Author’s Note: I am a trekkie. But after watching William Shatner, famously known as the legendary Captain James T. Kirk from Star Trek, become the oldest person to journey to space, it got me to thinking about what we can learn from the sci-fi show. Going a bit deeper, I thought about what the show could teach CLOs about their work today.

As a result, my article series entitled What Star Trek Can Teach CLOs was ideated. Part I of the series focuses on Captain Kirk himself. Part II focuses on Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Part III, this piece, focuses on Captain Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Subsequent articles will focus on different captains from the famed show. I hope you find useful information from my analysis.

Learning Captain Sisko

A Step in a New Direction

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered in 1993 and it was a near complete departure from the previous two shows. The stories were still presented in episodic form, but it was the first time a Star Trek series would not be focused on a crew “boldly going where no one has gone before.” In fact, it was set on a space station. And not any space station, a former Cardassian space station.

Readers of Part II of this series will already be familiar with that species.

The station, previously known as Terok Nor, was abandoned by the Cardassian military after giving up its decade’s long occupation of the planet Bajor. Bajor, struggling to come back from the deadly occupation, called on the United Federation of Planets for help. That help took the form of a Starfleet officer… Commander Benjamin Sisko.

Commander Sisko was played by Avery Brooks, the first Black man to lead a Star Trek series. Through Brooks, we were introduced to Sisko who was a grieving widower with a son. Sisko’s wife, Jennifer, was killed during the Battle of Wolf 359*. At the time of the attack, Sisko was serving as the First Officer of the USS Saratoga with his wife and son, Jake, living onboard. Sisko and his son were able to escape the ship before it was destroyed. Jennifer died during the attack.

While being forever changed by his wife’s death, Sisko managed to heal and began the process of raising his son on his own. In fact, it’s his role as a parent that makes him unique among the captains in Star Trek. He is the only one to be a single father** and that be the focus of his life.

In addition to being a father, Sisko, who was later promoted to the rank of Captain, is an avid fan of baseball and a competitive one at that. He is a fantastic cook, having been raised in his parents’ restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was there that he learned to experiment with flavors and ingredients. And he is passionate. He feels deeply and responds with raw emotion to the events happening around him.

Based on this information, what can the character teach CLOs about leadership and delivering on promises/strategies. If we had to narrow the list of characteristics down to focus on, let’s go with:

• Parental
• Competitive
• Experimental
• Passionate

The Parental CLO

There is this idea, one that is considered by most to be outdated, that there be a disconnect between leaders and those that follow them; that one should only care about how their employees do their respective jobs and experience success or failure. There is no room for one to bring their whole self to work.

It can’t be farther from the truth. In fact, we’re seeing now more than ever before the need to bring all that one is to his/her/their job.

A parental chief learning officer will cherish and value an employee’s whole self. It’s important for this type of CLO to create an environment where learning is assessable and diverse enough to benefit all employees and their lifestyles. It also is best when confronting issues of a personal nature in the workplace.

When an employee brings the whole self to work, that usually includes some of the more private or turbulent things in that respective employee’s life. It’s no longer acceptable to “save the drama for your momma.” Finding ways to turn those items into positives and valuable strengths in the workplace will translate to a stronger, more focused, more loyal employee.

Learning is a part of that environment. Not all content has to be job specific. Sometimes, that content can offer ways for employees to deal with financial issues, familial issues or physical or mental health issues. Again, taking a parental approach to not just teaching or providing… but also caring not only benefits the employee but the company as well.

The Competitive CLO

While learning is a strategic part of the business internally, it must also be accepted it is a strategic tool externally. What does this statement mean?

The business world is very competitive. Leaders in every part of the business are looking for ways to beat the competition. For a competitive CLO, learning is a strategic tool… one that can be used to lure potential employees to your organization.

A part of that strategy focuses on the content delivery system. The way one organization delivers the content, for instance through virtual reality (VR), might seem more attractive to employees who are currently receiving learning through the classroom.

The content is also a piece of the strategy. As noted before, content that focuses not only on the job-related needs of the employee but also fills a need in other areas of the person’s life can be much more attractive.

A competitive CLO will find ways to strategically place learning as part of the overall strategy. And that doesn’t just mean for the luring of potential employees. It can also be used at the C-Suite level. Making learning a fundamental part of the overall company means being able to seek and receive funding for the necessary learning initiatives laid out by the learning team.

The Experimental CLO

An experimental chief learning officer is one who is not tied to conventional methods always being used to solve a problem. In today’s environment, it’s important to consider the need to experiment on how to address issues.

For instance, one issue that’s consistently before CLOs surrounds the need to provide learning to a growing remote workforce. How does that learning need to exist and how is it going to be most used by these remote employees? What content must be provided?

Researching the questions and going over related data is certainly part of the answer, but it also requires a fair bit of experimentation. Providing diverse content and delivering it diversly means taking a guess what is needed. Sometimes it takes a fair bit of money as well. It’s important to weigh these options based on current information (budget, employee data, learning data, etc.) and make decisions accordingly.

And be open to the possibility of failure. Sometimes, learning is about failing. It’s not what anyone wants to hear but we all know it to be true.

The Passionate CLO

Captain Sisko is quite simply a passionate man. And you can see it emanating from him in everything he says and everything he does. It’s this single characteristic that CLOs need to have more than anything else.

The passion for learning and to provide learning is central to the lives of all chief learning officers. It must be, otherwise, it can be considered that one is only going through the motions of learning. Really looking at the data provided to leaders and understanding the story it tells leads to a more effective learning strategy for an organization’s people and the company at large.

A passionate CLO needs to feel the struggles of the team. He/She/They need to understand the needs of the employees and the goals of the company. He/She/They need to take to heart the challenges the organization faces and put the learning mechanisms into place to solve for the problem.

In Summation

As a fan, I always tell people I most want to be like Captain Jean-Luc Picard, but I am much closer to Captain Sisko. I’d venture to say as you’ve followed these articles you probably find yourself gravitating to one captain or another because he or she is most like you.

I ask you to consider, for a moment, the idea of looking to someone who you are most unlike. It’s a weird request, but one does not get to know another without traveling, at least for a short time, in the other person’s shoes. What would you learn and how would you apply it to your role as a chief learning officer?

In the coming weeks, I will continue to write about what CLOs can learn from the remaining Star Trek captains. The next one will focus on Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by actor Kate Mulgrew. Mulgrew was the first woman to lead a Star Trek franchise and she certainly changed the narrative in a wonderfully unexpected way.

Notes

*The Battle of Wolf 359 was led by an assimilated Captain Jean-Luc Picard known as Locutus. During the Borg attack, 39 starships were destroyed with nearly 11,000 people dead.

**Captain Kirk did have a son, but he was not introduced until the second Star Trek movie – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. David was killed by a Klingon on the planet Genesis in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Captain Freeman, the captain of the U.S.S. Cerritos in Star Trek: Lower Decks also has a child, but she and her husband are still involved in raising their daughter.