Game of Thrones

While “Game of Thrones” has its share of dragons, swordfights and sorcery, it’s the political maneuvering and shifting power dynamics that anchor much of the HBO television series and “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the George R.R. Martin series upon which the show is based.

From Jon Snow’s reluctant rise to become the lord commander of the Night’s Watch to Littlefinger’s backdoor machinations, characters take different approaches to leadership—with varying degrees of success.

Speakeasy talked with three experts in management and business—all familiar with the show—to see what can be learned from these styles when applied to a corporate environment: Aimee Cohen, an author and speaker who has been a career expert for more than 20 years; Waverly Deutsch, clinical professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business; and Erich Dierdorff, professor of management at DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business.

“What leadership is in its essence, at its core, is influencing others towards some goal, or to influence someone to do something,” said Dierdorff. In that sense, almost all the main characters in “Thrones” exhibit some form of leadership, he said, except for Jaime Lannister.

 “Jaime doesn’t want to be a leader, he wants to be an individual contributor,” said Deutsch. This conflicts with his father Tywin’s succession plan for House Lannister. “Succession-planning in business is so difficult,” she added. “We’re in a period right now where corporations are being led by baby boomers who are heading up towards retirement age, and they have Gen Xers and millennials behind them.” The Gen Xers came through during downturns in the —from the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 to the crash in 2008—where things like leadership training got cut at a lot of companies.
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