Leadership Development TV-Style (Some Reflections on Netflix's House of Cards)
Guest Writer: Clytemnestra

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

posted under , , by Unit for Criticism
[House of Cards is a political drama produced by Netflix. It is an adaptation of a 1990's BBC series of the same name. Clytemnestra is a career woman in a major US city with an academic past.]

Leadership Development TV-Style (Some Reflections on Netflix's House of Cards)

I met Ram Charan when I was putting together a “leadership development” program at the company I work for. Charan is one of the best known gurus of the leadership consulting industry, author of 16 best-selling leadership books. In his presence, I felt like I was meeting Yoda.

Charan’s stature is such that he can charge $25,000 a day to transform ordinary executives into corporate Jedi. He views leadership as a benevolent, almost spiritual force and in that he’s far from alone. Corporations, universities, and government offices, aided and abetted by an army of consultants, spend millions pursuing a similar ideal of “resonant” or “transformational” leadership, embodied by selfless, visionary paragons spreading personal fulfillment, organizational health and profitability.


In the 2013 Netflix political drama House of Cards, pop culture proposes an ironic counterpoint to this discourse. In this blend of black comedy and political thriller, it’s the schemers and bullies---in short, the assholes---who are society’s real leaders, coat-tailing their followers to power and wealth, and leaving a trail of crushed, bewildered paragons in their wake. By soaking every leadership industry precept in an acid bath of cynicism, the show forces us to confront a fundamental contradiction between the paragons that we think we want as our leaders and the total assholes we usually do have.
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