know, leadership team meeting on the Death Star, where you've got Grand Moff Tarkin,
who's sort of the professional manager, CEO, like very calm, very controlled, very logical

manager.

And then you've got a team of Imperial, you know, officers of varying levels and
responsibilities who are sitting on this Death Star, who are in charge of the fleet, are

in charge of the Death Star.

What the heck ever, right?

There's, you know, all the divisions of the company are sitting there.

And then you got Darth Vader sitting at, not even sitting at the table, like stalking
around the back of the table while they're talking.

And it's just like, I've been in this meeting, like this highly dysfunctional team meeting
where the boss doesn't really have everybody under control and they're, you know, they

kind of believe in the high level mission, but they're arguing about how to get there.

And the team is like squabbling and Darth Vader is like force choking out people that he
disagrees with who are disparaging his skill set and his entire world.

It's just like, it's all of the team dysfunctions you can have at once at this, you know,
ridiculous amplified Star Wars level.

So in particular, the elements of this that are happening are that we have this Darth
Vader team member who is committed to a different version of the vision than everybody

else and doesn't really care.

He's kind of of kowtowing to the boss, but he's really not even pretending to collaborate
with anybody else.

And everybody else is so focused on the political battles of how they should be doing the
thing that of course it's the empire.

Like they're not, they're not even grappling with the fact like the thing they're arguing
about is the most efficient way to go murder millions of people.

It's like the whole organization has gone off the rails and none of them have a moral
compass.

And so they're just squabbling over their little fiefdoms.

And that's, think an interesting thing to talk about, right?

Is this, you know, the disruption that this character has on the team.

Is this, you know, the disruption that this character has on the team.

But also that the fact when you get away from talking about the purpose, when you get away
from talking about like what you're trying to accomplish and why, it's very easy to get in

this mode of like, well, I just need to protect my little fiefdom, right?

I my team to be the one that helps us be successful and not the other person's.

Yeah, like you're talking about the fiefdoms.

That's the thing that I hadn't thought about as it relates to kind of the Darth Vader
archetype or like you get like for again, fractions of the Darth Vader archetype in

business.

It does create fiefdoms because you have people who are all about trying to make sure they
get the badge of honor and other people don't necessarily get the badge of honor because

at some point in this crap, yeah, at some point the problem is once you get promoted, you
get somebody like this who's promoted to a certain level.

The only thing that they can do is get more promoted.

That's what they want.

They need that.

They need that more money, more power.

The problem is they no longer have any sort of skill set that contribute to doing the
thing at the higher level.

Darth Vader is a prime example, right?

He's not capable of leading this group of people, but yet he wants to be the one in the
room who's leading it, despite the fact that he's completely has never been trained, never

been skilled, never.

He didn't listen to the people, the Jedi who tried to teach him.

what it would require to lead a group of people like this.

And yet he still wants to be the leader.

Right.

He does.

Well, and he has the other fun thing that he does, which comes out, you know, more and
more later in the trilogy, right?

Is he's like, well, I've got the secret line to the boss.

Like the emperor calls me and tells me what the real plan is.

And so I'm the only one that really knows what's going on.

It's just it's so it's so dysfunctional.

And we've seen this, right.

This the personality of like, I've got a skill set.

that nobody else has and I'm going to protect it.

And when we're successful because of it, it's because of me, because I, you know, cause I
didn't share it with anybody.

Like we've seen that, you know, people that want to be the technical specialist or the
people that want to have the one team that knows how to solve the problem.

The people that want to have the resource that everybody depends on.

Like that's a real thing.

The

I've got the secret line to the boss and in the conversation I had with him, he said, this
is what I should be doing.

So I don't have to listen to you, my actual boss, right?

Cause I talked to the CEO.

Like that's a real thing.

I've seen that I've done that.

I've been in the, I've been in the position where the president has called me and said,
Hey, I want you to work on this project.

And I've got like three layers of management between me and him.

gotta go like, Hey, so I got this weird phone call, right?

But

but how to navigate that without like blowing up the org structure without causing much
resentment.

Like that's a hard thing to do.

All right, and Darth Vader doesn't care.

He's just like, anyway, I talked to the boss, so like, I'm just gonna go do my thing.

And what we talked about in the last episode, the ego of I couldn't possibly have been
wrong.

yeah, I know it's taken forever to get the Death Star plans, but I'm gonna have them soon.

