Great question. And I am a questions guy. This is going to be part one of a three to five, maybe infinity, blog series looking at what leadership is so I have some context blogs to link back to for when I start posting about modern theories, critiques, tools, methods, etc. Let’s start in the philosophical realm and then in pop fiction. Let’s get big picture on leadership and think about it as an abstract. Then in Pt.II, we’ll take our time machine back to the 1800s and look at leadership through the ages.
So, What the Fu$% is Leadership?
Below are a smorgasbord of definitions from the literature and pop culture. Agreeing on leadership for the sake of science helps us study it. With that, you get to decide what it means for yourself based on what resonates with you and where you think you can have the most impact.
Philosophical Views to Start the Party
Leadership is influence directed toward shared goals. (Benmira and Agboola, 2021)
Leadership is the lifting of a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. (Drucker, 1974)
Leadership is a set of mindsets and behaviors that aligns people in a collective direction, enables them to work together and accomplish shared goals, and helps them adjust to changing environments. (McKinsey & Company, 2024)
Leadership is declaring a future others emotionally commit to. (Simon Leadership Alliance, n.d.)
Leadership is an invitation to greatness we extend by example. (Sanborn, 2021)
Leadership is a social process producing direction, alignment, and commitment. (Drath et al., 2008; Center for Creative Leadership, 2024)
What Do We Notice Here?
…Okay, fine! We’ll start with me – I notice:
- A heavy focus on the future state, not the present, and a shared future state, at that.
- Leadership is beyond who we are and focuses on how we treat others.
- Leadership leans heavily on getting people rowing in the same direction.
This makes leadership out to be a little more prophetical than grounded. These definitions do well to set us up for further discussion. In Pt.II, we’ll go through the evolution of theory, which is going to T-up these concepts and how we look at practical use of leadership theory.
The Classic Leadership vs. Management
If you’ve been in the space longer than five minutes, you’ve heard the manager-leader distinctions and gone through the exercise about what leadership is in relation to management. This is true to some extent, and when done well, the activity is more about breaking down that the two terms are dissimilar in philosophy. It often feels like brainwashing underpaid technical workers into taking responsibility for organizational problems they can’t actually control, rather than truly inspiring virtue.
Anyways, here are the typical takeaways from that exercise:
- Leaders tend to focus on relationships, vision, strategy, and change.
- Managers tend to focus on tasks, daily operations, order, and performance.
Again, it’s largely true. My qualm is that it can turn ‘manager’ into this dirty word and it tells people to rise up, be a leader, and take personal responsibility over organizational artifacts that they usually have no control over. It puts people who call themselves leaders on a pedestal of self-evaluated virtue. What we’ll explore is that studies are trending towards the ideology that leadership definition has more to do with how people see you than how you see yourself. Sounds obvious when we say it like that, but to me, it’s a profound recognition that leadership is how we help others, not how we see ourselves. With that, let’s turn to fiction. Fiction has some of the strongest leadership studies material.
From Fiction
Brandon Sanderson
Why learn about leadership and EQ from fiction? It’s simple. Fiction reduces prejudice, allows us to better infer others’ mental states, and creative reading or writing enhances empathy. (Vezzali et al., 2015; Kidd and Castano, 2013; Soto et al., 2020)
From Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive:
No real plot spoilers, but feel free to skip this section if you think knowing how the characters grow is a spoiler.
Brandon has a few awesome takes on leadership to bring to the table. First and most prevalent is that leadership is moral repair and burden-bearing. Dalinar teaches unification after failure. His arc focuses on rebuilding trust and order after crisis. Kaladin offers a different lane: leadership from below, where credibility comes from protecting people, carrying pain without letting it become cruelty, and earning followership through service rather than title.
Dalinar throughout the books evolves in his leadership and shows us new dimensions of vulnerability and compassion. Which, arguably, is one of the best leadership lessons we can take from the book. Capacity to acknowledge your own flaws and grow is leadership. Leadership is not perfection, it is the next right step. Dalinar and Kaladin both offer the perspective that leadership is “I will keep becoming someone others can safely stand beside.”
Isn’t it true? Our real leaders are often cracked vessels still trying to hold light.
I was going to talk about The Lord of the Rings books and movies here, but neither pass the Bechdel test. If you don’t know what that is, you may be better served going to figure that out. Congratulations on your new knowledge. Let’s go to one of the premier TV shows in leadership exampling that passes the Bechdel test with flying colors: Ted Lasso.
