Zombie Cliche Lookout: No Time to Worry
Leadership is a difficult, often thankless task, and will likely be even more so during a zombie outbreak. People are going to be upset, or tired, or hungry, hurt, or afraid. They’re not going to want to keep moving. They’re not going to want to be productive. They’ll want to find a close, relatively safe seeming spot to shut down for a while, but the leader can’t let them do that. They’ve got to keep people moving and working toward a common goal. This can be tough when everyone is on the same page and motivated, and damn near impossible when they’re not.
While the leader might get a brief taste of glory following a particularly good decision, the feeling is fleeting. What they’ll feel much harder are all the setbacks and losses. It will be pretty hard to keep going after you led your people into a building full of zombies and lost several people during your mad escape out, but you’ll have to. Your people need a leader now more than ever.
About This Episode:
Pragmatist Cheryl strikes again. Yes, the non-refrigerated medications are a problem, and likely a grave one to Sam’s friends, but she quickly determines that there isn’t anything they can do about it.
Discussion Question: A Good Leader?
Here’s a pretty straight forward question: what, in your estimation, makes a good leader? I’m sure most of us have worked under a couple, or at least worked under a few really bad ones so we can guess at how much more effective their opposites would be.
Since that’s a little too clear and concise, let’s complicate it a bit. What things that make a good leader in everyday life would be damaging to that same leader in a zombie survival situation? How would that leader need to adapt? Could he/she, in fact adapt, or are the skill sets simply too different to work out?
Change up for you. There are two types of leaders; Formal and Informal.
Formal leaders are those assigned to you. Your boss, squad leader, coach of the team. They have authority given to them and hopefully the training to make good decisions. They have to motivate people to get the job/mission done.
Informal leaders have no authority but are that guy or gal people just naturally look to for leadership. This could be charisma or a good personality or a natural motivator. Thing is since they have no formal authority their decisions may not be enforceable and they may not have the skills to be good leaders and if things go south they can be quickly turned on or worse people still follow them even though they have proven not to be good leaders. Does not mean informal leaders are always bad just a different set of rules. Most movies the Hero/Heroine is an informal leader.
Very good point. I would say that some leaders can also be a bit of both.
There’s also the “I thought you were leading us” leader, the one everyone, or a few selected individuals, in the case of movie plots, an individual whom everyone in the group thinks of as the leader, and who often later reveals he hasn’t been leading anyone, or actually is totally lost. 😀 Usually such a leader is associated with getting lost somewhere, like in the car park of a multi-story building’s multi-level car park! If you’ve seen Seinfeld’s 23rd episode you’ll know exactly what I mean! 😀
I’m not putting a link in this comment as it might be considered NSFW or places without privacy. 😉
I love that episode; so great.
I finally discovered your typo for today, Dave: It’s in the mouseover text “they guy” they–>the 😀
Fixed!
Looking at today’s episode, does anyone else think that Cheryl’s waving of the bat around implies that she’s getting impatient and wants to move on or fight some zombies? 😀
Hmmmm, skills that are good until everything goes bad…I must say that is a real challenge. Any skill can be good or bad depending on who uses it.
A daring leader might step up and take charge as one would captain a ship! Always making decisions, always making the tough choices…and thusly ignore the advice of others and lead his group into a zombie ambush around the next corner….
Hmm that didnt work so well, lets see what happens when a leader decides to always listen to the people around him before making decisions…and when things get tough there isnt time to take a concensus and people fall to following their own idea of what to do…and they all get picked off one by one by zombies…hmmm, that didnt work so well either.
In the end, emergancies need direct control of some kind. People need directions to over come the feeling of shock and fear. At the same time a team has to function like a unit. When you tell people to do something you dont know how they will do it, just that it will get done and get done in a way that wont explode in your face down the line.
In the end I guess a good leader is someone who isnt so much a leader, his job just happens to be directing people to do things, and people respect him as such. He’s the person who sets the parties goal, others find a way to make it happen. Because in the end the most important part of the leaders role is the people who follow them…
That…probibly made more sense in my head than out loud xD