Invincible's Rooke Mistakes: Leadership Lessons from Mark Grayson

Mark Grayson’s first day as a leader looks a lot like being handed the keys to a nuclear submarine and realizing you’ve only ever driven a go-kart. In Season 1, Episode 2 (“Here Goes Nothing”), he’s barely figured out how to stop a mugger when the Flaxans come pouring through a portal, and suddenly he’s expected to coordinate with a whole superhero squad. He’s got the costume, he’s got the pep talk from Dad, but when the punches start flying, it’s obvious he’s about three seconds away from yelling, “Wait, is there a tutorial level I was supposed to play through first?” Watching him stumble through leadership decisions is like watching a rookie Game Master who spent three hours painting goblin minis but forgot that dice were part of the game. You can practically hear the rulebooks sliding off the table as Mark blurts out plans he doesn’t understand, inspires confidence he can’t back up, and charges headfirst into situations that would make even the most heavily armored paladin think twice. And that’s the point: rookie leaders never get to learn in a padded room. They get tossed into a pit with real consequences, whether they’re ready or not. 

Congratulations, You’re in Charge of the Apocalypse Now

The rookie problem with Mark Grayson isn’t that he lacks power. By the end of Season 1, he’s tossing tanks and taking punches from kaiju-sized monsters. His problem is the same one every brand-new leader faces: he wakes up one morning, discovers he’s in charge of human lives, and nobody gave him the instruction manual. The Teen Team looks at him like he’s supposed to have a plan, and Mark looks back at them like a substitute teacher who just realized the lesson plan is written in ancient runes and half of the class is already summoning demons in the back row. 

That second episode, “Here Goes Nothing,” is where this lands hardest. One minute Mark’s still practicing landings on rooftops, the next he’s standing shoulder-to-shoulder with seasoned heroes while an alien army floods through a wormhole. It’s not just combat—it’s command. He has to call shots, direct people older and more experienced than him, and inspire confidence while wearing a costume that makes him look like an off-brand X-Men toy you’d win out of a claw machine. 

Situational Leadership: Or, How to Herd Cats While Blindfolded in a Burning Building

Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership model is the one that says you can’t just pick a leadership style like you’re choosing a favorite flavor of ice cream and then use it forever. You have to adapt based on the readiness of the people you’re leading. If your team is experienced and confident, you step back. If they’re lost and terrified, you step in. It sounds obvious until you realize that rookie leaders like Mark Grayson don’t even know their own readiness level yet, let alone how to assess someone else’s. He’s still figuring out how to fly without breaking his nose on a lamppost, but now he’s supposed to diagnose the the competence and confidence of half a superhero squad in the middle of an alien invasion? Safe to say, it’s probably not happening that way. 

Northouse (2021) lays this out pretty cleanly: Situational Leadership isn’t about the leader’s comfort zone—it’s about what the followers need in that exact moment. That’s the test Mark keeps failing in those early battles. He assumes his teammates are as shaky as he is, so he overexplains. Then, two minutes later, he assumes they’ve got everything handled, so he tries to imitate Omni-Man and barks orders he has no authority to give. The result is the same mess you see in rookie managers everywhere: too much handholding followed by sudden bursts of dictatorship, like switching from kindergarten teacher to medieval warlord in under five minutes. One second you’re patiently explaining finger paints, the next you’re demanding tribute and threatening to burn the village if snack time isn’t observed. 

It’s not incompetence—it’s inexperience. Situational Leadership demands a kind of judgement that only comes from time in the fire, and Mark is still learning which end of the fire extinguisher to point at the flames. He’s trying to read the room while the room is collapsing around him. And to be fair, that’s what every first-time leader faces. You can memorize theory all day, but you don’t really get it until you’re standing there, heart pounding, realizing you have to make a call and there’s no pause button. 

Every Rookie Leader Trips Over Their Own Cape

Yes, I know—Invincible is technically a no-cape universe. Cecil probably has a whole PowerPoint somewhere about why flappy fabric plus jet engine equals obituary. But the metaphor still works, because every rookie leader finds a way to snag themselves on something obvious. For Mark, it’s not literal fabric—it’s his own misplaced confidence, his imitation of Omni-Man’s swagger, his belief that he can skip straight to authority without putting in the miles. The results are the same as an ill-placed cape in a turbine: a loud crunch, sparks everywhere, and everyone staring in horror while pretending they didn’t just get sprayed with the confetti of shredded polyester. 

