The contemporary phenomenon of Game of Thrones has captivated millions of readers and viewers throughout the globe. The epic fantasy novel series, called A Song of Ice and Fire, has been adapted into an award winning[1] HBO TV series, titled A Game of Thrones. The novels have been written in third person, with 14 major point of view characters and 10 minor ones. The TV series has had a successful run of 7 seasons, with season 8 to be aired this year on HBO (as of 2019).
Set betwixt wars for the possession of the Iron Throne, and the survival of humanity, the books and the series are a melting pot of leaders. In as much leadership is about being a manager of emotions and not just facts and data, in as much it is about the journey of knowing one’s true self, becoming one’s true self and deciding what to do in future, constantly choosing between what is right and what is wrong, finding and defining your vision, being passionately committed to it thus evoking a fierce following by projecting a grand vision, and demonstrating coherence between thoughts, words, and deeds, that appeal to the idealism and desire for a meaningful life in the followers[2], I find both the books and the TV series to be an apt study for leadership given its characters with their personal and official journeys.
Background
A Song of Ice and Fire is the name of the fantasy series written by George R R Martin(GRRM). A total of 5 books have been published so far under this series namely — A Game of Thrones (1996), A Clash of Kings (1998), A Storm of Swords (2000), A Feast for Crows (2005), A Dance with Dragons (2011), The Winds of Winter (forthcoming) and A Dream of Spring (forthcoming). The books have been adapted into a TV series, Game of Thrones, which premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17,2011[3]. Henceforth I shall refer to both the books and the TV series as Game of Thrones(GoT), for the sake of ease and to maintain the flow in writing. Where and when a distinction must be made between the two, it will be explicitly stated.
Reasons for my Study
When asked the proverbial question — is the glass half empty or half full, some see the full glass, some see the empty glass. That is not what a leader sees though. The leader sees the glass in its entirety — both empty and full and he also sees the hidden potential of the glass. GoT with its myriad types of leaders, offers numerous perspectives on viewing the glass as a whole.
Comprising over 2103[4] mentioned characters spread across 344[5] chapters in the books and with over 500 characters in the TV series, GoT makes for a perfect ground to simultaneously study different types of leadership and to compare and contrast them. Furthermore, the stories in GoT span hundreds of years and thus they offer a dual perspective on leadership — a close look at the lives of the leaders as they grow, conquer, and die and a distant view on how their leadership styles have affected their legacies. It offers a dual narration on how one becomes a leader, thus taking the reader on the inner journey of their transformation while at the same time since the leaders are fighting the wars, we also are privy of how effective their leadership really is.
Success of Game of Thrones
As of 2015, the books have sold 60 million copies[6] worldwide and have been translated in over 47[7] languages. The Washington Post wrote about the success of GRRM –
“The success is all the more remarkable because [the series debuted] without mass market publicity or any kind of buzz in the fantasy/SF scene. George R. R. Martin earned his following the hard way, by word of mouth, by hooking his characters into the psyche of his readers to an extent that most writers of fantasy only dream of”.
Time magazine had named Martin one of the 100[8] most influential people in the world in 2011, and USA Today named George R.R. Martin their Author of the Year 2011[9]. The books have been on the New York times Bestselling list for 112[10] weeks.
The graph below shows the weekly rank on combined print and e-book fiction list of the books from the series from when they were released.
Graph 1 — Weekly rank on combined print and e-book fiction list, NY Times[11]
On the expanse of the novel, the graph below shows the cumulative word-count as compared to other novels -
Graph 2 — Cumulative series page count vs years since publication of first book
A look at the number of views[12] for each of the seasons of the TV series shows that the numbers have been increasing.
Graph 3 — Average viewers in millions over first and last aired episodes
Plot of GoT
Excerpts from Wikipedia[13] -
A Song of Ice and Fire takes place on the fictional continents Westeros and Essos. The point of view of each chapter in the story is a limited perspective of a range of characters growing from nine, in the first novel, to thirty-one by the fifth. Three main stories interweave a dynastic war among several families for control of Westeros, the rising threat of the supernatural Others in the northernmost reaches of Westeros, and the ambition of Daenerys Targaryen, the deposed king’s exiled daughter, to assume the Iron Throne.
GRRM’s inspirations included the Wars of the Roses and the French historical novels The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon. A Song of Ice and Fire received praise for its diverse portrayal of women and religion, as well as its realism. An assortment of disparate and subjective points of view confronts the reader, and the success or survival of point of view characters is never assured. Within the often morally ambiguous world of A Song of Ice and Fire, questions concerning loyalty, pride, human sexuality, piety, and the morality of violence frequently arise.
