Leadership lessons from the soaps

Can watching soap operas help students understand the uncertainty of business? asks Nicholas Pyke

Hollywood, with its heroes, villains and action-packed plot lines, must seem an irresistible mindset for the average corporate warrior: the businessman as hero, heading for a thrilling denouement in the boardroom. At the University of Exeter's Centre for Leadership, however, they are quietly urging some rather different viewing habits upon the magnates of the future. Get home early, they are told, settle down, switch on the soaps and have good long look at Dot Cotton, Jimmy Corkhill or Curly Watts. From the Archers to Z-cars, fictional characters play a key part in Professor Jonathan Gosling's lectures to the MA and MBA students at Exeter.

His audiences look at how series are constructed and produced and what, in their rambling and gossip-driven way, these low-budget dramas hope to achieve. The comparison with the world of work, says Professor Gosling, director of the leadership centre, is instructive. However much senior managers may dream of bestriding the company like a colossus, they had better pay attention to the huddle of smokers by the exit and the buzz of conversation from the water cooler crowd if they want to know what's going on. Because that is where the real stories are generated.

"We look at how soap operas are produced and how they fit into the lives of the audiences. Using the metaphor slightly differently, we see how we go to work as observers as well as participants, and how part of our commitment to work is the same as the commitment shown by the audience of a soap. We get pleasure and interest from the characters and from the unfolding plot lines, the cliff hangers and the teasers," he says.

Soap operas thrive on the sort of casual relationships and ambiguous social interactions that cannot be tidied up or managed into shape the way a Hollywood script writer might prefer. But the sense of continuity and community that springs from them is crucial to an organisation's well-being.

"You are, as it were, the producer," says Professor Gosling. "You've got some scripts, some actors and a general theme. But you've got to allow the characters to blossom, and if you do, they'll be appreciated by their public. It is much the same in management really. You can't control what everybody does, but you can influence the place. The key thing when you're producing a soap opera is that the overall theme must be clear. Otherwise the audience don't know what they're part of."

This Emmerdale theory of life is certainly an antidote to the standard business course, which shovels everything up into bags marked "finance" or "marketing". Real-life problems, says Professor Gosling, rarely fit these standard categories, nor are they likely to prove amenable to the technically orthodox solutions they invite. Problems are much more likely to arise from individuals and their messy interactions.

How do the students react to this rather subversive take? "I think people quite enjoy the cheekiness of it, there's a bit of looking around to see if it's OK to laugh," he says. "As we go into more detail about what is involved in managing a successful organisation, it brings up a lot of the stuff they already find themselves doing but weren't quite sure they were supposed to be doing – by which I mean standing around chatting to the receptionist." And if there's one key character, he says, it is the receptionist: the centre of gossip; the only one with a real grip of where the resources are and what they are capable of.

If it sounds good in the lecture hall, the soap-opera analysis also works on the shop floor. He is currently advising the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which is wrestling with a conflict between two competing views of itself. On the one hand its member organisations are well known for their emergency work at the scene of disasters. On the other, they have a long-term obligation to develop capable, self-sustaining versions of themselves around the world.

"These are two rather competing modes of operation," he says. "The disaster relief work can be completely counterproductive in developing the capability of, for example, the Rwandan Red Cross. You have some workers who structure their lives around a climax, around going in and having a big impact, as against those who concentrate on long-term relationships, trust and letting people have a go for themselves."

The "Hollywood" disaster approach, he says, is hugely attractive to funders, donors and workers from the rich north. But it tends to swamp the more delicate process of building capability. Recognising the conflict has been the first stage to resolving it. Understanding narrative is particularly useful for managing change, bringing an acceptance that there is no such thing as a completely fresh start.

Gosling also values soaps for their recognition of ambiguity and uncertainty, which is at odds with the traditional, rather romantic view of leadership which emphasises individual virtues, courage, honesty and independence. "The qualities of the individual are important, but they only come to effect in the context of the mix, the culture of the place. That aspect of business which is quite difficult to teach.

"Soaps can say lots of things about oneself. The characters are realistic: people who in one sphere are hugely successful but may be outright brutes in another. They also show how real experiences have a real impact."

By the end of a Hollywood blockbuster the baddies have been conveniently wasted. The soaps, meanwhile, just rumble on, which is depressing for the romantics out there, but excellent news for "Eastenders Plc".