We're taking care of it.

It's under control.

Stop questioning me.

Like he won't, you know, he keeps doubling down.

He keeps like, I'm personally gonna go solve this problem.

It's all of those behaviors and those are all like visible every day when you work for a
big company, right?

They're all real middle management sort of failure modes.

Yeah, I think we talked about in the intro a little bit, but the resource allocation too,
it's so annoying.

Just the, well, now the resources need to go over here.

I know we had some sort of a purpose or a mission we were trying to achieve, but like, no,
I'm gonna pull this Star Destroyer and I'm gonna take it over here, which is gonna create

a gap in the overall strategy, but who cares?

Because I'm trying to accomplish my objectives and I don't really know what your
objectives are or care about them.

Or even the, you know, the, shiny new object syndrome, right?

Where the, one guy who's like, this panel station is now the ultimate force in the
universe.

None of your other stuff makes any difference.

Like that's the, that's like the gen AI guy at the table.

It's like all of our porous products are junk.

Like what we need to be doing is building language models.

It's just like, like there's, there's always the shiny new thing versus the way we used to
do things.

And that's, that's a source of team dysfunction.

Right.

And then, and the leader who's just like, we should be nicer to each other in this
meeting.

That's really not the problem you need to be fixing here, dude.

In the end it always goes back to like you said, it's purpose.

It's are we aligned on purpose?

There's very few discussions that the Empire has about purpose.

They're just kind of like locked in on whatever the Emperor tells them is the purpose
because he's the most powerful being in the universe as they understand it and they don't

really have a choice.

They've just kind of enslaved themselves to him at which point like their only alternative
is to run and hide and hope he can't find them because they can't betray the Empire or

he'll just cut them down.

Right.

And he's the kind of leader who won't actually tell anybody what's going on.

Like he's got multi -layered plans and he's a hundred percent not letting you.

He's like, you guys can all go get ambushed or whatever.

I don't care.

Like actually I'm just trying to, you he's setting people up, but he's not telling people
what the plan is.

not, they have no agency.

They have no involvement.

They have no buy -in.

So.

So in the last episode, we talked about, you know, Anakin's arc of becoming Darth Vader
and becoming this character who sort of gives up his agency and is just reacting out of

fear and just sort of wearing the shell and pursuing this single minded, you know,
problems.

Right.

We talked about how to not turn into that.

So with this one, I want to talk about more from the other side, like, yeah, what would it
be like to have Vader on your team?

What would it be like to have disruptive, you know, toxic people in your leadership
structure?

What are some best practices around navigating that situation?

How do you deal with the fact that there probably will be somebody that was promoted
beyond their skillset or their leadership capabilities or somebody that is inherently all

about themselves or all about protecting their resources?

Like, do you do?

Like what are some leadership tactics or some navigating the team tactics when you have
that person as a team leader?

So one thing I asked a great mentor about this at one point and his feedback was that you
have to, as as this is going to be painful, you have to get closer to that person because

that's going to rub probably against your grain of how you want to do things because that
person probably doesn't have the same values that we have.

That person's probably not trying to become a magnanimous leader at this point in their
life.

But there's multiple, multiple benefits that I've learned from taking this approach of
going, I have to lean into my pain of being closer to that person, even though they're

going to do things that I'm like, don't want to be a part of that.

You don't want to take part in those things, but just to be closer to them, sit next to
them at lunch, you know, try to understand them a little bit better, ask them to go out

after work, whatever it takes in order to A, and this is kind of the

more easy magnanimous viewpoint is that person is acting like a Darth Vader for a reason,
right?

We just went and talked about Anakin's backstory.

They probably have a backstory.

They probably don't want to be this person, but they don't feel like they have a lot of
choices at this point in their life.

They've made their bed and now they're lying in it.

So there's, there's a reason there's childhood trauma, there's whatever, right?

There's family issues at home.

There's family issues at home.

There's something that is leading this person.

over for promotion and so now I'm going to make sure I get the next one.

Yeah.

There's, yeah.

Yeah.

So there's, that's true that you can, there's an opportunity to be sympathetic there,
right?

You know, to not view them as black and white, but to try to get a little bit more nuance
in your understanding of this person that's going to be in your orbit.

So you might as well figure it out.

Yeah, and then there's a strategy element too, right?

