The Stark men have a grim history of betrayal. First there was Ned by Littlefinger.
Then there was Robb by Roose Bolton and Walder Frey, and, finally, Jon by his Night's Watch brothers.
This isn't by accident. In fact, I blame Ned because all of the Stark men share some of
his flaws, which make them doomed as leaders. They try to be good men. They try to do what's
right, but in the end, they fail.
And this video will cover exactly how they fail and what we can learn from them. So let's
go ahead and start with the patriarch, and the first of the three Starks to be betrayed
and killed, Good Old Eddard. His problem can be summed up in one line of dialogue.
Ned doesn't know what people want and he's given up on trying. If you've seen our video
on Tyrion, you know that this, knowing what people want is the key to surviving the Game
of Thrones, because if Ned had carefully considered what everyone actually wanted, he would have
known that Littlefinger was a terrible person to trust.
Let's look at what Ned did know about him and what he should have been able to infer
about his motives.
Okay, so from just the first scene with Littlefinger, we know three things
First, that he used to be in love with Ned's current wife;
second, that Ned's brother nearly killed Littlefinger
while he fought for her, and three, that this ambitious guy, Littlefinger, has now worked
his way up from nowhere to be the Master of Coin. Does it make sense to trust this person
with your most important life-changing plan to give up all the power in the world to them?
Clearly not, because this person would probably hate your guts if you were Ned, but this is
exactly what Ned does.
Ned is completely outnumbered and he bets his life on Littlefinger coming through with
the Gold Cloaks for him, and Littlefinger does exactly what is expected. All Ned had
to do was think, "How would someone in Littlefinger's position, with his background act?" Yet Ned
doesn't think that. He thinks what so many of us think. What would I do in this situation?
And, of course, if Ned said he would do something, he would keep his word, but this is a complete
lack of empathy and it is stupid and deadly. People do not share your motivations, your
codes, your anything.
You can only look to their past actions if you want to predict how they're going
to behave in the future. So let's move on to the final huge mistake that Ned made, telling
Cersei his plan. This is both a terrible case of expecting other people to behave exactly
as he would, and of underestimating his competition. Listen to what Cersei tells him when he lets
her know that he is going to expose her bastard children.
When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die, there is no middle ground.
Ned has told her his plan. She says I will win or die, and then, Ned waits.
How crazy is that? Of course, she's going to use that chance to try to win. She just said so.
Interestingly, a different character, Tyrion, accounts for this. He knows that when he tells
his competition his plans, they're going to adjust and he uses this fact to spread disinformation
and out the mole who is informing on him, in this case, Pycelle.
You see there? He caught Pycelle by knowing that he would act differently based on the
information that he gave him. Ned expects everyone to be static. He tells you his plans
and you're just going to continue doing the same thing. That is a huge part of why he loses his head.
Let's move on to the next Stark to be betrayed and killed--Robb. Robb makes mistakes similar
to his dad's, but his number one flaw is that he doesn't align his people's interests with his own.
So let's go down the list. First, we've got the Freys, also known as the late Freys because
they didn't enter Robert's rebellion until which side was going to win. They want to
increase their power and they want they want to ensure that they're going to have victory.
So, tempting them with the queenship makes total sense. But you really expect their loyalty
after you've taken that queenship away--completely crazy.
Second, there's Catelyn, Robb's mom. She wants her family intact. She wants her daughters
back once the war has erupted. And when she gets news that her sons Brandon and Rickon
have been killed, she is desperate. Robb could have sent her to ask Lysa Arryn to join the
war, but instead, he keeps her by the camp where she lets Jaime Lannister free. Honestly,
rather predictable.
Then you've got the Karstarks. They want Jaime Lannister dead because he killed one of them
in an escape attempt. Rickard Karstark demands his head.
And then Robb doesn't give him Jaime Lannister's head, which precipitates the revenge, which
causes Robb to lose the Karstarks. If he had told Rickard Karstark that Jaime would be
tried at the end of the war, and that Karstark could have his head, then, maybe, he could
have taken that rage and put it in the right direction.
