A global pop group may seem like an unlikely case study in complexity leadership, but BTS’s Grammy protest shows something leaders often struggle to trust: influence does not come from controlling people’s responses. It comes from living your values so consistently that, when the unexpected happens, people already know how to act.
For years, I have taught leaders how to navigate complexity. One of the central challenges for leaders is to accept that they cannot control outcomes. They can, however, shape the conditions from which constructive responses become more likely. Often, this happens through the everyday choices leaders make: small, repeated actions that teach people what matters before a crisis or disruption arrives.
A few days ago, I watched that theory play out in real time, in a place I did not expect: the relationship between BTS and ARMY (the name BTS fans use for their collective community). What looked at first like a fandom response to an awards controversy became, to me, a vivid example of how culture carries leadership when direct instruction is absent. BTS had not simply prompted a fan reaction; over time, they had helped cultivate a shared culture of meaning, dignity and refusal to be diminished. So when the Grammys controversy arrived, ARMY’s response did not need to be scripted. It emerged from a culture already alive with those values.
The backstory
Recently, the National Recording Academy, which runs the Grammys, introduced a new Asian pop category. The decision was immediately contested. To many observers, it looked less like inclusion and more like a form of containment: a separate space for Asian artists rather than full recognition in the major categories. Associate Professor Jay Song, from the Australian National University, put the concern bluntly when she described the Grammys’ decision to create an “Asian” category as “pathetic and defeatist, and somewhat racist.” ABC News
For BTS fans the announcement landed on already raw ground. Many were still frustrated by the 2021 Grammys, when the show repeatedly teased BTS’s performance throughout the ceremony after the group had already lost its category. As Bryan Rolli wrote in Forbes, viewers complained that the Grammys had “incessantly” hyped the Korean pop septet’s performance, with many joking that the show was holding BTS and their fans hostage.
So when the new category was announced, the old language resurfaced. ARMY began talking again about the “Scammys.”
Then BTS announced that they would not submit their music for Grammy consideration. This was a big deal. BTS had spoken openly for years about their dream of earning a Grammy, and their current album, Arirang, seemed clearly in the running.
BTS explained the decision this way: ‘We hope our music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language,’ and then thanked ARMY for standing beside them.
What emerged
The initial response from ARMY was what you would expect: messages of support for BTS’s decision. But then something more interesting happened. Within twelve hours of BTS’s statement, Aliens — a BTS song that had not been released as a single and was not on the charts — reached number one on iTunes in 78 regions, including the US.
Aliens reflects BTS’s experience of alienation within the Western entertainment industry, their pride as Koreans, and their refusal to be boxed in by industry expectations.
Through thousands of actions and interactions across the community, Aliens emerged as ARMY’s symbolic response to BTS’s decision. Like many others, I read the announcement and then reached for the song. It seemed to hold something of how the moment felt. Then I saw on Reddit that Aliens was rising in the iTunes charts. It felt strangely moving to realise that so many fans across the world had responded in the same way, so I listened a few more times. Soon, Aliens had reached number one across multiple countries.
Across social media, ARMY expressed pride in the way the community had responded.
From a complexity leadership perspective, the important point is that BTS had not directed the response. It emerged.
Although the announcement was significant, ARMY’s response grew out of thousands of shared moments that BTS and ARMY had co-created across the previous thirteen years.
In that time, BTS have not simply built a fanbase; they have nurtured a shared way of making sense of the world.
Culture isn’t created by telling people what is important
Watching this unfold made me think about how leaders shape the conditions in which shared meaning develops.
Across years of shared experience, BTS have sung about identity, belonging, mental health, ambition, kindness, love and self-acceptance. They have spoken at the United Nations about the importance of expressing oneself, and at the White House about anti-Asian hate. They have also spent countless hours on camera sharing ordinary moments of life: exploring new countries, chatting, laughing, playing games, cooking, eating and even tidying up.
Gradually, a coherent way of being in the world became evident: a shared form of meaning-making. So, when something unexpected happened, people did not need to be told what it meant; they knew how to interpret it.
That, I think, is what made ARMY’s response to the Grammy announcement possible.
How Values Create Culture
It seems to me that the thread connecting BTS’s leadership with ARMY’s response was the consistent expression of sincerely held values.
This is where Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) has something important to contribute to complexity leadership.
In ACT, we spend a great deal of time helping leaders clarify what genuinely matters to them, because values shape behaviour.
Only sincerely held values can sustain the kind of behavioural consistency that, gradually, becomes a recognisable pattern.
Anyone can act compassionately for a while. Most of us can use the language of psychological safety in an important meeting or keynote. The real test comes in the everyday interactions of leadership. When we are tired or under pressure, our behaviour drifts. It either reflects what we truly value or becomes shaped by the need to avoid discomfort.
That is why sincerity matters. It makes sustained consistency possible.
If compassion genuinely matters to me, it will naturally find expression in how I listen, how I disagree, how I respond when I am frustrated, how I speak about people when they are not in the room, and in countless other moments that nobody notices individually.
Through repeated everyday moments, people experience those values as a recognisable way of being. That consistency becomes part of the shared culture. From there, coordinated, intelligent behaviour can emerge without anyone needing to prescribe it.
Perhaps this is one pathway by which complexity leadership can be both simpler and more demanding than we usually imagine.
Why this gives me hope
Watching Aliens climb the charts, I realised this was the first time I’d experienced that process from inside a system rather than observing it from the outside.
The feeling that surprised me was pride. Inadvertently, I had become part of a community that had responded to a principled act with another small, symbolic act that felt deeply aligned with a culture formed through years of shared experience.
This is what the BTS example makes tangible: Leaders cannot prescribe or predict every response, but they can cultivate the values, relationships and conditions that help people to make coherent decisions when no instruction exists.
What if the heart of complexity leadership is living your values sincerely and consistently enough that, when the unexpected happens, people already know how to respond?
Looking back, the remarkable thing was not simply that Aliens reached number one. The remarkable thing was that millions of people, spread across countries and platforms, independently recognised it as the right song.
There was no need for a coordinated campaign, or for BTS to tell ARMY how to respond. The judgement had already been distributed through the culture BTS and ARMY had built together across thirteen years of shared experience.
Maybe this is what complexity leadership asks of us: to make our values visible in the small, ordinary moments, so that when disruption comes, people have something to orient by.
For someone who spends her life helping leaders work in complexity, that felt less like fan behaviour and more like a leadership masterclass from ‘seven normal boys from Korea’
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