Although modern fantasy may often embrace strangeness, the Ice and Fire series is generally praised for what is perceived as a sort of medieval realism. Believing that magic should be used moderately in the epic fantasy genre, Martin set out to make the story feel more like historical fiction than contemporary fantasy, with less emphasis on magic and sorcery and more on battles, political intrigue, and the characters. Though the amount of magic has gradually increased throughout the story, the series is still to end with less overt magic than most contemporary fantasies. In Martin’s eyes, literary effective magic needs to represent strange and dangerous forces beyond human comprehension, not advanced alien technologies or formulaic spells. As such, the characters understand only the natural aspects of their world, but not the magical elements like the Others.
A common theme in the fantasy genre is the battle between good and evil, which Martin rejects for not mirroring the real world. Attracted to gray characters, Martin instead endorses William Faulkner’s view that only the human heart in conflict with itself was worth writing about. Martin explores the questions of redemption and character change in the Ice and Fire series. The multiple viewpoint structure allows characters to be explored from many sides, such that the supposed villains can provide their viewpoint.
Although fantasy comes from an imaginative realm, Martin sees an honest necessity to reflect the real world where people die sometimes ugly deaths, even beloved people. Main characters are killed off so that the reader will not expect the supposed hero to survive, and instead will feel the same tension and fear that the characters might. The novels also reflect the substantial death rates in war. The deaths of supernumerary extras or orcs have no major effect on readers, whereas a friend’s death has much more emotional impact. Martin prefers a hero’s sacrifice to say something profound about human nature.
Leadership Lessons from GoT
When it comes to talking about leadership lessons from books with a multitude of characters and plots, one often gets perplexed by the sheer complexity of the task of analysis at hand. In such cases, the length of the book rarely plays a role in picking up the number of leadership topics to be examined — Don Quixote is voluminous at around 800 pages, yet the most important lesson to take away from its main character is that to be a leader is to dream, to see reality in their own terms and to follow that path, no matter what. GoT on the other hand has not two or three but many pivotal characters and at the same time is voluminous. Since there are so many plots, each character is special in their own way, therefore for our study on leaders and leadership lessons from GoT we thought it was best to research the existing available lessons on the same. Negligible serious literature is currently available on leadership in GoT, it not being a classic, thus we have looked at few articles published in credible websites and interjected them with our comments and added some of our own observations.
A look at the lessons on leadership from GoT, as approved by the democratic collective of online searches and page ranks, shows us that it is the wisdom of the past that is found between the pages of the books and the characters on screen. In an article published on Forbes[14], Frances Bridges writes about 8 Leadership Lessons from Game of Thrones–
1. Listen to your advisers — In GoT, both the book and the series, the main characters have suffered miserably by ignoring the advice of their counsels. The counsels are also wiser than these main leaders. Ned Stark is wiser than Robert Baratheon, Davos is wiser than Stannis, Samwell Tarly and Maester Aemon are wiser than Jon Snow, Tyrion and Jorah are wiser than Daenerys. But they don’t have the vision or the charisma of their leaders (or the family name or fortune), so they lend their wisdom to those who do. The best leaders, whether the CEO of a company or the King of Westeros, surround themselves with people wiser than they are, and listen to them.
In as much as this holds true for the story lines from this book, we know that discretion needs to be practicing while taking advice from wise men, as is portrayed by the case of Iago and Othello in Shakespeare’s Othello and by the manipulation of Yudhishthira by Sakuni in the epic mythology Mahabharata. For a leader to survive, it becomes of utmost importance then to know who to trust and who not to.
2. Lessons two to eight — Know your weaknesses, know when to manage your enemies, know when to eliminate your enemies, lead by example, prejudice is a weakness, inclusion is an advantage, great leadership requires great sacrifice.
Business Insider[15], an American news website, founded 8 years ago in New York, has established itself as a credible platform for business news. An article published on this website, identified 6 different styles of leadership in GoT — the visionary leadership (Three-Eyed Raven and King Tommen Baratheon), the coaching leadership (Tyrion Lannister and Walder Frey), the affiliative leader (Jon Snow and Edmure Tully), the democratic leader (Davos Seaworth and Robin Arryn), the pace-setting leader (Daenerys Targaryen and Robb Stark), the commanding leaders (Tywin Lannister and Dothraki Brothers). The first names in the brackets refer to leaders who have used the aforementioned leadership style correctly, the second names are those of leaders who have unsuccessfully implemented the particular leadership style. Though this article has been designed as a listicle piece, it does highlight the point that adopting or having a leadership style does not necessarily guarantee success as a leader. The leadership style does not come first, the leader does.
