Running Point Made Me Rethink What a Good Boss Looks Like

Screen & Sound · The Lori Diaries

I started Running Point for Kate Hudson and stayed for a woman trying to run a basketball team while her family tests the limits of her patience. Somewhere between the boardroom arguments and the locker-room drama, I also found myself reconsidering something I used to believe about women at work.

I finished the first season in two days, which is my preferred way of watching a series when I tell myself I'll have “just one more episode” and immediately stop being a person with a bedtime.

Kate Hudson is Isla Gordon, a woman who unexpectedly becomes president of the Los Angeles Waves, a professional basketball team owned by her family. Her older brother Cam has stepped away to enter rehab, her other brothers aren't thrilled about her appointment, and a room full of people seems ready to interpret every mistake as proof that she never belonged there.

So, a relaxing first week at work.

The series is funny, fast, and full of gloriously messy family dynamics. Hudson has the kind of screen presence that makes even a tense meeting entertaining. I also love that Isla is ambitious without being presented as some impossibly polished businesswoman who has never made a questionable decision in her life.

She wants the job. She's good at parts of it. She's still figuring out other parts. Sometimes she's absolutely right, and sometimes I want to reach into the screen and tell her to think for another thirty seconds.

In other words, she seems like a person.

I Used to Think Being Emotional Was a Problem

Here's the part I wasn't expecting to admit in a review of a basketball comedy: for a long time, I had doubts about women in leadership.

Not because I thought women lacked intelligence, ambition, or the ability to make difficult decisions. My thinking was more tangled than that. I'd had experiences, heard stories, and watched situations in which emotions seemed to take over at precisely the wrong moment. Somewhere along the way, I started treating that as a problem women were more likely to have.

Writing that now feels uncomfortable. It should.

Because the more I thought about it, the more I realised I was doing something I'd never appreciate someone doing to me: taking the behaviour of a few people and turning it into a conclusion about an entire gender.

I've met men who let pride make decisions for them. I've seen confidence mistaken for competence. I've also seen women hesitate when they should speak up, and men show extraordinary patience when someone needed it.

None of those qualities comes neatly labelled “male” or “female.”

And over the past few months, I'd already started questioning my old assumption. Watching Isla gave that question a face, a power suit, and a basketball team.

The Decision That Changed How I Saw Isla

What caught my attention wasn't a triumphant speech or a scene in which Isla silences a room full of men with one perfectly delivered comeback.

It was the way she responded when one of her players needed help.

Travis Bugg is talented, unpredictable, and struggling with substance use. In the middle of a high-pressure season, Isla has every reason to think about what his absence might mean for the team. Instead, she takes him to rehab rather than sending him back onto the court.

That decision doesn't make her soft. It means she's willing to recognise that a player's value extends beyond what he can do for the team that evening.

And it isn't a decision without consequences. A leader still has to account for the game, the business, the other players, and the people depending on her.

That's what makes it interesting to me. Isla doesn't choose between caring about a person and doing her job. Caring about the person becomes part of how she does the job.

Empathy doesn't mean avoiding the difficult decision. Sometimes it helps you recognise which difficult decision actually needs to be made.

That applies just as much outside a basketball arena.

A manager can notice that someone is overwhelmed and still address missed deadlines. They can understand why a colleague is struggling without pretending the rest of the team isn't affected. They can be compassionate and clear in the same conversation.

The alternative isn't strength. It's often just refusing to notice what's happening until it becomes a bigger problem.

But Let's Not Give Women All the Empathy and Men All the Logic

I don't want to replace one stereotype with a prettier one.

It would be easy to watch Running Point and conclude that women make better leaders because they're naturally more caring. I don't believe that anymore than I believe women are too emotional to lead.

Empathy isn't an automatic gift handed out at birth. It's something people can practise, ignore, improve, or use badly, regardless of gender. And it isn't much use on its own.

You can understand someone's feelings and still make a terrible decision. You can have good intentions and create chaos. You can be the nicest person in an office and still be completely unprepared to manage it.

Isla has to learn that, too. She's not effective simply because she has a heart. She knows basketball, cares about the people around her, makes calls under pressure, and gradually learns what the job asks of her.

She's also lucky to have Ali, her friend and chief of staff, who helps keep her grounded. I appreciated that detail. I am deeply suspicious of stories in which a great leader does everything alone while everyone else stands nearby looking impressed.

In real workplaces, the best decisions often involve listening to the people who know something you don't.

The Boss Lady Doesn't Have to Become One of the Boys

There's another reason Isla works for me. She doesn't spend the whole season trying to become a copy of the men who ran the team before her.

She wants to be taken seriously, of course. Who wouldn't? But the series is more interesting when she starts making choices based on what she sees rather than what she thinks a powerful person is supposed to look like.

That doesn't mean she should lead with her feelings in every situation. It means she doesn't have to pretend she has none.

I've always found the phrase “boss lady” a little funny. We don't tend to call a man in charge a “boss gentleman.” We just call him the boss. Add a woman, and suddenly we need a special category, preferably with a slogan and a blazer.

I'm all for the blazer. I just think we can ask more interesting questions.

Does she know what she's doing? Does she listen? Can she make an unpopular decision? Does she take responsibility when she's wrong? Do people trust her enough to tell her when something isn't working?

Those questions matter far more to me now than whether someone seems tough enough to fit the traditional picture of a leader.

There's also a real-world connection worth mentioning. Isla's story is loosely inspired by Jeanie Buss, the Los Angeles Lakers executive, who worked on the series as an executive producer. In Netflix's interview about the show, Buss describes trying to make people feel welcome in rooms where she initially doubted she'd win everyone over.

I like that the series draws on a real woman's experience without pretending Isla is a flawless example to follow. She's a fictional character in a comedy. She's allowed to get things wrong.

What I Took Away From a Basketball Show

I'm not going to claim that one Netflix series taught me everything I need to know about leadership. That would be a lot to ask of Kate Hudson, even in an excellent suit.

But it did help me put words to something I've been reconsidering.

I used to think emotions were the thing a leader had to overcome. Now I think the more useful question is whether a leader understands their emotions well enough not to let them make every decision.

Anger can tell you something is wrong. It can't tell you the whole story. Fear might make you pause. It doesn't automatically mean you should stop. Empathy can help you understand what someone needs. It doesn't remove your responsibility to decide what happens next.

None of this is exclusively feminine. None of it is exclusively masculine.

It's human. And I think workplaces become better places when the people running them remember they're dealing with human beings.

So yes, I came to Running Point for Kate Hudson, the family drama, and a little Netflix entertainment. And I got all three.

What I didn't expect was to find myself revisiting an old opinion I'd carried around for years without questioning it nearly enough.

Isla isn't a convincing leader because she's a woman who feels deeply. She's a convincing leader when she uses what she knows, pays attention to people, and accepts that being in charge means making choices she can't please everyone with.

Maybe a good boss isn't the person who feels the least. Maybe it's the person who can care, think clearly, and still make the call.

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Have you watched Running Point? And what do you think matters most in a good leader: empathy, decisiveness, or knowing when each one is needed?

xoxo,

Lori