6 Leadership Lessons From Phil Coulson, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
In the run-up to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s seventh and final season this year, I committed myself to re-watching the entire show from start to end, over 120 episodes. It hasn’t been a chore at all. I genuinely love the show; and it’s the only series I’ve ever tried to re-watch all the way through. (I suppose a global pandemic and an international lockdown have conspired to help me find time to do this. See? Silver lining after all.)
I’ve been a fan from the beginning when Phil Coulson and Grant Ward showed up as stereotypical “men in black” outside Skye’s hacktivist HQ (her beat-up van) in Los Angeles. But Coulson is the furthest thing from stereotypical. After being raised from the dead at great lengths, he led a small band of dedicated individuals to keep the world safe, to serve as a shield between earth’s people and threats they couldn’t possibly imagine.
Now that Marvel fans are saying goodbye to Earth’s mightiest little spy family, I’ve been reflecting on the show’s enduring qualities. One of those qualities is the leadership skills and style of Phil Coulson (played brilliantly by Clark Gregg). At first, Coulson didn’t strike me as a leader leader. After all, he turned up first in Iron Man as the earnest but annoying, “Phil Coulson, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, employee of the far more leaderly Director Nick Fury…