In continuation of the above, I have identified the following other leadership styles from the books –
1. Autocratic Leadership – Aerys Targaryen, also known as the Mad King. It did not end quite well for Aerys in the books, he was killed by Jamie Lannister (who thus earned the name KingSlayer). Seeing how the TV series is progressing, Cersei Lannister is following in the steps of the Mad King. Her leadership style is highly autocratic in nature, she rarely listens to the counsel offered to her. But then she is a woman scorned and has pledged vengeance against all those who took her children and her throne, away from her.
2. Strategic Leadership – The High Sparrow, Petyr Baelish, and Lord Varys are some examples of this leadership style. The High Sparrow’s story is that from rags to power, by mingling with the common folk and the rick alike, he has strategically led the Faith Militant to control the city, King’s Landing. While High Sparrow has a visible band of followers, Petyr Baelish and Lord Varys do not, but High Sparrow followers gather from the fact that he is an announced leader of a religious group, while Petyr and Varys are just title holders in the counsel for various kings. A strategic leader, thus may not always be anointed, he might have to work in the shadows.
3. Transformational Leadership – The best example for this leadership style is The Faceless Man, Jaqen H’gher. We will be talking about the development of characters later in the paper, but the growth and evolution of Arya Stark’s fragile child persona to a deadly assassin under his guidance, best portrays his leadership skills.
4. Laissez-faire Leadership – The Dothraki and the Wildlings follow this free market type of governance, it is little wonder then how lawless, chaotic, and unorganized their kingdoms are.
5. Transactional Leadership – When it comes to gathering loyalty, no one does it better than the Lannisters by transacting followership for gold. The books are replete with leaders gaining followers by either giving moving speeches (Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow) or showing a great vision, or by helping the slaves and freeing the chained (Daenerys Targaryen). There are also leaders who lead by example (Jon Snow), and there are leaders who have had leadership thrust upon them (Tommen Baratheon, Robyn Arryn), there are some who stay in power by sheer manipulation and indulge in lowly politics, conspiring murder and assassinations (Olena Tyrell, Walder Frey, Ramsay Bolton) and there are a few whom the common folk really do love ( Margaery Tyrell, Sansa Stark) but the Lannisters are the only leaders who have to literally pay a price to those who will follow them, to those who will die for them.
Through discussions with the book readers, TV series watchers, and with one of Quora’s Top Writers[16] , it was quite evident that more than one leadership style does not suffice to define any one particular leader. While Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are clearly pace setters, they are both also charismatic at certain times. Though Cersei Lannister is mostly an autocrat, there are times when she has moved out of her absolutist mindset, and strategized to keep herself in power (joining hands with the Euron Greyjoy).
A comment here on Cersei’s ambition – Cersei Lannister was married to Robert Baratheon in a political move by her father Tywin Lannister. When we are first introduced to Cersei, we see her as the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and later we see her as she watches her children die, we see a younger Queen replacing her, we read about her being raped, assaulted, jailed, and walk the walk of shame. Cersei’s ambition to be the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms in the later books is fueled by revenge (it begins with her first born, Joffrey’s death, in The Storm of Swords) but in the former books, we are given no purpose for her ambition. She wants to rule because she wants to rule. She wants people to love her, because she wants people to love her. Her ambition lacks purpose. After she has killed everyone she hates, we wonder if she will be able to rule, and in her purposeless of ambition we were reminded of Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The books and the TV series have not yet concluded, so we are yet to know how Cersei’s story ends but Cersei has taught us that a leader without a purpose, without a vision, is not loved by anyone.
Leaders can therefore take upon a leadership style after assessing a situation. Premeditating this adoption can perhaps be taught in management schools but I would like to believe that a leader can intuitively sense when he needs to motivate his followers, when he needs to be strict with them and when he needs to show them how things are to be done.
Another article, featured on BBC’s[17] website, lists the views of two LinkendIn Influencers on leadership lessons from GoT. Since these lessons have been written by businessmen, they focus more on leadership in a managerial set-up. Vigilance is important, asserts Jeff Haden[18] owner of Blackbird Media, citing the story of Prince Oberyn losing to Ser Gregor when in a moment of pride, he loses his concentration and the mountain crushes his head. While running a business one must always stay alert, and be wary of one’s competitors, Jeff interprets. Other management leadership lessons from Jeff are fortune favors the brave, never underestimate yourself, and empower your staff and you reap rewards. He draws parallels from the stories of Dothrakis, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. Articles on LinkedIn on Leadership in GoT focus more on the business and management aspects as opposed to other websites on the internet, they are not about being a leader in the self-development way, they are about how effectively you can create value for your shareholders. I also found articles related to lessons from GoT leaders for hiring for your company, the type of bosses GoT would make, and others pertaining to primarily management in leadership.
