In my first experiences as a manager, many years ago, I joked that I rather liked Vader’s style of leadership. Not that I could inspire terror in my troops (and neither would I want to), but he was a meme machine of oneline putdowns (“I find your lack of faith disturbing”, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further”, “apology accepted, Captain Needa”, “You Don’t Know The Power Of The Dark Side!”, and “You have failed me for the last time, Admiral”).

But for all the fun in them, they actually have no insights into human behaviour. Vader is a cartoon villain without the comedy moustache.

To find a decent template for leadership, I had to jump franchises to Star Trek and Captain Picard. He isn’t perfect, but he is written with humanity and depth and an exceptionally quotable catalogue!

One of my favourite quotes has to be:

It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life.

Here Picard is talking about the danger of believing that if something went wrong, somebody must have done something wrong. That’s a trap we all fall into.

Sometimes a project fails despite good engineering.
Sometimes a relationship ends despite two decent people trying.
Sometimes a recruitment doesn’t work despite a good interview process.

Recognising that doesn’t absolve us of responsibility – but it does remind us not to invent blame where there isn’t any.

Patrick Stewart delivered those lines with such quiet conviction that they feel less like dialogue and more like his accumulated wisdom. Its easy to forget that he’s just the actor and those words aren’t his – I guess that is good acting!

There are several others I think of regularly.

From The Drumhead:

With the first link, the chain is forged… The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

I find that one incredibly relevant. It’s a reminder that principles are usually eroded one seemingly reasonable compromise at a time. That can be easily given away a compromise at a time – or taken one by one. No one “exchange” itself is quite enough to trigger alarm … until suddenly it is too late.

Then there’s The Next Phase:

There are times, sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders.

A wonderful distinction between loyalty and integrity. And why when somebody says that soilders and civil servants should just do as they are told I cannot accept it: that was how qwe got to Auschwitsc.

And, from The Measure of a Man:

Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits!

That whole speech is magnificent because Picard reframes the question. Everyone else is arguing about whether Data is property. Picard says, in effect, “You’re all asking the wrong question. You’re deciding what kind of civilisation we want to be.”

That ability to elevate a discussion from rules to principles is one of his defining characteristics.

Its also quitye an apposite question to ask in this time of the rise of Artificial Intelligence: would we recognise if or when it achieved sentience? Would we refuse to because that would suggest that it has rights? Does a thing have to be sentient to require being treated decently? Isn’t the reason cruelty to animals is abhorrent because animals don’t have sentience but they can feel pain and fear?

And since we’re quoting Picard, I’ll leave you with one that is good rule for life:

It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are… It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards.

That’s from The Last Outpost, right back in the first season. The episode itself isn’t one of TNG’s finest, but that line always struck me as quietly beautiful. It isn’t saying we should lower our standards. It’s saying that growth matters, and that leadership is often about helping people keep striving—even if perfection is unattainable.

Perhaps that’s why Picard remains such an enduring character for me. He’s immensely capable, but what people remember isn’t that he always had the right answer. It’s that he tried very hard to ask the right question first.