Roll For Insight

Tag: Leadership Lessons

  • Alien: Romulus and the Horror of Accidental Leadership

    Alien: Romulus and the Horror of Accidental Leadership

    The thing about the Alien franchise is that it keeps reminding us of the same workplace lesson: you are never as far away from a facehugger as you think you are. You can be minding your own business, fixing a leaky pipe, and suddenly you’ve got HR’s nightmare octopus trying to forcibly promote you into a parent. Alien: Romulus doubles down on this idea. Instead of seasoned veterans like Ripley or Marines who at least pretend to know what they’re doing, we get young, mostly unprepared characters who find themselves in a leadership vacuum. It’s not a story about heroes rising to the occasion—it’s about what happens when authority collapses and people who barely know how to pay rent have to improvise strategy while monsters are literally chewing through the walls.

    And that’s where the leadership lesson lives. Because most of us, at some point, get shoved into the “Congratulations, you’re in charge now” moment without training, guidance, or even a clean job description. It doesn’t feel like a promotion; it feels like something clawing its way out of your ribcage.

    Imagine you’re suddenly asked to run a restaurant, but nobody gave you keys, half the staff doesn’t speak the same language, the fryer’s on fire, and the health inspector is already seated in the corner, writing down notes like “severe violation: cook being eaten alive by kitchen monster.” That’s Alien: Romulus in leadership form—crisis with no map, no mentor, and no time to Google “how to manage people.”

    Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership theory becomes uncomfortably relevant here. The model argues that leaders need to flex their style depending on the competence and commitment of their followers. If someone has no skill but lots of enthusiasm, you direct. If they have skill but no confidence, you support. Easy to say in a classroom. Harder when the follower in question is holding a flamethrower backwards and screaming about acid blood. Romulus shows how clumsy this gets when young people are thrust into command roles—they don’t have the flexibility because they don’t even know the base settings yet.

    Then there’s authentic leadership, as described by Bill George. Authentic leaders win trust by being consistent, transparent, and rooted in values. The problem is, if you’re nineteen years old and have never even managed a car payment, you don’t have a leadership philosophy yet. Some of the Romulus crew try to fake it—raising their voice, giving orders, posturing like someone who knows how to run a horror movie. And the movie punishes them for it, because authenticity can’t be faked. You can trick your friends into thinking you’re cool, but you can’t trick a xenomorph into believing you’re in charge.

    And if we’re talking about punishment, Barbara Kellerman’s work on negative leadership fits right in. She breaks bad leaders into categories: incompetent, rigid, callous, corrupt, insular, and evil. Romulus gives us a buffet of those. You see incompetence in people who freeze under pressure, rigidity in those who can’t adapt when the plan falls apart, and callousness when survival turns into betrayal. And the result is predictable: higher casualty rate than a team-building ropes course supervised by velociraptors.

    Here’s the uncomfortable real-world echo: Alien: Romulus feels familiar because many of us have lived some version of it. Maybe not the acid-blood monsters, but the promotion you weren’t ready for, the absent boss who left you holding the bag, the chaotic project where everyone’s improvising until it collapses. The film makes it literal, but the truth is that leadership vacuums don’t stay empty. Someone always steps up. Sometimes they grow into the role. Sometimes they get eaten.

    Surviving your first leadership role won’t burn holes through the floor plating, but the scars last just the same. The question isn’t whether you’ll be terrified or unprepared—that part is guaranteed. The real question is whether you’ll figure out how to flex, to be authentic, and to avoid turning into the kind of rigid disaster that costs lives. In space, no one can hear you scream. But in the office, everyone can hear you panic. And it smells just as bad.

    References

    Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Sage.
    Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). Life cycle theory of leadership. Training and Development Journal.
    George, B. (2003). Authentic Leadership. Jossey-Bass.
    Kellerman, B. (2004). Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters. Harvard Business School Press.

  • Omni-Man and the Perils of Charisma Without Ethics

    Omni-Man and the Perils of Charisma Without Ethics

    What Invincible Teaches Us About Leadership (and Screwing It Up)

    Note: This essay contains spoilers for Season 1 of Invincible. Consider this your official warning before we apply Bernard Bass’s 1990 leadership framework to a cartoon man punching his own son through several office buildings.

