The Real Tragedy of Succession

I just finished watching Succession, and I haven’t quite come back to myself. It’s not unusual to get immersed in a well-written show, to care about the plot or become attached to the characters, but this felt different. I wasn’t simply watching something unfold on a screen. I was thinking about it while making coffee, feeling tense before bed, and wondering how Kendall would recover from a particular humiliation as if he were someone I knew personally. And then I would remember that he isn’t real. None of them are. And yet, they lodged in my psyche as if they were.

The reason, I think, is this: they speak like people I’ve worked with. Not in content, but in cadence. Not in decisions, but in defense mechanisms. I have heard that tone before—the sharp, clipped syllables of someone asserting control, the polished coolness of someone managing perception, the breathless improvisation of someone trying not to fall apart. I have sat across from people who communicated the way Logan, Shiv, Kendall, and the others do. Not with the same stakes, not with the same scripts, but with the same emotional fingerprints.

What Succession gets right, better than almost anything I’ve seen, is not the structure of power, but the shape of communication under pressure. It understands how people shift their voice, their tone, their entire posture when something is at risk—not only power or prestige, but something deeper and more primal. Their sense of self. Their dignity. Their belonging.

There are two things I’ve come to believe quite strongly, and I see them played out in every episode of the show. First, people do not like feeling stupid. They will do almost anything to avoid appearing uninformed, unprepared, or naïve. Second, people long to be seen, heard, and understood. They will often go to great lengths to create that experience, even if it means distorting themselves in the process. These two truths are in constant tension. The fear of exposure and the desire for recognition collide in the way people communicate, especially when they are under scrutiny.

Logan Roy speaks rarely, and when he does, it is meant to end conversations, not open them. His words are tools of finality. He communicates in blunt, declarative statements that leave no room for interpretation. And yet, this is not clarity. This is control. His silence is not the silence of listening, but the silence of power withholding itself. People lean into it, hoping for insight, fearing implication. He never reveals more than he has to, and his restraint is not vulnerability but strategy. He is not interested in being understood, only obeyed.

Shiv, by contrast, speaks fluently, often elegantly, with the language of someone who wants to be seen as emotionally intelligent and intellectually capable. She chooses her words with care, projecting composure and competence. But underneath that fluency is a persistent discomfort. Her sentences often carry a slight hesitation, a reluctance to expose anything real. Her polish becomes a form of evasion. She wants to be taken seriously, but does not fully trust her authority. In moments of pressure, her tone falters, and what emerges is not decisiveness, but defensiveness. Her words retreat into abstraction, and her attempt to manage perception creates distance rather than connection.

Kendall’s voice, more than any other character’s, pulses with longing. He wants so badly to say something true, to matter, to be taken seriously as a leader and as a son. He uses language the way some people use prayer—with desperation, repetition, and a quiet hope that someone is listening. But his signal is erratic. One moment he is channeling visionary conviction, the next he is unraveling under the weight of his own contradictions. He wants to be recognized as good, and strong, and transformative. But he has no settled ground to speak from. His words float above his self-belief, untethered, trying to create the reality he cannot yet inhabit.

Tom, meanwhile, communicates like someone who is always calculating risk. His tone shifts depending on who he is speaking to, and what he needs from them. He flatters, hedges, imitates, and, when cornered, deflects responsibility onto others. What makes him so fascinating to watch is not his cruelty, but his fear. He is terrified of being left behind, of being seen as dispensable. His language is filled with attempts to belong, to protect his position, to be indispensable to those above him. But his need to belong often overwhelms his ability to speak with coherence. His signal is not one of presence but of survival.

Roman is harder to define. His communication is erratic, irreverent, and deeply defensive. He uses humor not only as a shield, but as a form of negotiation. He tests people with his jokes, pushing just far enough to see how they will respond. Underneath his provocations is something deeply human: a wish to be seen for who he is without being punished for it. But he doesn’t believe that’s possible. So he performs a version of himself that is both chaotic and invulnerable. And in doing so, he becomes nearly illegible to those around him.

And then there is Gerri. She is the only character who consistently communicates with clarity, precision, and restraint. Her tone is measured. She speaks when she has something to say, and she says only what is necessary. But even her clarity becomes a form of defense. She reveals nothing she does not have to. Her signal, while consistent, is also carefully limited. She creates safety for others but rarely invites them closer. She is respected, but not known.

What Succession shows us is not simply how people behave in power, but how they communicate in proximity to fear, grief, and longing. These characters are not just performing roles—they are managing wounds. Their voices carry the residue of every unmet need, every unacknowledged failure, every internal contradiction they are trying to outrun.

And this is where I return to those two ideas: the fear of looking foolish and the longing to be understood. So much of our communication lives at that intersection. We want to be seen, but not exposed. We want to express ourselves, but only in ways that do not risk embarrassment. We want connection, but on terms we can control.

Most of the leaders I’ve worked with don’t need more eloquence. They need more congruence. They need the ability to speak from a place of internal alignment, where their tone matches their intention, and where their words carry weight not because they are perfectly crafted, but because they are genuinely theirs.

Succession reminded me that leadership is rarely about the message itself. It is about the state we are in when we deliver it. Our signal, that is the tone, the rhythm, the pauses and the pivots, reveals everything we’re trying to manage. And the more we try to suppress that signal, the louder it becomes.

Perhaps the real tragedy of the Roys is not that they fail to love one another, or to lead with integrity, but that none of them ever learned how to speak from a place that didn’t require armor. Their communication is all strategy. All signal management. Even their most honest moments arrive accidentally, in breakdowns and misfires, never by design.

And yet, I don’t think they’re unusual. I think they’re just exaggerated. Most people I’ve known in positions of power struggle with the same tension. They want to be understood, but not at the cost of credibility. They want to lead with presence, but not if it means softening. They want to speak freely, but only if the room is safe—and in leadership, it rarely is.

What Succession made me think about, more than anything, is how little room we give ourselves to communicate without defense. How early we learn to package, to adjust, to deflect. How many leaders are performing certainty when they’re actually full of doubt. How many smart, capable people are so afraid of sounding stupid that they flatten everything they say until it becomes unrecognizable.

There’s something quietly devastating about that. Because the most compelling voices—the ones we remember, the ones that change how we feel in a room—aren’t always the most polished. They’re the ones that sound like a real person is still somewhere inside.

I don’t think we need to talk more. I think we need to notice how much we’re hiding in the way we already do.

And I think, if we let ourselves listen differently—to others, to ourselves, to what is being said in between the words—we might find something more human than leadership. We might find what’s left when the signal stops performing. We might find what was trying to be spoken all along.