Leadership goes to the movies

Expert Warren Bennis on leadership lessons from the set and the screen.

5 Seconds

00:00

Leadership sage Warren Bennis has studied everyone from military generals to CEOs and political officials. And, being based down the road from Hollywood at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, he has also taken a special interest in studying the leadership of directors, interviewing filmmakers and television directors such as Sydney Pollack and Norman Lear over the years. “If one wants to learn about leadership, watch and observe directors,” Bennis told On Leadership. What follows are thoughts from one of the leadership field's biggest stars on the lessons he has taken from directors, movies and filmmaking.

Bret Hartman / For The Washington Post

In the closing scene [of "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930)], the hero, played by Lew Ayres, steps out of the trench to observe a butterfly and is shot dead. What still haunts me about that film is how soldiers’ lives are endangered by incompetent and uncaring leaders. It changed Lew Ayres’ life, too. In World War II, at great personal and professional risk, he became a conscientious objector. The film had an equally powerful but different impact on me. In 1943, two weeks before I was 18, I enlisted in the Army. Twenty months later, I was leading an infantry platoon in Germany. And since the end of World War II, I’ve devoted a good portion of my life to the study of leaders and how leadership can endanger or empower our lives.

File photo

“The King’s Speech” (2010) was a marvelous film about leadership in that it wasn’t about a person who went after a job, but who inherited it. It was a brilliant film because it showed this uncertain person learning to become a leader and to deliver a great speech -- a role we rarely see. All the stuff we have on leadership, it rarely shows the longitudinal, the person who inherits the throne and then has to learn to occupy it.

Laurie Sparham / AP

Steven Spielberg is a master of technology. He knows how to use special effects, and he’s a genius at that part of movies -- he’s changed the way movies are made. But the second thing he really has is a beautiful eye for casting. That’s what leaders do all the time. They have to hire people and fire people. What better way for learning those skills than as a director, who has to cast people for a precise role? It takes intuition, that sense of knowing the qualities of other people. Much of a director’s genius, including Spielberg’s, has to do with choosing the right people. He also knows a good idea when he sees one. Think of the economic cost and expense of doing a film. You’re making a multimillion-dollar investment. You’ve got to be pretty sure.

Paul Hackett / Reuters

“The Candidate” (1972) is all about Robert Redford running for office, a little reluctantly, but he gins himself up and gets elected. In the last scene, he’s in his dressing room preparing to go on TV to accept the nomination. He’s been trained by his campaign manager how to respond. He’s putting makeup on and the crowd -- the press -- is knocking at the door. As he sees them, he turns and says, “Now what do I do?” The only way you can really get what leadership is is by the experience of actually leading people. In a way, “The Candidate” is all about becoming a leader. You cannot actually do it vicariously.

Jim Burke, the former CEO of Johnson & Johnson who overcame the Tylenol crisis in the ‘80s, prompted my interest in movie and TV directors. He once asked who I thought was the most powerful leader in the United States. I served up several plausible candidates, including Paul Volker, then chairman of the Federal Reserve. He kept waving off my suggestions until I said, “OK, Jim, who?” “Norman Lear,” he replied. He was right. Consider the number of homes, the millions of families who Archie Bunker or “The Jeffersons” influenced. Jim’s point was that Lear’s shows were altering people’s behavior -- he had characters buckle their seat belts, for instance, and viewers did it. Leadership can be indirect, creating exemplars that influence others.

Jonathan Alcorn

There are two documentaries we show in our class: “Inside Job” (2010) by Charles Ferguson and the Errol Morris documentary “The Fog of War” (2003). They’re both about people not speaking truth to power. In the case of both “Inside Job” and “Fog of War,” someone who doesn’t lead the organization but is in a position of making a difference did not speak truth to power. Both films get at the tragedy of many bureaucracies.

Claire Folger

Another great film about bureaucracies is “Ikiru” (1952) by Akira Kurosawa. It’s about a little guy in a big bureaucracy who keeps trying to get the city he’s living in not to destroy a park. ... It’s a heart-breaking film. He finally gets the city council to approve [of not destroying the park], and it ends with him swinging in this little park in this large city. It’s about the problem of changing large bureaucracies. He is not himself a direct leader, but an indirect one.