    My stepson introduced me to Invincible, and watching episodes has kind of become a family ritual. If you’ve never seen it,  let me catch you up real quick. Superman, but with a mustache, shows up, builds a life, raises a son, and then one day casually murders half his coworkers in the most gruesome way possible. That’s not a spoiler; it’s Season 1, Episode 1. Omni-Man is the dad every suburban HOA thinks they want – handsome, confident, the type of guy who would fix your gutters while explaining why you should stop voting for tax increases. Except he’s also a colonizer sent to conquer Earth, and the whole “family man” thing is just long-term undercover work. Which makes him the perfect case study for what happens when charisma shows up without any ethical leadership attached. 

    Here’s the thing. Bernard Bass (1990) wrote about transformational leadership as if it were the gold standard of “good” leadership. He broke it down into four parts: inspirational motivation (painting a vision), idealized influence (being a role model), individualized consideration (actually giving a shit about people as individuals), and intellectual stimulation (getting people to think differently). Done right, it turns a group of employees – or superheroes – into a force that believes in something bigger than themselves. Done wrong, it turns them into cannon fodder for someone else’s personal crusade. Omni-Man is a textbook transformational leader. Right up until you notice he’s transforming people into stains on the pavement. 

    Think about how Omni-Man treats his son, Mark, in Season 1. Early on, he’s the encouraging father, telling Mark that becoming a superhero will be hard but meaningful. He trains him, mentors him, and models what it means to “do the right thing.” That’s the framework of transformational leadership right there. Mark looks up to him, imitates him, believes in him. The problem is that every bit of that framework is fake. It’s not built for Mark’s growth. It’s built to condition Mark to accept the Viltrumite worldview – strength over compassion, empire over community. That’s the difference between ethics and manipulation. And the second Mark resists, Omni-Man drops the act like a toddler dropping an iPad. 

    This is where charisma gets dangerous. Charisma makes you believe in the person before you’ve had time to check if their vision actually includes you.  It’s the shiny lure that makes people swallow the hook. Bass (1990) himself warned that charisma is morally neutral. It can inspire great social movements or genocidal nightmares. Northouse (2022) makes the same point. Charisma works, but it doesn’t come with built-in ethical guidelines. That’s why charismatic leaders can either mobilize people to march for civil rights or convince them to drink poison in a jungle compound. The mustache doesn’t make the man. Ethics do. 

    One of the most chilling moments in Season 1 is Omni-Man explaining to Mark why humanity is beneath them. He doesn’t just say “I’m stronger, so I should rule.” He says it with that calm, steady, paternal tone. The same tone he used when teaching Mark how to throw a baseball. That’s what makes it horrifying. The very cadence that once inspired trust is now being used to justify mass murder. That’s charisma without ethics. When the same voice that once motivated you suddenly tells you your life is worthless, and part of you still wants to believe it. 

    And let’s not pretend this is confined to alien overloads on animated TV. Every workplace has seen the Omni-Man archetype in khakis. The VP who tells stories about “vision” and “disruption” but quietly measures worth in profit margins and how fast they can chew through new hires before running out of warm bodies. The manager who says “we’re all family here” right before giving a bunch of people the axe. The coach who insists that losing builds character but only spends time with the players who pad his win record. They’re charismatic. They’re inspiring. And then you find out that their charisma was just the camouflage for their actual agenda.

    The counterexample in Invincible is Cecil, who is the opposite of inspiring. He’s gruff, morally compromised, and perpetually five minutes away from a stroke. But he at least embodies adaptive leadership (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002). He tells people the truth: every option is bad, some less bad than others. He doesn’t try to dazzle you into following. He tries to survive alongside you. Cecil may not make anyone want to tattoo his face on their bicep, but he does something Omni-Man never could. He builds trust out of transparency. People will follow you through hell if they believe you’re burning, too. 

