Employment law lessons are everywhere.

Previously on the Blawg, we’ve discussed valuable legal training you can glean from such unexpected sources as The Office, Dilbert, March Madness, Mr. Rogers, Simon & Garfunkel and – occasionally – even lawyers.

Today, we offer up some deep employment law thoughts inspired by the season finales of two of the nation’s most-loved TV shows: LOST and American Idol.

LOST

If you’ve never seen the show, here’s the basic set-up: a plane crashes on a remote island and a small pack of survivors tries to get rescued before they all kill each other. Basically, it’s Gilligan’s Island with lots of guns.

The show revolves around the intense interpersonal conflict that results when people work together to tackle seemingly impossible problems under seemingly insurmountable odds. Sounds a bit like the modern American workplace, doesn’t it?

With that in mind, here are my Top 3 Lost Employment Law Lessons from the past season:

1. You’re truly LOST without a team.  The very best way to avoid needless disputes that can bring down an entire enterprise is to foster an environment that puts the team above the individual.  The mantra “live together or die alone” is repeated by someone on the show every 27 seconds or so. That’s great advice.
2. Be careful whom you follow.  Don’t make alliances with bad people — you could end up in a bad place. Headlines from the past year featured several prominent HR execs getting hauled into court or even jail after they went along with various questionable schemes. There’s an old saying: “Bad company corrupts good character.” Don’t let that happen to you.
3. Adversity = opportunity. LOST’s characters are in near-constant peril. The good ones see each challenge as an opportunity: they rise to the occasion and grow as leaders and as human beings. That’s a great lesson for today’s trying times. Don’t sit around whining about the economy or other things beyond your control. Seize each day and make the most of it.

AMERICAN IDOL

The setting: three all-powerful judges help America decide who gets a career in music and who doesn’t.  Sort of the ultimate talent-evaluation exercise.

Frankly, as a native of Milwaukee, I’m still clinically depressed over the fact that fellow Milwaukeean Danny Gokey (who attended my kids’ school) got voted off. That said, here are my Top 3 American Idol Employment Law Lessons:

1. Pursue honesty (even if it gets you booed). Simon is the only judge who actually seems to tell the truth, which usually isn’t very popular with the crowd. However, in my humble opinion, honesty is always the best assessment policy. Needlessly sugarcoating talent assessments or performance evaluations only leads to trouble in the end.
2. Don’t intentionally inflict emotional distress. On the other hand, you might want to consider being just a tad less harsh than Simon. Managers who routinely fill their performance evaluations with words like ”hideous,” “pathetic,” ”terrible” and “awful” are just begging for emotional distress claims.
3. Humility and creativity are key. This year’s finalists offer a stark contrast. It’s down to super-humble Kris and ultra-creative Adam. The business book classic Good to Great found that humility at the top is the absolute #1 key to a “great” enterprise. Other studies confirm that fostering creativity in an organization is the key to innovation and staying ahead of the competition. You need both to win in today’s world of work.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 8:27 am and is filed under American Idol, Employment Law News, Lost. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.