The Problem With The Leadership Style Of Jon Snow
The Flaws in Servant Leadership, a Game of Thrones Analysis.
Game of Thrones Season 8 is coming to a conclusion soon, but there are fans who are upset about how the show is going. What bothers most is the choices the characters chose to behave.
Now to be fair, I am not saying that we should not take in flaws because that is what the characters are up to, except the drives are not strong enough to for them to act a certain way. They should have extended the shows so that we can comprehend why they behaved that way.
However, this season has shown the worst thing a leader could do depending on their style. In this article, I will discuss the problem with Jon Snow’s leadership style and pretty much for the entire seasons.
The entire male Starks have been doing this, so this pretty much applies to all of them.
Jon Snow is servant leadership, he has been carrying out a lot of duties to serve his people. Thus making him honorable like the rest of the Stark family.
It may sound great to be an honorable leader, but that doesn’t mean it will work in every situation. Here is why:
1. Too Sentimental
Servant leaders are ethical driven. They would choose to tell the truth because for them, it is the right thing and honorable. For them, honor is very important.
The problem here is, they will confuse the difference between right and smart. They are so honor and ethics-driven that it can foreshadow than to actually think.
An example where Jon was asked by Cersei to pledge his loyalty to her. Now logically, since he pledged his loyalty to Daenerys, who seeks for the Iron Throne in order to break the wheel of a tyrant, he should have lied because either way, Daenerys will go after King’s Landing no matter what.
Instead, he decided to tell the truth that he cannot bend the knee to Cersei. As a result, in season 8, the North barely had armies, and Cersei had the upper hand. Just from this scene, it proved to us that Jon is no fit to play the Game of Thrones. He just doesn’t have any bright strategy at all and chooses honor all the time.
What he should have done, since he is also against Cersei, he should have agreed to pledge loyalty only for the armies. Then, they could have gotten more help to fight the dead, and Daenerys can storm King’s Landing. It may sound cruel, but Cersei is no crueler.
2. Too Trustworthy
Since they are so sentimental, they are easy to manipulate. Again, choosing honor than smart, they would blabber a lot of things because they think others can be trusted. This is the big problem that Jon had when the Watch had skepticism on bringing the Wildlings to the North.
When you have people who are doubting your goals, what you should do is scope down the biggest problem and WHY they are doing this. Not giving clear explanations will only turn things around and have people talking behind their backs. In a way, there are no communication between leaders and followers.
I wrote an article about lacking of communication and why it is a great threat to companies here:
Anyways, Jon did not communicate enough, and he thinks his men can still be trusted just because they serve the same team. He brushed off the comments of the Watch brothers, only telling them that winter is coming, leaves them that way, and hopes they still have a sense of the Night King. As a result, he got himself killed anyway.
What he should have done is explain to his armies the reason why he is doing this. When leaders want to get people to follow their vision, they must keep repeating the purpose on why they are doing it so that it will stick in their head no matter what.
Because there are people who are still skeptical in what you do in the process, and if you keep believing that they will still follow you no matter what decisions you come up with, don’t expect them to stay alongside you any longer.
3. They Want To Save Everyone
Now, this is not wrong. We all want everyone to be safe and happy.
The problem arises when their priorities are not set straight because they keep saying “yes” to everyone and everything. Imagine you are asked for help from so many people and you keep saying “yes”, how will you keep up with all those promises?
Not only will you jumble up your schedule, but you also won’t even have time to finish everything and for yourself. This is why strategists and surgeons need to calculate their moves very carefully because they are sacrificing soldier’s lives in battle. Additionally, they must be willing to sacrifice those people for the greater good.
Because Jon is not a strategist, he thinks that, even if he is King, he should leap into action as well. By far, we can all agree that he is not the person who can sit still and watch.
This has been going on for the entire seasons, especially the Battle of the Bastards, asking peace with the Wildlings after a small civil war at Castle Black, even bringing a wight to prove to Daenerys. The people have already elected him King, if he dies, the North will be without a war leader again, but so far, he got out lucky.
What bothered them most was back at point 1, being too sentimental. If you are sentimental, you even want to save your worst enemy. In the end, the soft spot you gave to that enemy will be taken advantage of. This is what Cersei understand, which was why Jon was not able to get the army he needed to fight the White Walkers.
The Take…..
Firstly, we still cannot blame them for behaving this way. Like I wrote previously, this type of leader has been through lots of denials and rejections that lead them to become servant leaders. We see this in people like Mahad Magandi and Martin Luther King, they ended up getting assassinated but got the change they hoped for.
There is nothing wrong with this leadership. However, this leadership style must work a lot on differentiating between right and smart. When you ended up making ethics more important than being smart, you may end up like the Stark leaders, getting betrayed all the time.
I hope you get something from here. Thank you for reading.