    Omni-Man, by contrast, builds nothing but fragile compliance. The Guardians of the Globe trusted him because of his charisma and record, not because he ever invited them into his vision. And when he killed them, no one even saw it coming, because no one had ever been close enough to see him for what he actually was. That’s the cautionary tale Bass (1990) would underline, circle, and use two exclamation points. Transformational leadership without ethics corrodes culture from the inside out. It doesn’t just betray trust. It makes people question whether trust is even possible. 

    For a second, let’s pull this down to earth, because no, most of us aren’t secretly grooming our children to help us conquer the planet. But the planet shows up smaller and quieter in everyday leadership. You hire into a job because the manager seems inspiring, because they talk about growth and opportunity. Six months later, you realize the “growth” was a euphemism for doing two jobs at once, and the “opportunity” was the opportunity to burn out. Or you sit down at the D&D table where the GM promises a player-driven story, only to find every choice redirected because they actually wrote a novel instead of a campaign. That’s Omni-Man with dice instead of fists. The betrayal doesn’t sting because of the outcome. It stings because you believed them when they said your choices mattered. 

    Cue the infomercial voiceover, “There’s got to be a better way. Now there is!” Ethical Leadership. Brown and Treviño (2006) describe it as modeling normatively appropriate conduct, communicating it clearly, and reinforcing it consistently. It sounds dry, but in practice, it means one simple thing. Your charisma isn’t yours. It belongs to the people who trust you, and they’re letting you borrow it as long as you use it responsibly. If you betray that trust, there’s no speech or mustache impressive enough to bring it back. Ethical leadership is what separates a transformational leader from a manipulator. 

    Amy Edmondson’s (1999) research on psychological safety drives this home. Teams thrive when people feel safe to speak, fail, and learn without fear of humiliation or punishment. Omni-Man doesn’t just fail at creating psychological safety. He annihilates it with prejudice. The moment Mark pushes back, Omni-Man doesn’t create space for dialogue. He beats his son half to death to enforce compliance. Replace “fists” with “shaming in meetings” or “retaliating against dissenters,” and suddenly, you’ve got a case study in bad management instead of supervillainy. Different scale, same outcome. Silence, fear, and eventual collapse. 

    The lesson isn’t “charisma bad.” Charisma matters. Confidence matters. Vision matters. But charisma is like fire. It’s useful when it’s contained, but can be catastrophic when left unsupervised. Transformational leadership only works when charisma is tethered to ethics, when the vision is genuinely shared, and when the people in your orbit aren’t just NPCs in your story. Omni-Man had the fire but none of the responsibility. That’s why his legacy isn’t leadership. It’s trauma. 

    And yes, I’m aware I just spent 1,300 words applying Bernard Bass’s 1990 framework for transformational leadership to a cartoon man in spandex who uses a subway train as a teaching aid. But that’s the point. Leadership theory isn’t supposed to live in textbooks. It’s supposed to help us see what’s happening around us. Invincible just happens to be a gorier, louder mirror of something we already recognize. Charismatic leaders can give us the razzle-dazzle with their vision right up until we realize that vision never included us. 

    So here’s your homework. Think about the most charismatic leader you’ve ever worked for. Now ask, did their vision make room for you? Or was it just camouflage for their actual mission? If it’s the second, congratulations – you’ve already met your own Omni-Man. And unlike in Invincible, you don’t need to punch them through a mountain. You just need to stop mistaking charisma for leadership. 

    References

    • Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19–31.
    • Northouse, P. G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and practice (9th ed.). Sage.
    • Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2002). Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. Harvard Business Review Press.
    • Brown, M. E., & Treviño, L. K. (2006). Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(6), 595–616.
    • Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

  • You Don’t Need to Know Everything—Just Stop Faking It

    There’s a particular kind of boss that’s worse than just a micromanager. It’s the kind who micromanages badly—hovering over tasks they don’t actually understand, second-guessing decisions with no context, inserting themselves into workflows like a toddler grabbing the steering wheel from the backseat. At least a competent micromanager might know what they’re interrupting. But this flavor of leader doesn’t know the work, won’t admit it, and compensates by managing through vague questions, performative stress, and ominous calendar invites titled “Touch Base.” If you’ve never had a boss like that, congratulations on your peaceful life. The rest of us are still flinching every time someone asks if we “have a minute.”

