Five leadership lessons from James T. Kirk

[Tyberius]

Forbes has an article here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/03/05/five-leadership-lessons-from-james-t-kirk/

Agree, disagree. More lessons? Other captains?

Of course there is the book "All I really need to know, I learned from watching Star Trek"

 

[T'Girl]

... chess is often taken too seriously as a metaphor for leadership strategy. For all of its intricacies, chess is a game of defined rules that can be mathematically determined.

It’s ultimately a game of boxes and limitations. A far better analogy to strategy is poker, not chess. Life is a game of probabilities, not defined rules.

This comes from the line in "The Corbormite Maneuver" where Kirk said to Spock: "Not chess, Mr. Spock. Poker."

If you're knowledgeable about chess, you know that there are no wild cards and there is no bluffing, everything is right in front of you. But that's not how real life works.

In poker there are hidden cards in the possession of your opponents. Plus you have a need to read your opponent in a way that simply doesn't exist in chess. One of my favorite episodes is "Data's Day," in the end the Romulans possessed the hidden wild card.

And Picard was forced to fold.

")

 

[Captain April]

The article is spot on about yes men and The Phantom Menace. Sycophants are the path to stagnation and eventual irrelevance.

 

[T'Girl]

Weak leaders surround themselves with yes men who are afraid to argue with them.

You mean this?

When I read this, I immediately thought of Jonathan Archer, look at who he had around him. He had one true adviser at first, Trip. Who largely though the same way he did. The other Humans on the bridge were "mousey," Malcolm wouldn't have spoken up if Archer set the bridge on fire.

Nether Archer or Trip initially want T'Pol there at all, it took a year for Archer to even begin to listen to her.

")

 

[Timo]

...Of course, it's a bit amusing to read leadership advice intended for a competitive organization when the actual organization at hand is one tasked primarily with maintaining status quo. Dynamic leaders will be the undoing of such organizations, and will lead into them failing with their primary goal.

Also, in any military, listening to advice from your inferiors is only going to get everybody really, really uncomfortable, as the inferior will necessarily attempt to say "Boss, I don't want to die!" while it's the superior's job to tell him "I want you to - better you than those thousand others, let alone me".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Caliburn24]

Actually listening to inferiors is a necessity in the military. Hence the huge(sometimes bloated) staffs for general officers. The best military leaders are almost universally the ones with the 1) best staff, and 2) who listen to that staff. Unfortunately history overlooks the contributions of staff officers for the most part, and unless you have served in the military yourself you can't really have a true grasp on just how essential a good staff is.

Also, combat-arms soldiers in a volunteer military are a little different than normal civilians. While serving as a scout in Iraq, myself and my platoon begged and pleaded with higher to be allowed to go out as two-man sniper teams or in other small teams that would vastly increase our effectiveness as counter-insurgency fighters even while greatly increasing the personal risk and danger to ourselves. And we were not alone, every other line combat platoon in Diyala was begging for the chance to take the fight to the enemy. And the competition for which units would get to go to the hottest most violent parts of Iraq were pretty fierce. When air assault missions would come up, or something similar, we did whatever we could to get put on them. Yeah, it was a bit nuts looking back at it, but that is the mentality.

Starfleet is of course not nearly so bloodthirsty, but seems to have the same sort of cavalier attitude about putting their ships and crews at risk in unknown situations. And from what we have seen the crews of Federation starships typically are competing to see who gets to go on those risky missions.

 

[Captain Rob]

My former employer, who's also my former best friend could learn something from this article. While I was working for him, he got his MBA. One of the course dealt with leadership and they used the movie "Twelve O'clock High" as a teaching tool for effective leadership. Now I love the movie but my friend couldn't comprehend that there was a huge difference between Gregory Peck's character fighting WW2 and him running a tiny construction company. A construction company doesn't have to worry about 20 to 30 percent of it's crews not coming back from the job because they're dead. And you don't have to worry about people dropping bombs on your office while you're at work. The premise being that a supervisor shouldn't make relationships with his employees because emotions might interfere with making the hard decisions. And oh yeah; ignore the advice of someone (me) that has 20 years experience managing employees. Captain Kirk's methods worked for me.

 

[sonak]

...Of course, it's a bit amusing to read leadership advice intended for a competitive organization when the actual organization at hand is one tasked primarily with maintaining status quo. Dynamic leaders will be the undoing of such organizations, and will lead into them failing with their primary goal.

Also, in any military, listening to advice from your inferiors is only going to get everybody really, really uncomfortable, as the inferior will necessarily attempt to say "Boss, I don't want to die!" while it's the superior's job to tell him "I want you to - better you than those thousand others, let alone me".

Timo Saloniemi

have you been in the military or been close to folks who have? It doesn't sound like you're all that familiar with how it actually works.



As for the topic, I agree with many of the points, except the "away team" one. TNG had it right on that issue. The captain is the most irreplaceable one on a ship. No matter the good example it might set, you don't send your captain routinely into dangerous places.

 

[Miss Lemon]

Thanks for the article!

As for the topic, I agree with many of the points, except the "away team" one. TNG had it right on that issue. The captain is the most irreplaceable one on a ship. No matter the good example it might set, you don't send your captain routinely into dangerous places.

I agree with you. But if you take this point metaphorically and apply it to leaders in business or government, it actually is a good point. You have to take risks to become successful and real leaders should not be afraid of getting their hands dirty. Moreover, they should be part of their own team.

 

[T'Cal]

It's important to be able to identify leadership moments and then respond to them appropriately. So often bad leaders will be so oblivious to such circumstances and they say or do the wrong thing and their poor leadership traits become apparent to everyone...except themselves.

 

[Anji]

Kirk is the ultimate leader and the most important rule I've learned from him is to treat your employees like family.

I've used it for the past six years and it's never failed me.

Respect, compassion and love...you don't need an MBA to understand that.