I once asked Robert Zemeckis what his favorite film was. Without a beat of hesitation, he said “Forrest Gump.” Why, I asked him? “I guess it’s because we were all making the same movie. Everybody -- the actors, the producers, the writers, the sound people, the costumers, the caterers for goodness sakes, the gaffers, the grips, the best boys, the makeup people” were all on the same page. I’ve never heard that point so brilliantly made. Yes, it does take a village -- more than that, a village that is aligned, that is collaborating to create a great movie, a great product, a great nation. Filmmaking is collaborative almost by definition. But collaboration grows more important everyday in all institutions where creative individuals work together. It’s not just Hollywood. Whether the task is building a global business or discovering the mysteries of the human brain, one person can’t hope to accomplish it alone.

Phil Caruso, Paramount Pictures / ABC

Francis Ford Coppola once compared filmmaking to opening a hotel. He should know. He’s just finished building his fifth hotel which, according to press reports, has been in production for six years, longer than it took to make “Apocalypse Now.” “In a movie, the details are the things an audience will notice,” Coppola once told the Financial Times. “In a hotel, it’s everything the guests experience.” Leaders who respect their customers or viewers -- who pay attention to, look at and listen to everything they experience -- are focused on details, and tend to get them right.

Natacha Pisarenko / AP

Sydney Pollack was talking to me a long time ago about his movie “The Way We Were” (1973). There’s a scene where Barbara Streisand is supposed to run out of a classroom and start sobbing, and she couldn’t get the tears out. Pollack told me, “I knew there was juice going on in her, and she was just too tense to let it come out. She had built it up in her mind, and something touched her when I put my arms around her. I just was so convinced that she could cry, because I had seen so much emotion in her work. I don’t know where the impulse came from to hug her.” Directors are kind of midwives to feelings. He had so much trust with the actors that they found they could do things they didn’t previously think they were capable of doing.

Mark Garten

In “12 Angry Men,” (1957) director Sidney Lumet shows a group of strangers meeting -- and meeting and meeting and meeting -- as a jury. It shows how leadership emerges out of a group of strangers. They don’t know one another. No one was designated or crowned. That’s what happens an awful lot of the time. You’re not given the status -- you emerge as a leader. A jury is quite different from a huge organization. There is no hierarchy, just a bunch of people having to make a life-and-death decision.

/ File photo

“I’m concerned about everybody working together.” That’s Martin Scorsese’s response to a reporter who asked what he feels the first day on a set. The quintessential auteur, the dictatorial avatar of filmmaking, Scorsese has successfully morphed into a team leader. I would guess that his experience in the movie business led to the profound realization that it’s impossible to lead without the full inclusion, initiatives and cooperation of his partners and followers. That’s good advice for any leader. And for Scorsese, probably good enough to win another Oscar.

Karen Quincy Loberg / AP

Featured Photo Galleries

Homeowner David Firth tries to beat back a brush fire heading towards his home at Bettas Road and Low Drive as wildfire burns Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012 in Cle Elum, Wash. The fire jumped the line they were trying to make but still stands after being sprayed with water trucks and further efforts to beat it back with the help of several neighbors volunteering. (AP Photo/The Seattle Times, Bettina Hansen) SEATTLE OUT, USA TODAY OUT, MAGAZINES OUT, TELEVISION OUT, NO SALES . MANDATORY CREDIT TO: BETTINA HANSEN/THE SEATTLE TIMES.

Residents evacuate as wildfires rage through the West

This year’s wildfires are more numerous and have gotten bigger than last year’s, an official says.

LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 16: Protesters gather outside the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks is staying on August 16, 2012 in London, England. Mr Assange has been living inside Ecuador's London embassy since June 19, 2012 after requesting political asylum whilst facing extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Julian Assange granted political asylum by Ecuador

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was granted asylum on Thursday by Ecuador, raising the possibility of a diplomatic showdown between British...

