Top Five Ways A TV Show Gives Insights into Leadership, Strategic Investment, Work/Life Balance and "the Board"

A Top Five Tuesday that includes a plea to pay you Dir of Comms what she's worth!

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Welcome to Top Five Tuesdays, a new feature for premium (i.e. paying) Talking Out of School subscribers!

Why Top Five Tuesdays?

Top Five Tuesday posts are on topics that aren’t big enough for a longer article and are designed to be brief, easy to read, helpful and (hopefully!) much of the time, at least a little fun.

“Is the Board on?”

Top Five Ways Apple TV’s Severance Provides insights Into the Mission Drive Workplace

Both the story and the production convey messages about the nature of work, leadership, investing time and money strategically (pay director of comms the salaries they deserve!), and dead end cults of personality.

After a three year gap, Severance returned to Apple TV for a second season last week. I recently did a rewatch of season one that was well worth it. In a first watch, you are mainly trying to figure out the characters and plot - it’s immediately gripping like a good dystopian novel but deciphering the parameters of the world building takes all your attention. It was also interesting coming back to this show that I watched originally in my final semester of headship after two and a half years of distance, reflection, writing and interacting with schools from a very different angle and in a different context. This time around I appreciated both the satire and commentary on the modern workplace and our attitude towards work - and as all good narrative arts do, the underlying message about what it reveals about both our higher and lower natures as people.