7 Lessons For Leaders From Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey is a smash hit on PBS Classics. Downton Abbey is a series portaying the life and struggles of the Crawley Family in England before, during and after WWI. The show is a fantastic Venue to compare the lot and activities of the upper class and the working class. The show is a great classroom for studying the traits and challenges of leadership anywhere! Following are seven lessons to take away from this fantastic show that we can all benefit from at home and in the office.

1.      There is more than one agenda going on. During the show’s episodes you are constantly being exposed to the many different maneuvers by Thomas who moved from Footman to Personal Valet to the Lord of the Manner to Under Butler. Thomas pulls this off by using snitches, dropping suggestive and misleading gossip in front of the members of the Estate’s patriarch Lord Robert Grantham. He even steals the Lord Robert’s Dog and hides it in the woods, just so he can set himself up as hero by finding it! He tries to keep the under staff stirred up and divided downstairs to advance his own agenda while upstairs the family thinks that they have the only agenda going on which is mainly perpetuating the success of the estate. Frequently theirs is sidetracked by the workings among the staff. The lesson here it’s dangerous to be naïve and in denial that people very close to you aren’t working as cross purposes with you particularly while they have the advantage of your confidence and overhearing your plans.

2.      Trusting staff with personal or private issues. You never know who is watching or listening? This ties in directly from the above item. This can and often happens when talking amongst the family members is being overheard by staff in the room that is either invisible or trusted above their deserving level. The Lady Grantham speaks in front of her maid with young Rose about a surprise which ends up being related to the head of the maids and Thomas extrapolates that there is about to be a layoff of staff when in reality it is a jazz band being booked for a surprise performance. Lesson being that unless you are willing to share the how, when and why many things are better left unsaid in front of the office staff. It could very well lead to unnecessary stress and lower morale.

3.      The importance in having faith in staff who are loyal. The Lord Grantham has a personal valet who is a former military buddy that has a terrible marriage. The Personal Valet actually took the blame and served a prison term for his unscrupulous wife without telling anyone the truth that she had taken silverware from the military club. So he moves on without her but she refused to give him a divorce. He falls in love with a very proper and compassionate maid in the house. The jealous wife ends up committing suicide in a way that he would be framed for it as murder. It takes months to overturn the verdict and get the man free. When Bates finally gets out of prison once the evidence is uncovered of his innocence he gets to come back to the manor. The Lord Grantham paid for his attorney and supported and believed in him based on his relationship experience even after a trial found him guilty it turned out he Lord was correct in remaining faithful. The lesson is that others will on occasion be jealous and set up an honorable person for the fall and leaders need to give the benefit of the doubt as long as they possibly can.

4.      Helping loyal staff with personal issues. When Matthew Crawley the heir to the fortune and husband to the eldest daughter of Lord Grantham dies in an automobile accident his personal Valet Mr. Molesly is left without a position and let go. He ends up being unemployed and finally working on repairing the roadway and delivering groceries. This is a person who had worked his way up to the title of Under Butler which would be like Executive Assistant to the CEO. The Duchess tries to help him get a position with another estate to no avail and there are numerous gestures by many of compassion for him. In the end he comes back to the estate in the lower position of Second Footman, but just in time to encourage and stop Thomas the current Under Butler and house staff bully from having access to the privacy of the Lady Grantham’s private conversations. Molesly takes the new Lady’s Maid on as a friend and encourages her not to be dragged into Thomas’s unscrupulous agenda. This is to a great benefit for the privacy and security of the Family. The lesson here is that you never know how you can benefit yourself by being loyal and compassionate to former staff.

5.      Bullies among the staff are usually unknown. You may never know that you have a bully threatening and intimidating your staff right under your nose. The house staff virtually live in the basement and eat their meals down there and spend most of their time out of sight of the Family but they are very much interacting with each other all the time. This interaction leaves room for bullies to intimidate the more timid staff out of the sight of the family upstairs. Thomas the Under Butler and O Brien the Lady’s Maid do this on a regular basis, even teaming up on occasion. Lesson being this can be true of the staff in a company when the management or leadership is distanced and out of close proximity. Classic example is very likely in environments where they have corporate offices in one area and production separate with their own cafeteria.

6.   The contrast of leadership by Character and leadership by intimidation.The contrast between the virtuous leadership that is always on the mind of the great Lord Grantham is so well contrasted against the dark intimidation and leadership demonstrated by Thomas the Under Butler. Thomas is constantly making discouraging or disparaging remarks to the staff in an effort to keep them mentally beat down and intimidated. The Lord Grantham on the other hand spends his time and money to pursue what is right like when they find a letter left behind as a Will by Matthew Crawley that in effect takes control of the estate away from him and splits it with his strong willed daughter Mary. Consider the time when Mr. Bates puts his counterfeit skills learned in prison to work to prevent a great scandal involving the Prince of Wales that would fall on the door step of Lord Grantham. The lesson here is that people are watching and will be inspired to go to great ends and risk to protect the virtuous leader.

7.      Value of Sage advice from elders who see the big picture. The Grand Duchess the mother of the Current Lord Grantham knows how to handle situations and draws on many years of exposure to scandal and challenging situations. She is constantly steering things with arranged meetings and comments. She comes up with a plan that puts a different Thomas, the widowed Son in law and former Chauffeur as Overseer of estate. Thomas who is an avowed Socialist and had to flee Ireland from anti government violent activities with the Lord Grantham’s Daughter as his wife. The daughter soon after dies in childbirth at the estate. Thomas is planning to leave living on the estate with the grandchild at the same time that the Estate overseer is resigning. She also puts two and two together realizing that Thomas had experience with a family farm and was familiar enough that he could be the new estate overseer. This gave him a prestigious position with a real contribution to the family and reason to stay. Not only did it solve the problem of finding a new overseer it solidified the family connections and Thomas turns out to be very good at the job. The lesson here is that the value of sage advice from experience is so often unappreciated and overlooked.

Written by Robert B. Eaton, Author

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