Margareta Pagano on why businessmen should watch Robert Zemeckis’ latest film
Chief executives under pressure in these gruelling times should sneak out, or stay in, to watch Beowulf, the 2007 film starring Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie that has just been released on DVD. They could learn what it is to be a really great hero — going to battle only if you are prepared to die. That’s the lesson which businessmen should take from watching the movie, says Mike Cook, an organisational psychologist who has coached scores of executives at Whitehead Mann, the leadership consultancy.
So many businessmen or women fail because they lack the humility to admit they got things wrong, Cook says. ