3 Leadership Styles of House of the Dragon Characters

Hi, this is Russ Willett. We're going to talk about the different characters of House of Dragons and break down their leadership styles. You know, so the way I like to think of things is there's three leadership ways. We get a kind of selfish leader, a self centered leader. This is the narcissist. We see examples of that throughout our professional lives. Another one is transactional. Right? Someone who's maybe good at doing the job, saying the right thing, showing up on time, making sure that the things get done. They tend to be good managers, but not necessarily change agents or people that do well in distress. And the third one is a transformational leader. This is a person that's making change. These are the leaders that emerge in crisis. These are the leaders that emerge during really relevant situations. And that's when leadership really comes through and people want to follow them. Right. People don't want to follow a narcissist. They do because they're afraid and they afraid of bad things happening to them and fear. People don't want to follow a transactional leader because it's great to move paper along, but not necessarily going to engage anybody in a way that's going to really kind of get them excited. But transformational leaders are really interesting. So where do these people fall into this king Viserys? I'll put him at a transactional leader. You know, this democratic style that he has. He's got no political acumen whatsoever. He's easily manipulated. He's not a really good surveyor of morality or even loyalty. Everybody around him is running around trying to manipulate him in some way or another. And he, you know, what's presented in the show is he has no clue, or he might have a clue and he gets aggravated with it. But he really sees he's going to play this political game, which he hates. He completely detests it. Definitely a transactional person. What you see is that you see him takes advice from the bad influences, rejects advice from the good advisors, the people that are in the field, the people that are telling him things. He listens to a few people who are easily a sycophant and at the same time manipulating everything he does. But the peer pressure and the pressure to fulfill his obligation and the transactional way shows that he's just weak and he's kind of pathetic. You know, some people might see him as benevolent. Some people might see him as really trying to do a good job. The nice guy. The nice guy. He's really, you know, he is a nice guy. He's trying to be liked sometimes by people, you know, taking his family on trips and doing certain things to kind of bring him together. It's all, I mean, that's all really positive stuff. That was what people would do. But he's doing it for the wrong reasons. He's trying to be liked. He's trying to not be stressed. He's trying to, you know, just kind of get by. The best illustration of this is the whole thing with the war. This war is going on. He knows it, but he's afraid to take any action. And we can look at our own history and realize that that does not work. When you are faced with threat, you really have to stand up to that threat. And he's kind of just, you know, hiding away. We don't want to start a war. We don't want to do anything. Look, I agree we don't want to start a war, but this is just going to evolve into something that's really a hundred times worse in your organizations. You're going to find people that are just like the king. And what we call them professionally is paralyzed leaders. They're paralyzed. They can't do anything. They can't make decisions. They can't. They can't decide on what to do. They're bouncing from one thing to another. They tend to be a little neurotic. They tend to be, you know, afraid of their own shadow and just react to everything. They're definitely not good leaders. Now, the king found himself in this role, probably wasn't planning on it, probably wasn't prepared for it. He was probably a good social mover. He's charming, but definitely not geared up for this position. So do you think King Viserys will last on the Iron Throne? Do you think he's gonna survive eventually? No, he'll probably get killed. Someone will probably kill him or in some kind of power play. Yeah, I don't think he's gonna last as long as he lasts. The situation's gonna get tremendously worse. Let's talk about the prince. Prince Daemon is, you know, at first he comes across as probably someone who's ascended transactional leadership, and it's really maybe transformational, but there's this whole social construct going on where he thinks he's going to be king, and all of a sudden he's denied that. So that kind of sets him off into a different kind of place, and his narcissism really kind of takes over. That's not to say that he wouldn't be a good leader in a certain situation, but he is so upset about the fact that he's not going to be king, that he really goes off the deep end. So at this point, I would say he's at, you know, he's level one. I'd say he's a selfish person right now. And I guess the strongest indication of his really just anger and vitriol towards the whole situation is when. And then episode three at the end where he gets word that the king is going to come to his rescue, and