In “Here Goes Nothing,” he tries to rally the Teen Team with speeches that sound like Omni-Man Lite, all bluster and no foundation. Nobody buys it. Not because Mark is weak, but because the authority he’s trying to use is borrowed, not earned. That’s the rookie trap—you think leadership is about imitating whoever was in charge before you, so you copy their tone, their posture, even, in some cases, their bad habits. In reality, it just makes you look like a kid in Dad’s oversized suit, sleeves dragging across the floor, tripping over themselves while trying to look dignified. 

I’ve seen this exact move outside of comic panels, too. New managers in warehouses suddenly decide to go full drill sergeant on crews who’ve been there ten years longer than they have. Bike shop rookies, promoted from wrenching to managing, try to crack jokes like the old owner, but it comes off as forced, because everyone knows they’re not that guy. And when I was a brand new supervisor at a well-known logistics company, I made the opposite mistake—I backed off too much because I didn’t want to look like a dumbass. Either way, you end up in the same ditch: leading from insecurity instead of awareness. 

The funny thing is, everyone expects rookie leaders to screw up. Nobody’s shocked when the cape gets caught in the revolving door. What kills you isn’t the mistake itself—it’s pretending you meant to do it that way. Mark doesn’t realize this yet, so he doubles down on his blunders like they’re intentional strategy, as if slamming into the same wall twice will finally convince everyone the wall deserved it. Real growth starts the second you admit, “Okay, yeah, that was a mess. Let’s try that again.” Until then, you’re just a rookie with a cape full of scorch marks and a suspiciously turbine-shaped hole in your self-esteem. 

The Discount Omni-Man Problem

Mark’s biggest mistake isn’t charging into fights underprepared—it’s trying to lead like his dad. Which, in this case, is like a brand-new manager deciding to copy the boss’s style, only to realize the boss is an absolute sociopath who solves HR disputes by throwing people through walls. Mark doesn’t just mimic Omni-Man’s tone; he copies his whole presence, from the stoic delivery to the fake-it-till-you-make-it posture. The problem is, authority doesn’t transfer by osmosis. You can’t just wear the Omni-Man scowl and expect the Teen Team to snap to attention. Instead, they look at Mark the way you look at a teenager trying to forge his dad’s signature on a field trip permission slip—technically, the shape is there, but everybody knows this isn’t the real deal and someone’s going to get detention. 

This is where Authentic Leadership theory steps in with a polite cough and a stack of receipts. Bill George’s book Authentic Leadership (2003) and Avolio & Gardner (2005) argue that authentic leaders build trust not by posturing, but by showing up as themselves—consistent, transparent, and rooted in actual values. Mark hasn’t figured that out yet. He’s performing the role of “Superhero Leader” the way a nervous intern performs “Professional Office Guy” by overusing the phrase “per my last email.” It’s exhausting to watch, because the act cracks the second reality pushes back. If you want to see the opposite of this play out, you don’t even have to leave your streaming queue—Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “The Drumhead” is practically a masterclass in Authentic Leadership, with Picard holding steady under pressure, instead of collapsing under the weight of a borrowed act. 

And reality always pushes back. Mark’s “Omni-Man Lite” routine collapses the second Rex Splode starts mouthing off during the Flaxan invasion, loudly questioning why they should take orders from a rookie in a claw-machine costume. Atom Eve doesn’t pile on, but the look she shoots Mark makes it clear she’s not convinced either. Authority evaporates the moment people stop pretending to believe it, and in that scene you can practically hear the balloon pop. 

That’s why the Teen Team never fully buys into his commands at first. It’s not that they hate him—it’s that people can smell the difference between confidence and cosplay. Leaders earn credibility  by showing their actual hand, not by bluffing with borrowed cards. Mark has to learn that the hard way, and it costs him more than a few broken ribs. 

Congratulations, You’ve Leveled Up to Human Punching Bag

Mark doesn’t figure out his own leadership style in a classroom, or even in a quiet heart-to-heart with Dad. He learns it by being repeatedly punched through skyscrapers until he starts connecting the dots. Every humiliating failure, every sarcastic jab from Rex, every alien who turns him into roadkill—those are the tuition fees for Rookie Leadership 101. And the bill is steep. 

This is the crucible piece of leadership theory—the moment when Authentic Leadership and Transformational Leadership start to overlap. Authentic Leadership says you can’t fake your way to trust; you have to show up as yourself. Transformational leadership, as James MacGregor Burns first argued in Leadership (1978) and Bernard Bass later expanded on in Organizational Dynamics (1990), is about inspiring people by showing vision and resilience, not just barking orders. Mark earns both the hard way. He tries to be Omni-Man, fails spectacularly, and slowly realizes the only shot he has is to stop pretending and start fighting as Mark Grayson. That’s when people start to trust him—not because he suddenly gets stronger, but because he finally stops performing and starts leading in his own skin. 

