Anyone who’s known me for more than a few days knows Star Trek is huge in my life. If you understand Star Trek, you understand me. It’s basically my operating system.
But it’s also been more than a show. Trek shaped how I think about leadership: how teams work under pressure, how ethics hold when power gets messy, and why a “code” is not the same thing as a brand value.
It has also taught me more about photons, tetryons, gravitons, chronitons, and other space things than I have any right to know as a communicator. But especially leadership.
And no, Uhura was not my inspiration for loving Trek. That would be trite.
It was Captain Picard.
Many Sundays in 1993 and 1994, my parents would leave me at home (with R7 for a Vanilla Magnum and Jelly Tots), and I would settle down to some Trek. Bliss. I wanted to be on the Starship Enterprise so badly. Come to think of it, there were not enough Black women on the bridge in 90s Trek. Not until Discovery, but that is another story.
Over time, I fell in love with three very different corners of Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager, and, eventually, Deep Space Nine. Different captains, different crews, different constraints. But all of them shared one thing: no matter how different everyone was, the team was sacrosanct. You can disagree, argue, push back, challenge. But when the call is made, you move together and carry out the mission. That kind of trust is rare, and I wanted to work in teams like that.
Picard: leadership as code
Picard. Oh, Captain Picard. Principled, deeply into literature, philosophical, and stubbornly committed to doing the right thing. Not because he is flawless, but because he is anchored. He operates from a code.
Star Trek gives us the Prime Directive, yes, but what always struck me was the discipline behind it: you do not get to reinvent your ethics based on who is watching, what is convenient, or what might make you look clever in the moment.
He deviated sometimes, and that matters too. He broke rules to protect people. To prevent harm. To preserve something human. But even his deviations were not impulsive. They were reasoned. Accountable. Built on a clear internal compass.
Picard taught me that leadership is often the uncomfortable act of naming what is wrong, even when it makes the room tense. Not to win, not to perform virtue, but because the greater good requires someone to draw a line. To walk through life without a code that calls you to honour is dangerous. It leaves you at the mercy of smooth talkers, charmers, and persuasive people with bad incentives. If you know your code, you know how, and why, you are moving through the world.
Janeway: leadership under constraint
My next Star Trek love was Voyager. Never diminishing The Next Generation’s place in my heart, Voyager offered a different leadership lesson: emotion does not disqualify you from leadership, but it can absolutely distort your decision-making if you do not handle it with discipline.
More than a few times, I found myself frustrated with Janeway. Some decisions felt too rooted in emotion and not enough in the kind of internal compass Picard embodies. And yes, she is a Starfleet captain, so the Prime Directive is still the official code. But every captain has an additional code, the one they live by when the handbook cannot save them.
Janeway’s was simple: get as many of my people home as possible, as soon as possible. And underneath it was a harder truth: I made a choice, and now everyone is living inside its consequences, including me.
She made an emotional decision that set the scene for the entire show. But it was also arguably the right one. That decision forced the crew to become more than “mere Starfleet.” It made them confront who they were, what they stood for, and what purpose looks like when the institution is not there to tell you.
Did it cost lives? Yes. Did it save lives? Also yes. Janeway did not lose her humanity. She used all of it, and then she carried what it cost.
Voyager is the clearest lesson I have ever seen in leadership under constraint: no one makes decisions in the perfect world. When the organisation is not there, what do you hold on to? When resources disappear, when do you bend rules and when do you break them? And how do you justify those choices when you are alone with yourself and the mirror?
Policies and procedures are the institution’s scaffolding. Take them away, and leadership becomes personal. Can you live with the decisions you have made and the impact on other people’s lives? For every team member, there is a family living with the consequences of your leadership. Can you live with that?
Though she could have listened to Chakotay a little more… Scorpion, I’m looking at you.
Sisko: leadership when the world will not stay clean
And then there’s Deep Space Nine. Sisko is the captain Trek gives us when it stops pretending that leadership happens in clean rooms.
He arrives as a widowed father, carrying grief, sent to what looks like a forgotten posting. Except it is not forgotten. It becomes a geopolitical choke point, a cultural crossroads, the edge of a coming war. And to make it even simpler, he is also handed a role he did not ask for: religious icon. What do you do when people need you to be a symbol as well as a commander?
Sisko taught me that leadership is not only about decisions. It is about legitimacy. It is about trust across difference. It is about learning the language of people whose history you did not live, whose faith you do not share, and whose pain you cannot dilute with policy. Picard’s moral clarity is beautiful. Sisko’s moral navigation is braver, because the environment keeps changing and the stakes keep escalating.
What makes him exceptional is that he is an institution-builder. He is not just managing a crew. He is holding together a station, a planet, a fragile peace, and a set of alliances that are always one bad day away from collapse. He has to negotiate, persuade, protect, discipline, and sometimes fight. He cannot lead by principle alone, because principle without power analysis is not ethics. It is optimism.
And then war arrives, and Sisko shows the final lesson: the cost of leadership is not abstract. In “In the Pale Moonlight,” he makes a choice for what the audience can recognise as the greater good, but he pays for it internally. He is not proud. He is not untouched. He has to live with what he did, and with who he had to become to do it. Some decisions are beyond the team’s pay grade, and that loneliness is part of the job. But the question is always the same: will you recognise yourself when this is over?
Sisko is up there with Picard for me because he proves that a code is not only something you cite. It is something you wrestle with, protect, and sometimes repair, in public and in private. He shows that leadership is not clean. But it still has to be accountable.
Picard taught me a code. Sisko taught me what it costs to keep it.
So, what have I learned from decades of Trek?
That a code is not something an organisation hands you. It is something you build, and it should follow you wherever you go. If your ethics change depending on who signs your paycheque, you are not being strategic. You are being led.
Policies and processes exist for a reason. They slow us down, create fairness, and protect people from impulse. But they cannot replace the human element, nor can they make the decision for you. Leadership is using your internal code and your processes together, choosing with clarity, and then living with the cost of your choice. Because at some point, the process ends, and you still have to choose.
That some roles will grow you, and some roles will change you. Sometimes that change is the point. Sometimes it is the warning. Introspection is how you tell the difference and how you keep yourself intact.
And those questions are not always rebellion. Sometimes they are respect. A request for the rationale is often a request for belonging, for coherence, for shared ownership. Too many leaders confuse thoughtfulness for disloyalty.
Without Star Trek, my life would be less colourful. I would look up at the stars with less wonder, less imagination, and less hunger for what might exist beyond the everyday. It may be a television show. That does not mean there is nothing valuable to learn.
Out there, among the stars
Where Words Take Root 
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