    I’ve worked under those managers, and—cards on the table—I’ve been one, too. Not in the mustache-twirling villain sense, but in the more common and less cinematic way: I got put in charge of something I didn’t totally understand, so I backed off too far because I didn’t want to come across like a dumbass. That’s the inverse version of the same mistake. Instead of meddling, I ghosted. I figured giving people space was the respectful thing to do, when what they actually needed was presence. Not command. Not control. Just the sense that I was there, paying attention, invested, and ready to help.

    Running a team without understanding their work is like Game Mastering a system you’ve never read. You might be able to fake it for a session or two. Maybe you’ve got the vibe down—narrating like Matt Mercer on half-speed, throwing in enough “roll for initiative” moments to keep everyone entertained. But sooner or later, your players are going to do something mechanical. They’ll try to shove a goblin off a bridge, or cast a spell that interacts with a system you didn’t prep, or—God help you—start asking about grappling rules. And now you’re scrambling through the Player’s Handbook like it’s a cursed tome, bluffing your way through it while everyone quietly starts texting under the table. Because nothing kills trust like a GM who pretends to know things they clearly don’t.

    Leadership theory has a name for this balancing act: Situational Leadership. Hersey and Blanchard laid it out in the late ’60s, but the idea still hits. It says your leadership style should adapt based on how competent and confident your team is at a given task. Some people need direction. Others need support. Some just need you to get out of the way and let them work. But the only way to figure that out is to actually know where they’re at. And that requires something micromanagers and absentee leaders alike tend to skip: asking questions and listening to the answers.

    Most micromanagers don’t think they’re micromanaging. They think they’re doing due diligence. Staying informed. “Driving results.” But what they’re actually doing is disrupting Self-Determination Theory—a cornerstone of motivation research that says people thrive when they feel autonomous, competent, and connected. Micromanaging undercuts autonomy. But if you also don’t know the work, it undercuts competence too—yours and theirs. You’re not just in the way; you’re actively creating friction, the same way a GM does when they override the bard’s plan just because they didn’t understand how Bardic Inspiration stacks.

    And on the flip side, disappearing because you don’t understand the work doesn’t help either. That just makes people feel unsupported, especially when things start going sideways. It’s the equivalent of a GM saying, “Well, that’s what your character would do,” and then zoning out on their phone while the players roleplay around them. Sure, you’re not interrupting, but you’re also not engaged. You’ve become the leadership version of ambient tavern music.

    So how do you do it better?

    You get curious. You name what you don’t know. You ask your team what they need from you today, not just what they needed when the project started. You ask, “What am I doing that’s helpful?” and brace yourself for the silence that might follow. You sit with it. Then you try again.

    You stop treating questions like traps and start using them like torches. You stop assuming that being “the boss” means you have to be the expert. And you realize that your credibility doesn’t come from having all the answers—it comes from helping the people who do their best work.

    If you’re running a campaign and you don’t know every mechanic, that’s fine. But don’t fake it. Bring in a co-GM, hand off to someone more familiar with the system, or prep more next time. In the moment, the best thing you can do is own it. Say, “I don’t actually know how this rule works—can you walk me through it?” And suddenly, you’ve transformed from an authority figure faking competence into a leader modeling collaboration.

    When you’re a leader and you don’t know the work, your job isn’t to disappear. And it’s not to overcorrect by smothering your team with bad advice. Your job is to learn just enough to be useful, to ask the right questions, and to create an environment where people feel like they can do their thing without you pretending to be the expert on everything. Because when people know you’ve got their back—not their keyboard—that’s when trust actually starts to build.

    And the next time you do have to give direction, it won’t sound like interference. It’ll sound like support.

    Citations:

    Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R.M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.

    Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K.H. (1969). Life cycle theory of leadership. Training & Development Journal, 23(5), 26–34.