The strategy element is I want to understand what is this person on about?

know, Darth Vader is all about resources.

He's all about making sure he has top -down control of the, or at least like a great level
of influence over the right resources in the organization.

And he's all about capturing the resources that he needs to accomplish his mission.

So a lot of times he's, you know, what is that person on about?

Are they on about resources?

Cause if they're on about resources,

Just because you're empathetic and try to understand their backstory doesn't mean you can
change them.

That's not your job.

You can maybe help, but we can't, that requires a lot of time and energy and a skillful
person, right time and place.

So you can try, but you can definitely take advantage of understanding what is their
strategy.

What is this person trying to do?

And can I use my being a little bit closer to them to align their strategy with

the overall team strategy.

Can I try to get them just a little bit closer to it?

That way when they go off and respond to things, react to things, they're at least
reacting in the right direction, hopefully.

They might still not be being the kindest person to the people around them or whatever,
but at least they're focused on the mission that the rest of the people are focused on so

you can forgive it a little bit.

right.

Can you channel that energy?

Can you blunt the trauma that they're inflicting on people around them?

Or can you get them to point all their horsepower at something that is slightly better
aligned?

So if you get close to them, can potentially, if you're up here or if you're somebody that
you get to a position where they trust, they understand your worldview, maybe you can kind

So if you get close to them, can potentially, if you're up here or if you're somebody that
you get to a position where they trust, they understand your worldview, maybe you can kind

of point them a little bit slightly on a course correction.

Right.

The other thing that their experience I've had with that, I think very similarly is that
if you're in more of a subordinate role where you're maybe not going to necessarily be

able to guide them, but you're not super well aligned with mission, know, selfishly, but
not cynically.

able to guide them, but you're not super well aligned with mission, know, selfishly, but
not cynically.

If you can, if you can satisfy them occasionally, if you can make them look good, because
that's what they value.

If you can find a way to do a thing that you like doing anyway, or that you feel is the
right thing to do that they also value.

You can find some piece of alignment that every once in a while, like you're making them
look good or you're making, you you're satisfying them or you're helping them, you know,

move in their direction.

Then you can earn some air cover to like go off and do the things that you think are
actually important or go off and, you know, pursue missions that maybe they aren't

necessarily explicitly asking for.

And I've had that experience too, right?

You know, I've had, I've had.

times where I was pursuing some things that I thought were really important to move the
organization forward, but they weren't super high priority for my next level boss or the

one above that.

But as long as that person, know, every quarter they'd call me like, my God, we need to
make a dashboard for this.

I need to report on this or I need a strategy, a slide deck about this thing or whatever.

As long as I was willing to do that, like drop everything and spend the next three days
doing that thing and putting them in a position to succeed, right?

Then they were like, okay, great.

I'll trust you to spend your other time doing whatever you think is important.

kind of earn yourself some grace to not be, you know, on the Darth Vader train all the
time, but at least, you know, let Darth Vader empower you enough to like go have your own

influence in the organization.

And I think that's a, it's not guaranteed, but when, you, like you say, you get close
enough to somebody to understand what's important to them and you listen to them when they

say, this is what is non -negotiable.

This is the thing that has to be done in the organization.

Then you can potentially, you know,

not only not get flamed yourself, but earn yourself a little bit of credit to pursue your
own agenda or to kind of cultivate a different network that's not just the strict

hierarchy.

And that's a workaround, right?

But that actually takes us to the other thing I wanted to talk about, which is kind of
organizational alignment itself.

Like telling the difference between an organization where it's like...

rooming Darth Vader's like with the whole organization has a different set of priorities
and behaviors and missions than what you believe in.

That's one situation, which is a different situation from I'm fundamentally on with this
organization, but I have this one really terrible, toxic, disruptive boss in my orbit.

Like those are kind of different environments.

So what have you, have you had either of those or both of those situations drew?

Yeah, I've definitely seen both of those.

haven't experienced them, experienced some of them directly, some of them indirectly.

But yeah, I think there's two different situations there, like you said.

And that's actually the exact same point I was about to make, which is understanding if
it's a bad Apple factory or not.

Like you said, if it's an individual manager who has gotten themselves to this point and
they're just a driver, a go -getter, and they have kind of run out of...

road in terms of their skill set to be able to do that.

They're not able to properly leverage the actual team and organization to do it.

And so they end up being the Vader.

