Fiction is there to bring truth to reality.  Looking anew at issues through the gauze of another person’s imagination paradoxically brings our own life into focus.  Apparently.

With that in mind I’ve been musing about what the tale of those everyday superheroes told in The Avengers (or the slickly named for the UK – ‘Marvel’s Avengers Assemble’) can mean for the audience of this blog.

It’s probably against health and safety rules to urge you to experiment with gamma radiation, or build an armoured exoskeleton, so I reckon that Teamwork is the safest bet.

All teams are a rag-tag bag of talents, ego’s and eccentricities, and it’s how these individuals come together that counts (as Henley Business School’s own Meredith Belbin has described so accessibly) .

In the Avengers we have someone with tactical nous and a brave heart (Captain America), a brilliant engineer with a suit that can fly (Iron Man), a master spy with an understanding of the human mind (Black Widow), a top notch archer/assassin (Hawkeye), an ace scientist with the ability to get very destructive (Bruce Banner/Hulk), and, as if that’s not enough, a God who can harness the elements and throw a big hammer (Thor), all brought together by an arch-manipulator and strategist (Nick Fury).

As special as each of these characters are, they couldn’t defeat their enemy alone.  Indeed, without the willingness to work selflessly together towards a common goal, all of them together would still fail.

So it’s worthwhile thinking about the attributes you bring to a team – when you’re in an interview though, and you’re asked the role you tend to take in a team, it’s probably better to say ‘Monitor Evaluator’ than ‘Iron Man’.