Heroes and Villains
Characters We All Work With from ‘The Boys’
The workplace can often seem as action-packed as something off the set of The Fast & The Furious movies. When you have power struggles, and business superheroes trying to save the day from villainous competitors trying to take it down, it can play out very much like a Hollywood movie. If upcoming deadlines feel like a race against time, and you find yourself looking up to the sky hoping someone will swoop in and make everything okay, you may have a team reminiscent of the wild, and unpredictable cast of ‘The Boys’. While you do your best to try and figure out who are the heroes and who are the villains of the office, let’s take a look at the characters from the hit show and see if we can find some similarities between them.
The “The Deep” Office Misfit
All of our colleagues have their own personalities and characteristics that make them unique. Among them, there is often that one outlier who’s personality is just….off. Welcome in ‘The Deep’ – The Office Misfit. His unique personality, the eccentricities, make him a unique superhero, and a very quirky colleague. The Deep shares his odd hobbies and interests, which no one else shares, and yet his idiosyncrasies make him somewhat interesting and even endearing to the others. The Deep waffles between trying too hard to be liked yet at his most confident moments, can be arrogant. He is that work-in-progress colleague yet to be determined what he will ultimately become. While HR sorts out whether his 60 gallon fish tank and 200 tropical fish qualify as emotional support animals, we will let The Deep figure out who he wants to be and do our best to keep him focused on his work.
The “Hughie Campbell” Office Reluctant Hero
Heroes tend to emerge during a crisis, and lead us from disaster to salvation just when we think all hope is lost. And sometimes they are too busy saving people from burning buildings or stopping trains about to run into a car stuck on the tracks. That is when the Reluctant Hero is called upon – our Hughie Campbell. The Hughie is our colleague who blends in with the team, with a fairly muted personality, easy to get along with, and whom everyone likes. He brings a kindness and positive, funny persona to work each day, but his work and behaviors are all within a pretty normal range, and thus there is little that stands out about the Hughie. And then, disaster strikes! The network crashes, there is a malware attack, there is a company scandal in the news, you name it. The Hughie, realizing that no one has a good plan to save everyone, rises to the occasion. He will jump in to take on the project, meet with the brutally challenging client, and he will emerge victorious. Until being pressed into action, we hadn’t given the Hughie much thoughts. But having seen him now step up and do the hard work it takes to pull a business and a team out of the fire as though he has super powers, is thrilling to watch and reminds us how much more there is to people than we often think.
The “Starlight” Office Rising Star
There is a 9-Box exercise companies use to rate everyone’s performance and potential, which goes from ‘top-right’= all-star performance/huge potential, to ‘lower left’=pack your bags. In between you will find the ‘Good Soldiers’, ‘Steady Eddies’, and you’ll find the ‘Rising Star’, like our Starlight. She is among those we see has having huge potential, and has begun to show you some of what she is capable of. Her work started out very good but has gotten progressively stronger to an exceptional level. She has built relationships within and outside the team, building a brand that has many groups thinking about her and the role she could play for them in the future. Like the earnest character, the Starlight brings a sense of hope and positivity to the workplace. Her passion and enthusiasm for their work inspire others to strive for greatness. And if she shines too brightly at certain times, don’t be too concerned, it’s a good thing – just pull out the shades and it will pass.
The “Homelander” Office Charmer
We all love charisma. If we don’t have it, we wish we did, and those who do, we want to get to know them. It is a magnet that draws people in and the more they have, the greater the pull. Super-Charisma belongs to that rare colleague whose work we do not always get to see up close but is clearly regarded as the Top Dog, the Best at what he does, and whom we’ll call our Homelander. He has incredible charm and wit, and a personality that, particularly from afar, makes anyone and everyone want to get closer. Much like the powerful character from ‘The Boys’, the Office Homelander exudes confidence in all that he does, able to convince his colleagues to do what he believes needs to be done, can bring in the big, new client’s business no matter how remote the chances appear, and will connect with two dozen people between his office and the breakroom making everyone feel like a million bucks along the way – that level of charisma can do that! Yes, the Homelander can be a bit of a show-off, which also is part of his charm, and if we had it, we’d probably be showing it off too.
The “Billy Butcher” Office Leader
The leader of the office, whether the person carrying the title or not, is usually the person with the unyielding determination and no-nonsense attitude as it relates to business and to completing a mission. Hello, Billy Butcher, our Office Leader. Just like the fierce character from ‘The Boys,’ Butcher will take charge and lead the office team with an unrivaled, fiery passion. Butcher’s ability to think strategically, to quickly assess people – who is on our side and who is working against us- to create the quickest and smartest path to success, is uncanny. Butcher is the driving success behind the whole operation, and he will not be stopped until he leads us all to victory over the competition. With a bull in a China shop approach, there may be some bumps and bruises for everyone along the way. But, like Butcher would tell you, ‘Rub some dirt on it, and let’s go’. He seems to feel neither bumps, nor bruises, so plan to put on a good face even if you’re quietly writhing in pain on the inside. He likes people who are tough!
In the adventurous and often thrilling world of the workplace, we spend many hours and accomplish a great deal working with Misfits, and Rising Stars, Strategic Thinkers, Charmers and Leaders, whether they know it or not. What we learn from each helps us to relate to the next ones we’ll see as they join us here or we move onto the next stop on the career journey. ‘The Boys’ characters may have super powers that help them to fly, or breathe under water, or run faster than a speeding bullet, or just stop the bullet altogether, but inside they are the same people with the same talents and hangups and highs and lows we all do, and why it is so relatable for us in thinking about the Characters We All Work With.
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