Other top results[19] on a search for leadership lessons from GoT contain articles, the lessons in which are about self-development, believing in your own self and other strategies to manage your strengths, weaknesses, and your enemies.
Development of Leaders in GoT
Since the stories in the books and in the TV series are spread over many years, the reader and the viewer is privy to the lives, the growth, and the deaths of various characters. One sees Sansa Stark develop from a romantic maiden to a shrewd calculative queen in making, one sees the bastard child Jon Snow rise in ranks from the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch to the King in the North, he could even become the King of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros if he accepts the marriage proposal of Daenerys Targaryen. Jon Snow, his royal parentage unknown, grows up in the shadow of the Stark brothers, finally to realize his potential when he is sent away to the wall where by proving his worth, he is accepted as a brother and as a King and the stigma of being a bastard is forgotten. Arya Stark from the innocent tom-boy develops into a deadly assassin. Daenerys Targaryen grows into a breaker-of-chains-queen from the once suppressed young girl, we see her transitioning as she struggles with prospects and dilemmas and slowly with each conquest and some losses, finally defines an integrated vision that she can commit to. And then there is the imp, Tyrion Lannister, who stays consistent in his advisory role, but he goes from king to king, in a rather dramatic turn of events. He is the most prominent Machiavellian character in the books, there is no winning an argument with him. Through the lives of these characters we see the sacrifices they make, the hardships they go through, the choices they take – to do what is right, to retain power and to stay alive.
Because wars are being fought and the Iron Throne is at stake, we see leaders die too in GoT. GRRM has earned a name for notoriously killing off those who are often perceived as main characters. Right in the beginning of GoT, we see the righteous and honest King Ned Stark die at the hands of Joffrey. After which leaders, both good and bad, die at a rapid rate with the deaths of Robb Stark, Lady Catelyn Stark, Joffrey Baratheon, Mance Rayder, Ygritte, Jon Snow, Prince Oberyn, Walder Frey, Tywin Lannister, Margaery Tyrell, Olena Tyrell, Khal Drogo, just to list a few. Jon Snow does come back to life, as does Lady Catelyn (only in the books as Lady Stoneheart), and this is only about as magical as this epic fantasy novel gets, apart from the dragons and the White Walkers, that is. The lesson highlighted by all these deaths, most of which are a result of political ambition and plotting, resonate with Shakespeare’s all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances and also with the cycle of cause and effect as spoken about by Krishna in the Bhagvad Gita. Richard Darwin has said in his book The Selfish Gene, a claim repeated by Nassim Taleb in his The Black Swan : the Impact of the Highly Improbable , that human beings cannot perceive long timelines. As the average human life is around 80 years, it becomes difficult to place the importance of events that occurred a thousand years ago in a proper context. Many lessons can be learnt from the stories of GoT spanning thousands of years, it is solely at the discretion of the reader as to what conclusions he draws from the lives and deaths in the books – a nihilist might deduce that since all men die, nothing really matters, an existentialist might infer that it matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul[20]. The lessons that we draw from these stories is that as a leader it is of utmost important the type of legacy you leave behind you, life is far from random, your actions have consequences some of which the coming generations will have to bear, therefore one must choose wisely.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this piece. Also coming up in this series are lots more numbers and colorful graphs to show that while all men must die, women haven’t had it that easy either in GoT.
References
[1] List of awards and nominations received by Game of Thrones
[2] From the Foreword to The Essence of Leadership, Explorations from Literature, S Manikutty and Sampat P singh
[3] Game of Thrones, TV Series
[4] Total number of characters in Game of Thrones, Business Insider
[5] Refer to attached excel sheet and this article
[6] ‘Game of Thrones’ Writer George R.R. Martin Posts ‘Winds of Winter’ Novel Excerpt, New York Times Article
[7] Another precinct heard from, Article Link, Referenced on Wikipedia
[9] George RR Martin is our Author of the Year, USA Today
[10] New York Times Bestselling List
[11] Bestseller List Graphic, NY Times
[12] Average number of views for each episode, Wikipedia
[13] A Song of Ice and Fire, Wikipedia
[14] The 8 Best Leadership Lessons from Game Of Thrones, Forbes, 2017
[15] Leadership styles from Game of Thrones, Business Insider
[16] Ankush Saxena, Quora Top Writer 2015 and 2017, Quora Profile Link
[17] Leadership Lessons from Game of Thrones, BBC
[18] Four Leadership Lessons from Game of Thrones, Jeff Haden, LinkedIn Influencer, 2015
[19] Google search result for Leadership Lessons from Game of Thrones
[20] Invictus by William Earnest Henley
