War is an unforgiving environment for leaders, as we saw in Black Hawk Down. Add a mission that looks both futile and morally dubious, and it becomes even harder. That’s the situation faced by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) in Steven Spielberg’s epic Saving Private Ryan. Following the brutal D-Day landings,… Read More »Great movie leaders: Captain John Miller
Many organisations have a vision and values, but only in the best does that vision truly galvanise its people and result in better performance. Why? Because often that vision either isn’t compelling enough, or leaders fail to act consistently with the goal they have set out. In Mel Gibson’s stirring though… Read More »Why Braveheart’s clarity of vision can help every leader
Harrison Ford may have headlined 1993’s Oscar-nominated thriller The Fugitive, but it was Tommy Lee Jones who stole the show with his portrayal of grizzled US Marshal Samuel Gerard. Such was his impact that Jones got his own spin-off five years later in US Marshals. Gerard exhibits many impressive leadership… Read More »Great movie leaders: Samuel Gerard, The Fugitive
War is the most unforgiving environment for a leader, with every decision affecting both your own life and that of others. It’s an environment vividly painted in Black Hawk Down, Ridley Scott’s re-telling of the US military’s ill-fated incursion into Mogadishu in 1993. Based on Mark Bowden’s absorbing book, Black… Read More »Leading under pressure: Black Hawk Down
Advisers who can’t be trusted. Threats from more powerful competitors. A divided organisation who have no faith in your ability to lead, and are deeply suspicious of your motives Oh, and potential assassins at every turn. That’s the scenario confronting the new monarch in Elizabeth, Shekhar Kapur’s fascinating film on… Read More »Baptism of fire: how Elizabeth stabilised her nation
Organisations with a strong sense of tradition and history can sometimes close the door to new approaches that might yield better results. In Moneyball, Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) shakes up one such establishment: professional baseball. Dispensing with traditional player scouting techniques, Beane uses statistical measurement of… Read More »Three major league leadership lessons from Moneyball
Humour is a powerful weapon in learning and you can find plenty of it in Chicken Run, the brilliant animated pastiche of World War II escape movies. Our heroine is Ginger, the plucky hen who leads her fellow inmates of Tweedy’s Chicken Farm in an audacious mass breakout to secure their freedom.… Read More »Lead like Ginger: five lessons from Chicken Run
When I first watched Thirteen Days, I was shocked how close the Cuban Missile Crisis brought us to armageddon. I’m old enough to remember the end of the Cold War, but the hair’s breadth from conflict that the film portrays is eye opening. The film dramatises the traumatic period in 1962… Read More »Top five leadership movies: Thirteen Days