So in real life, say that you're a boss and someone asks for a promotion. Don't just give
it to them and don't just say no. Tell them that when they help you achieve a goal that
you have set, they will have that promotion. Now, you are both pursuing your goal.
So moving on now to Edmure, which brings us to the second major point and Robb's second
major flaw. Your commanders need to know the strategy, not just the tactics. Robb told
Edmure not to attack the mountain, but he didn't tell him why. So when Edmure saw a
chance, he did what he thought was right, and then, this happened.
Now, Robb is a good strategist and that is a solid plan, but not telling Edmure his overarching
goal of not attacking was a major blunder. The people in your organization, on your team,
wherever you maybe, must know why they have certain goals, otherwise, they can't adapt
to changing conditions. They can only do exactly what you've said.
Genghis Khan, one of the greatest military commanders in history, divided the Mongol
army into units of 10 men who were given autonomy to accomplish their specific missions with
some latitude. This meant that the men could be flexible to the conditions that they face
and improvise solutions that their commanders could never have anticipated.
If you are a leader, you can't expect to make every single decision. You need to delegate
and you need to do that effectively so you can't just tell people the tactics. You need
to give them the strategy. You need to tell them the why.
Let's get on to Jon. In my opinion, Jon's mistake is very simple--No Communication.
Check out what Jon has seen.
That is an undead army being led by a mythical White Walker. Jon has seen it and his men
have seen it. It's the greatest threat the world has ever known is the reason that he
wants to get the wildlings south of the Wall, so that he doesn't have to fight their undead
corpses, and here's what he says about it to his men when he returns.
He says nothing. He's got thousands of eye witnesses, some of whom are brothers of the
Night's Watch. Each one would swore to what he's seen and he doesn't explain that an undead
army is coming to kill everyone. Notably, he does do this before Hardhome. It looks like this.
That is a great point and in this scene, Jon gets through to them. They did go to Hardhome
to save the wildlings, but a good leader doesn't just say the mission once. He needs to repeat
the mantra. He needs to make sure that people understand it and stay on track. He also needs
to find a way to make sure that it makes sense for everybody and that normally occurs by
listening to what each individual cares about, and finding a way to make them understand
how your plan gives them what they care about vividly. This is where Jon Snow screws up with Olly.
People will tell you what's important to them all the time, like Olly does right here. Very
obviously, he wants revenge against the wildlings that killed his family, and, perhaps, even
more importantly, he doesn't want his loved ones butchered in front of him. So if you
want to convince someone like Olly to do something that they don't like, you need to paint a
vivid, grim picture of their worst case scenario that the undead wildlings are going to butcher
his brothers of the Night's Watch, and then, enslave them so that they kill everyone else.
It needs to be vivid. It needs to be visceral. But what does Jon Snow do?
What would motivate you more, the memories of having your village slaughtered or the
vague threat of winter coming? Clearly, the vivid memories. So it's no wonder that Olly
is going to do whatever it takes to stop that. It's not pleasant, but if you want to get
through to people, you have to paint a vivid picture of what they stand to gain and what
they stand to lose. I've heard it referred to as the "The heaven if they do and the hell
if they don't." Both aspects are necessary if you want to lead someone from a position
that they don't want to budge from. And unfortunately, it doesn't look like Jon's death has changed
his persuasion skills much.
I've come at it from a different angle for each Stark, but they all do the opposite of
what we saw Tyrion do in his video. They do not know what the people around them want.
They don't know how to give it to them. That makes them extremely flawed leaders.
And if you're interested in what you can do to be a better leader, specifically, what
you can do to make an amazing first impression, we've set up another video that covers the
four emotions that guarantee a great one. And the Starks do well in some of these and
miss on a couple of them. If you can hit all four of these emotions in the right order
and you're in any kind of environment, from the board room all the way to a bar party,
this will work. So if you want those, click the box. It's gonna take you to a page where
you can submit your email and get immediate access to that video, so that you can use
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If you have any video suggestions, please go ahead, write them down in the Comments.
I got some stuff I am very excited for in the next week or two. I've been working on
it for a long time, but suggestions are always appreciated, and that helps me know what's
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