Chase Culp of Houston checks his clown makeup before the performance of Circus Smirkus on Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012 in Montpelier, Vt. Circus Smirkus, based in Greensboro, Vt., is an award-winning international youth circus founded to promote the skills, culture and traditions of the traveling circus.(AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

India Independence Day, Syrian air strikes, Western wildfires, plastination and more in the day in photos

News and feature images from around the world.

Cast member Charisma Carpenter poses at the premiere of 'The Expendables 2' at the Grauman's Chinese theatre in Hollywood, California August 15, 2012. The movie opens in the U.S. on August 17. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENTERTAINMENT)

Eye on entertainment

Charisma Carpenter, Chuck Norris, Lionel Richie, Joe Jonas, Nelly, Alice Cooper and other celebrities.

US President Barack Obama drinks a Guinness beer at The Dubliner pub on March 17, 2012 in Washington. Obama went to the bar to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. AFP PHOTO/Brendan SMIALOWSKI (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Hoppy days are here again

President Obama is making clear his love for beer on the campaign trail as he attempts to ferment a coalition of the swilling.

Scanned from Post archive. Washington Senators baseball players Goose Goslin, Manush, Kukel. 9/21/1933. No other info. TWP Photo.

The last time Washington was this good . . .

The Nationals have had the best record in baseball in August, starting to erase memories hardened by decades of mediocrity. Here are clues to...

Montreal Washington, of Kansas City, pets the dog she adopted, Friday, Aug. 10, during 'Tackle Pet Homelessness' at the Kansas City animal shelter in Kansas City, Mo.. Washington plans on naming the pit bull, Alexandra. The shelter is at capacity and is offering a $25 adoption special for all dogs 25 pounds or more. For the month of August, all cats are 'name your own price' and kitten adoptions are $50. (AP Photo/The Kansas City Star, Allison Long)

Homeless and adopted dogs, sand kittens, snow leopards and more in animal views.

Amazing creatures from around the world.

LEWISBURG, WV - AUGUST 11: ( EDITORS NOTE: Image was created using the iPhone 4s with Snapseed's vintage filter) Two young boys sip a drink at the West Virginia State fair on August 11, 2012 in Lewisburg, West Virginia. People from across the region travel to the fair, which is celebrating its 88th year, and hosts various events including equestrian and livestock demonstrations along with a full compliment of carnival rides. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

iPhone snapshots at the West Virginia State Fair

An iPhone captures the fun at the West Virginia State Fair, in its 88th year. All images were created using the Snapseed photo-editing app&rsquo...

Back to Previous Gallery

Discussion Policy | FAQ | About Discussions

Comments

Add your comment

Read what others are saying About Badges

SuperFan Badge

SuperFan badge holders consistently post smart, timely comments about Washington area sports and teams.

More about badges | Request a badge

Culture Connoisseur Badge

Culture Connoisseurs consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on the arts, lifestyle and entertainment.

More about badges | Request a badge

Fact Checker Badge

Fact Checkers contribute questions, information and facts to The Fact Checker.

More about badges | Request a badge

Washingtologist Badge

Washingtologists consistently post thought-provoking, timely comments on events, communities, and trends in the Washington area.

More about badges | Request a badge

Post Writer Badge

This commenter is a Washington Post editor, reporter or producer.

Post Forum Badge

Post Forum members consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on politics, national and international affairs.

More about badges | Request a badge

Weather Watcher Badge

Weather Watchers consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on climates and forecasts.

More about badges | Request a badge

World Watcher Badge

World Watchers consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on international affairs.

More about badges | Request a badge

Post Contributor Badge

This commenter is a Washington Post contributor. Post contributors aren’t staff, but may write articles or columns. In some cases, contributors are sources or experts quoted in a story.

More about badges | Request a badge

Post Recommended

Washington Post reporters or editors recommend this comment or reader post.

You must be logged in to report a comment.

Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.

All comments are posted in the All Comments tab.

More about badges

Get a badge

To pause and restart automatic updates, click "Live" or "Paused". If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in.