Ted Lasso
Yep, Ted Lasso gets its own section in this blog. No spoilers here. You can read this and enjoy the show later, which I highly, highly recommend. (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
Belief Before Proof
Ted believes in people before they’ve earned it publicly. He understands that people often grow into the expectations held around them. Ted lends people a better story about themselves until they can carry it on their own. (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
Culture-building, not performance-driving
Ted is not obsessed with squeezing output from the team; he changes the environment the team lives in. He builds trust, psychological safety, ritual, humor, and belonging. Ted is not a command center boss, but a gardener of conditions. The team improves because the soil improves. (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
Emotional courage
A lot of leaders project certainty. Ted shows something harder: warmth without surrendering responsibility. He is open, relational, and often vulnerable, but he still makes decisions, holds standards, and absorbs pressure. Ted teaches us that leadership is not emotional invulnerability, but the ability to stay human while carrying other people’s anxiety. (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
Seeing the whole person
Ted rarely treats people as single-function tools. Roy is not just an enforcer. Jamie is not just a diva. Nate is not just a smart assistant. Rebecca is not just an owner. Ted keeps looking for the hurting, ambitious, frightened, hopeful person underneath the role. This makes Ted’s leadership developmental. Ted asks, “Who is this person becoming?” (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
Invitation Over Domination
Ted’s style is unusually non-coercive. He influences through conversation, example, consistency, and relationship. He does not lack authority; he just does not worship it. Followership becomes more voluntary and durable. People are not complying with Ted, they start internalizing what he stands for. (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
Roy Kent – Earned Credibility
He’s here! He’s there! He’s Every-F-ing-where! Roy Kent! Roy Kent!
Roy represents a different but equally strong leadership model. He leads through authenticity, standards, and fierce protectiveness. He is not polished. He is trusted. Roy teaches us people follow leaders who feel real, especially when those leaders combine blunt honesty with loyalty. Roy has some awesome lines at the end of season three about what it means to grow and change as a person. (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
Rebecca Welton – Reclaiming Purpose
Rebecca’s journey is about moving from reactive leadership to generative leadership. Early on, she is driven by grievance and image. Later, she becomes more grounded in stewardship and responsibility. Rebecca shows us that leadership matures when ego stops driving our decisions. (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
Nate Shelley – The Dangers of Unhealed Insecurity
Nate is the show’s strongest leadership warning. Competence without inner stability can lead to status hunger, resentment, and cruelty. His story shows us that leadership failure is not always caused by lack of talent. Sometimes it comes from trying to heal wounds with ambition and by propping up the ego. (Sudeikis et al., 2020)
The Risk of Overly-Kind Leadership
Kindness can become foggy if it avoids hard truths. Ted sometimes delays conflict, protects others while neglecting himself, or uses optimism as a kind of emotional camouflage. So one lesson from Ted Lasso is that healthy leadership needs both care and confrontation. If you’re looking for more discourse on this topic specifically, check out Radical Candor by Kim Scott. (Scott, 2017)
My Summation
Fiction offers a way to build EQ skills and offers strong examples of leadership. Pop culture tells us leadership is a visionary activity that centers on how we treat ourselves and how we treat others.
What’s Next?
- Pt.2 – We’ll review the history of leadership theories to get us to the modern day.
- Pt.3 – We’ll look at the prevailing modern theories competing in the modern sphere.
- Pt.4 – We’ll break down how to use each theory.
The most important step is always the next one.
– Dan
References
Benmira, Sihame, and Michael Agboola. “Evolution of Leadership Theory.” BMJ Leader, 2021. https://bmjleader.bmj.com
Center for Creative Leadership. “Direction + Alignment + Commitment (DAC) = Leadership.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/make-leadership-happen-with-dac-framework/.
Drath, Wilfred H., Cynthia D. McCauley, Marian N. Ruderman, Patricia J. Ohlott, and John J. McGuire. “Direction, Alignment, Commitment: Toward a More Integrative Ontology of Leadership.” The Leadership Quarterly 19, no. 6 (2008): 635–653.
Drucker, Peter F. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Kidd, David Comer, and Emanuele Castano. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science 342, no. 6156 (2013): 377–380.
McKinsey & Company. “What Is Leadership: A Definition and Way Forward.” September 10, 2024. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-leadership.
Sanborn, Mark. “Quotes to Inspire Extraordinary Leadership & Remarkable Performance.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://marksanborn.com/quotes-to-inspire-extraordinary-leadership-remarkable-performance/.
Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings. New York: Tor Books, 2010.
Scott, Kim. Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Simon Leadership Alliance. “The Definition of Leadership.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://simonleadershipalliance.com/leadership-skills/the-definition-of-leadership/.
Sudeikis, Jason, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly, creators. Ted Lasso. 2020–present. Apple TV+.
Vezzali, Loris, Sofia Stathi, Dino Giovannini, Dora Capozza, and Elena Trifiletti. “The Greatest Magic of Harry Potter: Reducing Prejudice.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 45, no. 2 (2015): 105–121.
Soto, Amanda, et al. “The Creative Spark: How Reading and Writing Fiction Enhances Empathy.” Journal of Creative Behavior, 2020.