[0:05] Severance has some shocking leadership lessons because at first glance,

[0:10] the leadership seems totally outrageous, but it somehow feels familiar. And that's where the lesson is. This is Rusty Gaillard, and this podcast is Do Something Different. It's a leadership podcast for corporate leaders who want more success and more freedom to be their full selves at work. I've got five shocking, surprising leadership lessons I want to talk about from the show Severance with you today. And I'm coming to you from the MDR office on the Severed floor. 

Let's dive right in. Number one, most leaders are outies. And that's the problem.

[0:48] Literally in the show, the leaders are outies. They're not severed at all. But if you think about the characteristics of the outies versus the innies, all of the Audis on the show have some kind of issue that they're dealing with, and they're running away from that issue. They're running away from the discomfort, from responsibility, from emotional challenges. And honestly, that's what leadership looks like today. A lot of people go to work to run away from challenges in other parts of their life. They show up at work and say, I don't want to deal with emotion. I don't want to deal with difficulty. I don't want to deal with discomfort. I just want to get the work done. Mark is a classic example of that in the show because Mark is dealing with the loss of his wife and he's drinking too much and he's isolating and he's in grief.

[1:35] And he says, I got severed because I don't want to deal with that. I want part of myself to be free from the grief.

[1:45] Leaders often avoid the hard work of leadership it's the same idea it's like they've severed themselves from the emotional challenges and they say i don't want to deal with that i want the simple part i just want to get work done and i just want to be productive it's just business, meanwhile they're either outright ignoring emotional things that need to be addressed on the team or they're outsourcing it to groups like HR.

[2:13] When you are leading from the neck up as a leader, when you've outsourced all of your emotion, when you've left that at the door, you're not present. It's like you're severed. You're performing as a leader, but you're not practicing leadership. So the challenge for you is can you show up more fully? Can you not outsource the emotional things and actually show up and deal with them.

[2:38] That brings us to our second principle, which is that innies really show us what real engagement looks like. And I would say raw engagement. Because those innies have no choice but to live fully. There is no escape for them. When they leave, they are gone. They are not themselves when they leave the severed floor. So every hour, they are present and they are at work. There's no sleeping. There's no social media. There is no escape. And that clearly creates suffering for these people, but it also creates honesty. They're not numbing out. They're not staying busy with busy work. They are fully present all the time. Helly demonstrates this right from the very first episode. She wakes up on this table. She's disoriented. She's scared. she's stripped of any kind of context about what's going on but her first reaction is to start pushing she's testing boundaries she's asking questions she's challenging she's resisting authority completely different from the audi version of helena who is compliant with.

[3:47] This idea of living fully being fully present and being a little bit raw is a little bit scary and frankly it's you know it feels a little bit uncomfortable it's somehow attractive because they're emotionally alive and it's the great irony that they've somehow become more human than their outies you see this with the whole exchange between any dylan outie dylan and his wife, whose wife is actually attracted to Innie Dillon. Because Innie Dillon is fully alive and fully present. And that's an attractive quality. So you have to ask yourself as a leader, what would look different for you if you showed up more fully at work? If you brought more of your Innie to work? If you were willing to be a little bit messy? If you were willing to challenge, to push the boundaries?

[4:36] People will always respect that because you will show up more human just like in the show the innies have this very attractive quality they're good characters you want to like them you want to be on their side what if you brought those qualities to work if you were willing to be a little bit more messy and experience what it would be like for people to like you and want to be on your side.

[5:02] The third leadership lesson that's surprising from Severance is how they've taken culture and turned it into a weapon. I mean, Lumen obviously takes this to an extreme, but it's kind of crazy to look at the culture. They've got the four tempers. They've got these paintings. They've got all sorts of worship almost of cure. It looks like culture, but it really is a mechanism for control.

[5:33] And i think a lot of companies have some version of this which is don't rock the boat be a team player that's not how we do things which all translate to don't challenge the system, and then you layer rewards and recognition on top of that to support it and then you know in severance they do this so beautifully the waffle party the music dance experience the melon bar? I mean, these are hilarious. They are surreal and totally outrageous, but somehow they feel familiar. For anyone who's worked long enough in the corporate environment, you're like, well, we've never had a melon bar. And yet somehow there's things like this that feel similar to what we've experienced in the corporate world.

[6:23] So you have to look at where is your culture trying to reinforce conformance. That's not what leaders look like. That's not how executive presence looks in this company. That's not how we do things. Those kind of statements are stifling individuality and trying to move towards conformance, exactly what the culture at Lumen does. And then think about the rewards that you have at work and think about how you as a leader reward people. The innies in Severance were quite happy, actually, with these, you know, music dance experience and the melon bar and so on. And yet there was also, you could recognize some degree of like, this is kind of silly, but it is what it is. And I think a lot of us in the corporate environment have that same response. And there's such a better way to do recognition. And it's simply an authentic connection to people.