That's a situation where it's a little more manageable.

Like you said, you can deal with that.

You can work through that.

You can be very tactical.

around it.

Yeah.

You can, you can imagine that that's not your destiny is that that's the only way to
succeed.

You just need to kind of work around that person and, know, maybe look for another team,
look for an opportunity to transfer or figure out how to work with them until they go do

something else and you have a new, you know, have a new boss.

Yeah, you can get those people working in the right direction.

At some point, if it's one person or a few people that are a minority, then you can
generally work with other good leaders in the organization to get them going in the right

direction.

Let's just keep them focused on the things that are important to the organization, reward
them when they do them.

And sure, you know, we're not going to, there might be rough around the edges in terms of
how they treat people and stuff, but we can't get, if we can't get rid of them, what are

we doing?

Let's just try to try to help them as much as we can.

and make sure that the rest of the organization is treated as good as possible.

Now, the other side of that is if it's a bad Apple factory, if the CEO is doing this and
you see the CEO is doing it, the person underneath the CEO, the VPs are three of them,

didn't used to do it, but now they're starting to act like this and then your boss is
acting like this or whatever.

Okay, that's a bad Apple factory.

You can't fix a bad Apple factory.

have to, at that point, you gotta be Finn.

You gotta leave the stormtroopers.

You gotta leave the empire because that bad Apple factory is not your responsibility to
fix, nor are you probably at the right place and time.

Yeah.

Call out to episode seven.

I love it.

So yeah, absolutely.

And so yeah, if you, you know, if you're three levels down in an organization and the way
they make decisions about promotions, the way they make decisions about resources, the way

they make decisions about who gets to have authority and influence is fundamentally not
aligned with the career you want to have right then.

probably hanging out waiting for to work for a different Darth Vader than the one that
you're currently working for isn't the plan, right?

Like maybe you just don't want to be a stormtrooper anymore, right?

And that's a really hard thing.

we're not here at Wondertour telling you to go quit your job tomorrow, but we are telling
you to examine your values.

We're telling you to develop your own character and make your own decisions about where
you're going with it.

And if you, is absolutely, you know, there are...

And if you, is absolutely, you know, there are...

Stories of an organizations that have developed really toxic decision -making cultures,
really toxic leadership cultures, right?

And, you know, whether it's if you realize that your whole organization is a Ponzi scheme
or if you realize your organization is a cigarette manufacturer, you fundamentally can't

stomach the product that is being produced.

Like nobody's going to solve that problem for you, right?

You're the only one that can decide how well aligned you are.

trying to tell the difference between those two situations, more often than not, it's
going to be, you you have a single person in your orbit that's really disruptive.

You're working for a boss that you're really not aligned with.

That's really hard.

It's really difficult, especially if they're enabled by other people, if you don't feel
like you're empowered to make a difference.

Like not to take anything away from that situation, but it is, important to try to discern
the difference between that situation and the, this is the way this organization wants

people to behave.

And I don't feel comfortable with it.

then you might need to look for another gig.

Exactly.

That's, that's good.

So let's hit some key takeaways here.

So let's hit some key takeaways here.

know we, we talked a lot of practical application there.

This has been helpful to me to reinforce how, how to approach this situation.

Cause I think you're all going to run into that situation where you have somebody who
exhibits characteristics of a Darth Vader type manager.

So to me, the first key takeaway has to be to consider that person.

You got to reflect on that person.

get close to that person as you can without getting damaged yourself or minimizing the
amount of energy and effort that you have to put into processing being around that person.

But you got to understand it because you're never going to be able to help.

A, Brian, you might not be able to figure out what we just talked about with
organizational, know, is this the organization or is this the person?

But B, you got to understand why is this person like this?

What motivates them?

And you can't do that unless you get closer to that person.

Right.

So don't avoid the problem.

Right.

If you've got a, you know, if you like a step, step zero is like recognize it, right?

If you see things that are really disruptive, you can look at, you know, is there a Darth
Vader behavior pattern going on in your orbit?

Right.

As one of your managers exhibiting this anti pattern of magnanimous leadership, then if
you can't, you know, if you, if you have to engage with that, then go straight at it.

Like, don't, don't be afraid of it.

Like go, go engage with that person and

be humble about it and see what you can learn.

See if they have a point or see if they, at least you can understand what the levers are
to try to move them in the right direction or levers are to get yourself some air cover

to, you know, to be able to operate more independently.

think those are all, yeah, those are all really good strategies.