he's like, I'd rather die than have that happen. It's not going to happen. And then he charges in and I don't know if this is planned or not, but all I know is that he's dragging out his enemy. You know, he's. That's. That's how driven and determined he's going to be. So he's going to create just like a narcissist would, complete destruction. You know, his route to leadership is, I'm going to destroy everything I touch. There's one little scene where he's talking to the princess, his niece, and there's one little scene where he shows a little bit of emotional intelligence, which is interesting, but for the most part, you know, because. And if he was granted the. The kingship after his brother and if that, he probably would have been a good advisor, but it didn't look like the king was actually interested in his advice in the office or in the organization. This is sometimes the selfish high performer. This is the person that is so good at what they do, whether they're an engineer, a salesperson, or, you know, they just have an equity of value in the company or in the organization that no one. No one touches them. No one's ever, you know, people just put up with their b's because they just can't deal with it. They don't know how to deal with him. They don't, you know, they're afraid and they're gonna. And because he's bringing value, they're letting him do whatever he or she wants to do. My advice is if somebody is like, that performs really well and can get along and can kind of support the culture, then fine. But if you start seeing these people destroy the culture and, you know, will can get that angry about things, then, you know, it's. It's not necessarily great for the culture of the organization. Do you think Damon will sit on the Iron Throne? I don't think so. He might set up his own shadow government, you know, claim to be king. I think that's kind of being set up in the third episode. But no, I. You know, I don't think he's going to officially. I mean, who knows what's going to happen again with the politics. But if that happens, it's really a bad ending. Do you think he'd be a good king if he was? If this didn't happen? He might be a really good, strong leader, but I think now he's insane. But I tell you, the most compelling character here is Princess Rhaenyra. You know, she's young, just like any young person who's gonna rebel against their parents. But she's also dealt some kind of confusing blows. One is she's told, first of all, she's being ignored to be. To be the heir of the throne. And that's upsetting to her. She seems. They're presenting her as having some intuition, some good political acumen. She gives advice to her father, and of course, he pooh poos it and, you know, puts her down and, you know, she's. She's subjugated to serving wine to the council, which is pretty pathetic. So the king with all this personal turmoil, decides that Rhaenyra will be the heir. You see her kind of evolve once. Once she gets that word, she thinks she's in. And then when the new family starts, she starts to devolve again and starts to feel frustrated. She doesn't go off the deep end like her uncle, but she's, you know, she's rebelling and she's fighting and trying to figure out her way. There's that whole episode with the white stag, right? They're hunting for the white stag, and she knows her father's hunting for the white stag, and he ends up killing a substitute stag in a very awful way. I mean. I mean, it just illustrates how pathetic he is. And then she sees the white stag and she makes a choice. She makes a choice not to do something. Tells us a couple things. She's in control. When she killed the boar earlier, it didn't look like she was in control of her emotions. When she stormed off on the horse in the middle of the hunt, didn't look like she was in control of things. But in that moment, she felt the power to have, and she had a choice. And the choice was to kind of let it pass. And that's powerful. That shows that she has emotional intelligence. That shows that she's thinking at a little different level. The jury's out to whether she'll be a transformational leader because there's a lot of politics going on. If she was in my organization, I would send her to some development programs. I would be mentoring her, and I would be using everything I could to kind of get her to where she needs to be. That's really what the king should be doing. Do you think Rhaenyra will sit on the throne? Well, I kind of. I don't know. I did look ahead a little bit. I did. I went and googled what happens to Rhaenyra. I think it's gonna be a journey. It seems to me like my intuition tells me that she would be a warrior. I mean, she does ride a dragon, right? That's pretty intense. The king is what I call a paralyzed leader. Transactional, democratic. In his own head, non political. The prince is dynamic, has transformational qualities, but has his narcissism has taken over, and he's just gonna destroy things. And Rhaenyra, if I was writing the story, she would sit on the throne and it would be a happy ending. But that's not how Game of Thrones goes. Thanks for spending a little time watching. If you like this content and you want more analysis on leadership, hit the subscribe button. 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