TV shows are not the best place to look for workplace wisdom or leadership advice, but this is (sort of) Saturnalia season and I have been binge-watching old episodes of House, so I thought I’d pull together a list of a few things I learnt from observing House’s style.
For those not raised on sarcasm, please understand that I am not seriously suggesting these as good behaviours, although the opposite of each might be worth a shot.
- To establish strong leadership, it is important to lord your higher-status over the team so that they know you have more power and can fire them whenever you want.
- To encourage good ideas and innovative thinking, it is best to shoot down any bad ideas immediately and belittle whoever said them.
- To ensure you really know your team well, you should invade their private lives and question them on deeply personal matters – If you learn any juicy stuff, you can mock them about it later!
- To solve complex problems, jump to some quick assumptions and arrogantly insist you’re right, this will save time later – if you’re wrong, just repeat the above until you’re right.
- To manage upwards, break the rules, then make constant sexual innuendos to your boss until they grow tired of you.
- Not caring about other people and being rude to them shows how powerful you are. It is a sign of objectivity and strength, and will be fine as long as you deliver better results than everyone else.
- It’s fun to create amusing nicknames for your team, ideally they should be demeaning and based on their race or sexuality or other protected characteristics.
- Stealing is a quirky character trait people will grow to love: try breaking into people’s houses, or borrowing money from your colleagues and never paying them back!
- Humour at work can be great. Use it to punch down at others, and the more personal the gags the better the impact! If you’re the only one laughing, you know you landed a proper funny.
- Delegation is important. If you can delegate well, you can spend your time watching trash TV, practising the piano and ten-pin bowling while they work!
To repeat the health warning for idiots who don’t get it (sorry sorry, too much House … ): this post is sarcastic – don’t do this stuff, it’s terrible leadership and workplace behaviour, although it is excellent television.
(You can also find this silly article over on my blog here - I don't pay for it anymore, so sorry about the annoying ads).
