You don’t have to be in a position of authority to show leadership. And one movie that makes this point better than most is The Intern. After a successful career, 70-year-old widower Ben Richards (Robert De Niro) comes out of retirement to become a senior intern at an internet fashion site… Read More »Leading without authority: The Intern
Movies are awash with tales of the underdog. But Friday Night Lights deals with a very different theme: the pressure of expectation. Set in the tiny Texas town of Odessa, that pressure is heaped upon the Permian Panthers High School football team. Here, football is a religion, and the boys are celebrities:… Read More »Setting expectations in Friday Night Lights
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of ‘stuff’ you have to deal with? That you never seem to make the progress you want? Many of us do, and that’s why we fail to achieve what we want to, whether at work or in our personal lives. But… Read More »How Zorro can help you regain control and make progress
Identifying and nurturing talent is integral to great leadership. I’m not talking about the McKinsey ‘war on talent’ approach which suggests that talent is restricted to a select group of individuals for whom all companies must fight tooth and nail to be successful. I’m talking about the latent talent that lies within… Read More »The Blind Side guide to nurturing talent
With the cinematic release of Star Trek Into Darkness, it seems a good time to recall the conversation from JJ Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek which turns the life of the delinquent young James T Kirk. Captain Pike’s short chat with a beaten-up Kirk following a bar brawl, shown below, is… Read More »The leadership conversation that ignites a Star Trek icon
Leading any group can be hard. But imagine that group is riven with gang rivalry and hate, with an ever-present threat of physical violence. And that you’ve woefully underestimated the challenge. That’s the situation facing Erin Gruwell (played by Hilary Swank) in her first teaching job at the newly-integrated Woodrow… Read More »How Erin Gruwell can help you lead a difficult team
Popular culture suggests extroverts are likely to make the best leaders. But according to Susan Cain’s ‘Quiet’, that’s not necessarily so. While extroverts thrive in certain leadership situations, there are many qualities that make introverts great leaders. In fact, introverted leaders can often be found at the top of some… Read More »Four qualities that make introverts great leaders
With Olympic fever gripping the UK, it seems a good time to revisit Miracle, the 2004 film that depicts one of the great Olympic underdog stories. I was only 11 during the 1980 Winter Olympics, but can still clearly recall the elation of the US ice hockey team following their… Read More »Seven Olympic leadership lessons from Miracle