[7:21] The best kinds of recognition don't cost any money people it's much more effective to have strong internal motivation than it has than it is to have external motivation this has been demonstrated time and time again so it doesn't matter what kind of external parties or gimmicks or little prizes that you have what matters is that you care enough to see someone and recognize their contribution. Think about work. In severance, the innies' entire life is work. They don't have an outside existence. They never leave the severed floor from their awareness. All they do is work. And for many of us, it feels the same way. To pour all of yourself into work, to make it the major factor. And of course, I know for all of us in real life, it's not 100% of our lives, but it is a major, major part of our lives. And to pour everything into work and get a waffle party in return or a gift card? Sure, that's where these things start to feel familiar. So as a leader, how can you really, truly appreciate someone for their contributions? It's free and simple.

[8:36] The fourth leadership lesson I want to talk about from severance is how work can become like religion. In severance, Lumen takes this to an extreme. It doesn't just offer a job. It offers meaning. It's got morning devotionals. There's a whole set of principles. There's books that you have to study. There's mythological stories. There's strange paintings. People say, praise Kier. Once again, this is not only strange, but also has some echoes of familiarity.

[9:06] The reality is in today's world where religion is not as prominent where many of the social community structures are not as strong as they once were we are looking for meaning and we are looking for belonging in life and everybody wants that a lot of us find it at work through our co-workers and through the companies that we work for i loved working for large prestigious companies during my corporate career because it gave me a connection to them. And I could borrow some of the prestige from those companies and feel like, oh, I'm important because I'm working at a good company. Work often fills these existential questions like, who am I? And am I worthy? And do I matter? And they are become a part of our identities. And companies are happy to fill that space.

[9:59] So you have to ask yourself, are you happy with that as a situation? Are you happy attaching that much of your identity, that much of your meaning to life, to your company? This is an example where I don't encourage you to do something different as a leader, but I encourage you to lead yourself first. For you to ask yourself this question of how much of your identity and how much of your self-worth gets tied up in your work. That is clearly what Lumen is doing. They're indoctrinating that into the people, but there's an element of that that is true in the real world in our corporate cultures. And are you falling into that or are you charting your own course?

[10:40] The fifth shocking and surprising leadership principle we can take from severance is that as a leader, when you are not integrated, you are creating chaos.

[10:51] Severance is really a metaphor for how we have a work persona and a home persona. When I was starting off in my career, I literally articulated that approach to how I navigated my life. Here's how I am when I'm at home and here's how I am when I'm at work. When I'm at work, I was no nonsense. I was all business. I wasn't talking about personal things or my weekend or I wasn't chit-chatting with people. I was getting things done. I was all productivity, all focus, trying to be effective and be successful. And i split off the human part of myself that was friendly or had a sense of humor or wanted to laugh or connect with people i severed that from my my work persona what happens when you do that i think dylan in the show is such a good example of this once again when dylan first finds out that he has a kid he is enamored with that idea he wants to learn more later on milchak dangles his little carrot in front of dylan saying hey maybe there's going to be a space for you to meet your Audi family. And Dylan starts betraying his friends because it's so important for him to know that he has more than just work. And this plays out, of course, as he meets multiple times with his Audi's wife.

[12:04] The truth is that we can't sever ourselves. We are full people. You don't have an outside persona and a work persona. You don't have an Audi and an innie personality at work. When you try to do that, you're just ignoring challenges and eventually it shows up as burnout, disengagement, or in the case of the show, outright revolt.

[12:28] As a leader, it's doubly important because if you're not facing yourself, you are bringing in confusion, resentment, you're unpredictable, and in the end, it creates chaos at work. The best leaders know themselves. They consider themselves a whole person. They recognize that they have an outside life and they have an inside life, but they bring those together. They don't hide from their shadows. They bring them into the light and they lead from a grounded, authentic, whole place.

[13:01] I loved Severance as a show, not just because it was wild and entertaining and outrageous in many ways, but because so many of the themes were familiar.

[13:12] So the question for you is how can you take some of this and bring it into your life and do something different as an individual and as a leader and as someone who is leading yourself in your own life. My challenge to you is to bring more of your innie to work. Not to sever yourself into your outside persona and your inside persona, but to show up as a whole person and bring more of that raw, messy, but connected innie personality to work. When you watch the show, if you're like me you liked the innies they were cool they were like you're on their side you're rooting for them against the big bad evil empire well be that person bring that any bring that raw passion that energy that rawness the messiness bring that to work and let other people root for you as well but the key here is to find a way to do that and a specific action you can take so that you are doing something different that is how you move the needle.