Data Ethics

I’ve been watching Orphan Black recently, it was something I watched a long time ago but hadn’t finished the last series and by the time I got around to catching up I’d forgotten the complicated storylines - so I started again. It’s a great story with fantastic acting so I won’t dwell on those details but what I noticed this time around was how the two characters - Sarah and Rachel - reflect a particular leadership theory I’ve also come across quite recently.

The theory is that of filtered leaders, something studied by Gautam Mukunda and is summed up succinctly in this extract from the HBR article:

Unfiltered leaders are high risk, high reward. Filtered leaders… have deep knowledge and can be very effective in a stable situation.

And it seems both types of leaders can succeed because it depends on the situation; in a stable environment the unfiltered leader will cause too much chaos and distruption and in a scenario where change is causing harm, as in a period of war, then an unfiltered leader can bring the risk-taking needed to stabilise things.

In the context of Orphan Black it seems clear that Rachel is the filtered leader, she was raised with the knowledge of her existence as a clone and works at a high level within the very organisation that created her. Sarah though is a maverick. She had been taken out of the clutches of the organisation as her adopted mother had helped her hide, even from herself as she had no idea she was a clone. Everything she learns she does “on the job” but, whilst that might be exhausting, it means she makes decisions that are creative, unusual and often successful.

I’ve touched on this analogy only very briefly as leadership isn’t really the point of the blog, strangely given the title! The point is the value of the followers and the team. In Orphan Black, the story makes it clear that Rachel has a lot of money and resource at her disposal but she keeps being scuppered in her plans because of Sarah… and her family. This is the crucial part, Sarah bands together with her clone sisters who each have their own strengths and weaknesses - even though they are the same person as they are clones! They work together, care for each other deeply (even after some very nasty fights where one gets shot by the other but survives by sheer luck. I said it was a complicated story!) and they trust each other. Rachel, on the other hand, commands and dictates to the people who work for her to serve her. Their loyalty to her and her cause is shaky and she can’t really rely on people in the same way as Sarah can for “her people”.

It’s not clear always which leader is best or which an organisation or team should go for, but what is clear is that we work best in great teams where we can combine our strengths and our weaknesses get covered.

Thumbnail photo is of a dry stone wall by Peter H from Pixabay