Coach Luke or Embrace Darth?

“Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker: who would qualify for a career coach?” That was the interesting question posed at a meeting I attended the other day. After some quick conversation, most of the participants agreed that Luke was the better candidate for a career / personal development coach. The reasoning was straight forward: Luke has trouble controlling his emotions and is a bit of a loaner. He’s a lot of potential but mostly gets mixed individual results. Darth, on the other hand, has already had a bad coaching experience (the emperor), doesn’t adhere to the stated values of most companies and is evil incarnate. Pretty easy decision, right?

Wrong. Like most business discussions, the need to get to the “results phase” of the conversation completed obviated and eclipsed the two basic philosophical questions that would make-or-break any possible response: “What problem are you trying to solve with the coaching?” and “What is acceptable behavior to achieve business results?”

Just for fun, I thought about other ways to start the conversation. What if you asked everyone at the table “If you had a choice between being Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, who would you chose?” Any doubt as to the outcome of that poll? I would then have asked “OK, let’s say Luke fails in the end and Darth succeeds. Who would change their vote?” Again, I am guessing that most people would stick with being the fair-haired fighter for truth and justice rather than the plasticized epitome of evil.

Then I would take a different tack. I would ask “Who has more integrity… Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker?” Everyone would laugh knowingly and say “Why Luke, of course.” And they would be wrong. There are several times where Luke withholds the truth from people who need to know it (as when he fails to tell Leia that they are siblings), while Darth always tells the truth. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure that you can go down any business-book definition of success and find that Darth is a better “business person” than Luke. Luke consistently fails to achieve milestones. In fact, if he didn’t achieve the one big objective he is after (become a Jedi, blow up the death star, redeem his father, save the galaxy for freedom and justice) Luke would be widely considered a bad employee. He has lots of character defects, whereas Darth is strong, confident and obedient.

Let’s face it, Darth Vader is the perfect employee and Luke is a bit of a knuckle-head who is a loose cannon. Darth follows the company line; Luke is a rebel. Darth is a commanding leader; Luke is a rural hick who doesn’t really fit it. Darth can mobilize resources quickly to achieve his objectives and is feared inside of his own organization; Luke is a bit of a wimp who always seems to need everyone other people’s assistance to achieve his objectives.

And yet, here we are, all keeping our hands raised in a vote for being Luke. What gives? And, even more fundamentally, why the hell would you try to change Luke from being the youngster flibbertigibbet he so often seems to be when he is the one guy who consistently saves the universe from evil and destruction? Why would you get the coach for Luke?

I think if you went through this exercise at any company across America (and perhaps Western Europe too) you would find the same fundamental disconnect: everyone wants to be Luke and everyone thinks Luke is the one that needs coaching. I have a theory about why this happens: we all see ourselves as the potential hero from a young age, but we have been programmed to believe that a corporate environment can’t accept the risky behaviors of heroes. So we quietly dream about who we want to be and then squelch that dream when we put on the suit and walk through the lobby door. Once the corporate armor is on we willingly (and evenly eagerly) accept that our individualistic tendencies towards intrepidness and fearlessness need to be “coached” out of us so that we can plug into the larger paternalistic / militaristic structure that corporations purposefully create to avoid surprising shareholders and getting executives fired.

I am not here to make moral arguments about whether crushing human beings into conformity is a good thing or a bad thing. You can be he judge of that. I will propose that today’s organization is best served by heroes, and that the nature of a hero is that she makes a lot of short-term mistakes on the way to a glorious end. You might want to consider that before you try to take your Lukes and turn them into Darths.

Comments

[Lance Knobel]

Here's another good vs evil choice for you to ponder. Would you rather have Andy or Sid (from the original Toy Story) as your employee?

Andy is the perfect boy. The toys all love him. He plays with them as they are meant to be played with. Sid is terrifying. Toys that make their way into Sid's grasp are destined for mutilation and destruction.

Yet which boy is more creative? Sid did mash-ups before anyone heard of Web 2.0. He is the heir to the tinkerers of the Homebrew Computing Club and the Phone Phreaks of the '70s.

To take up an old Talentism trope, I suspect Sid reflects the kind of child we want our education system to encourage. Creative, individualistic, original. The Andys of the world will be outsourced to India.

[Colin Kingsbury]

No, the real question here has to be Bond versus Dr. No. Bond is a complete maverick, refuses to follow protocol, and certainly did not attend sensitivity training, while his opponent is better-disciplined, a member of several protected classes, and presumably better-educated.

[DonaldHTaylor]

Great post, but I think you over-estimate the power of the dark side. Thanks to my own coach (my 9 year-old son) I am well versed in the ways of the evil lord, and you overlook his final act: throwing his boss to his death.
Not really the behaviour of a good corporate citizen, surely?