The show is brutal about this lesson, maybe more brutal than most workplaces (unless your boss regularly throws you into orbit). Mark’s entire arc in Season 1 is basically: fail, get wrecked, limp home, try again. But the blood and the bruises serve the same function as a rookie manager’s awkward first staff meeting or catastrophic scheduling error. The embarrassment stings, but it’s what burns away the illusion that you can lead by intimidation. What’s left is raw, imperfect, and honest—and that’s where real leadership begins. 

Your Cape is a Nametag and Everyone Knows It Doesn’t Fit

Rookie leadership in the real world doesn’t come with Flaxan invasions or kaiju-sized lizards, but it feels just as overwhelming when it’s your first week wearing the manager’s badge. One day you’re unloading boxes with the crew, and the next you’re standing in front of them trying to run the morning meeting with a clipboard that feels heavier than a battleaxe. Everyone in the room knows you’ve never done this before. They know because last week you were making the same dumb jokes and complaining about the vending machine with them. Now you’re supposed to be the one writing the schedule and settling disputes about overtime. The cape is metaphorical, but it still doesn’t fit, and everyone can see it dragging on the ground. 

I’ve lived this more than once. One of my first days as a supervisor at that logistics company felt like trying to speedrun leadership on nightmare difficulty. I went from memorizing safety acronyms in training to suddenly being responsible for thirty people loading trucks at four in the morning. They didn’t need me to be Omni-Man. They needed me to know how to answer the ten questions they fired at me before I’d even had coffee. I didn’t. So I overcompensated—sometimes by backing off too much, sometimes by trying to sound more authoritative than I felt. Either way, they saw right through it. 

That’s the universal rookie leader trap: thinking you can outpace inexperience with performance. Employees, like superheroes, don’t buy into your leadership just because you’ve been handed the title. They're gauging whether you’re consistent, whether you’ll own mistakes, whether you’re willing to learn instead of fake expertise. If you fail those tests, you lose credibility faster than a mall Santa caught vaping in the food court. And once people see the beard slip, it’s hard to get them to climb back in your lap and tell you their Christmas list. You can insist the peppermint-scented vape was part of the act, you can double down with a jolly “ho ho ho,” but everybody knows the spell is broken and suddenly you’re just a guy in a red suit explaining vape flavors to mall security. Leadership works the same way—the illusion of authority shatters the instant people realize you’re faking it. 

Rookies: The Universe’s Favorite Punching Bags (and Why We Need Them Anyway)

Rookie leaders are messy, unpredictable, and occasionally disastrous. They trip over obvious problems, overcompensate with bad impressions of their predecessors, and learn most lessons by smashing face-first into the wall. But here’s the thing: without rookies, nothing ever changes. You don’t get new energy, new ideas, or new voices. You just get the same Omni-Man figure barking orders forever until someone remembers how that story ends—with a crater full of bodies.

Mark Grayson matters not because he’s perfect—he’s emphatically not—but because he’s willing to get destroyed in public and still show up the next day. That’s the rookie superpower: resilience. In leadership theory, that resilience is what transforms the rookie stage into the foundation for authentic and transformational leadership. You can’t become the leader people trust without first being the kid in the claw-machine costume getting heckled by Rex Splode. You can’t inspire people if you’ve never had to eat a failure in front of them and keep going. 

The rookie stage feels humiliating, but it’s what forges the kind of leaders who actually grow teams instead of managing them. When rookies survive the bruises, they stop chasing borrowed authority and start leading from who they actually are. That’s when trust takes root, and trust is the only thing that lasts longer than another round of Flaxan invaders. 

So the next time you find yourself in Mark Grayson’s shoes—whether that’s in a superhero brawl, a warehouse at four in the morning, or a bike shop with customers glaring at you for fumbling with the cash register—remember: you’re supposed to be bad at this in the beginning. Your credibility isn’t built by never screwing up. It’s built by taking the punches, learning in front of people, and showing them that you’ll still be there after the smoke clears. Rookie leaders matter because they’re the ones brave enough to keep stepping into fights they’re not ready for—until one day, they finally are, and by then they’re not rookies anymore—they’re the slightly dented, emotionally concussed veterans giving advice like “never wear capes” while pulling vending machine coffee out of their utility belt.

References

Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 315–338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2005.03.001

Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/0090-2616(90)90061-S

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

George, B. (2003). Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory and Practice (9th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.