And then the perspective, which I think you were just leading into, right?

The perspective of the bad Apple factory.

Like try to...

look at the organization culture and why that person is successful.

And if this is an outlier situation or somebody that's kind of, you know, had a special
path to where they are and you feel like this is, you know, you can work around it, then

great, go do that.

That's, you know, that's by far the most common situation.

But do be, you know, take a look.

Are you working for the empire?

Like if you're working for the empire and you don't believe in the position of the empire,
then maybe it would be time to go join the Alliance, right?

Maybe it'd be time to do something else.

And that's, that's really hard, right?

And that's going to be a rare situation, I think, but it's, we're encouraging people to
develop their own characters.

We're encouraging ourselves to develop our own characters and principles.

And part of that has to be looking for alignment in your life, not the people that you
choose to surround you with, which for a lot of us, most hours of the day are the people

that we choose to work with.

So, find a, find a pocket of the, yeah.

that is disparaging of magnanimous values, then it's going to be really tough for you to
be the person that you're trying to be.

Yeah.

So find a pocket of the world that, that, you know, that helps you, you know, and not
necessarily everybody around you has to agree with your values, but at least that you feel

like you can thrive, that you can skillfully be magnanimous and make the world better,
improve others.

If you're in a pocket, then we'll you do that.

See if there's another pocket in your organization.

If the organization doesn't want those things, then you need to understand whether you can
make that difference or not.

But the last thing I want to say just then is that circling back to that Darth Vader
character that we talked about and kind of tying into our last episode, right?

The people that are in that position that are that disruptive, that are that toxic, that
are that misaligned with those around them, Most of those people, like you said, they're

not happy.

They're not satisfied.

They're not delighted about being the rogue agent.

They might enjoy disrupting things, but they're probably upset about something, right?

And it's going to take a huge push.

from somebody they trust to break out of the shell, to take off the helmet, right?

In our Star Wars example, right?

It takes somebody, it takes a Luke Skywalker who is, you know, both magnanimous and
trusting and I see good in you and I'm gonna put myself in this, you know, I'm gonna learn

from Obi -Wan's sacrifice by sacrificing myself.

It takes that much of a person in your orbit who is clearly on your side to get Darth
Vader out of his helmet, to get him out of his shell.

has to see his own son, who is the kind of the, where Anakin should have been the Obi -Wan
2 .0 or whatever.

Luke is actually Obi -Wan 2 .0.

And so he won't listen to the first Obi -Wan, even though he has like one of the greatest
teachers you could ask for.

But then he sees the kind of the reincarnation of Obi -Wan here.

And only in that moment does he realize that he can.

he can be saved, that there is some redemption.

And sadly, that redemption is very narrow at that point.

The redemption is critically important.

I do not want to say that what Darth Vader does, throwing the Emperor into the battery or
whatever it is there, is not important.

It is.

But it's like, look at how narrow his choices were at that point.

Right, right.

But it's just to end this episode on the note of, you know, in both directions, if you
are, if there are people in your orbit that are causing pain around them, if there are

people in your organization that are acting really unskillfully, like it's going to take a
lot for them to completely change, but it is possible, right?

And, you know, being a good influence is something that you can do.

an example, being a trusted voice is something you can do.

But by the same token, even if you are, have been habitually destructive in your
environment, even if you haven't figured out how to skillfully navigate, like look for the

people in your orbit who are, who are helpful, who are magnanimous, who are, have your
best interests at heart and you can learn from them, right?

You can still, you can make the different choices, even that far down the road.

can still, you can still take different steps.

So I need to, need to reflect on that one a little myself.

Absolutely.

Let's wrap it up here, Brian.

This was great going on this journey with you for our first episode on villains here
talking about Darth Vader.

What are we going to talk about next week?

We are, we're going to continue down the classic villains train.

We're going to go with a big budget Hollywood action movie.

We'll be talking about Hans Gruber, the terrorists slash thief from the original diehard
movie, which will be great fun because that movie is ridiculous fun on every level.

So that's where we're going next.

We are really going to enjoy this series talking about leadership lessons from the
opposite angle, the anti -patterns of leadership lessons.

So we hope you'll join us for that next time.

We hope you enjoy this conversation.

And until then, just remember, as always, character is destiny.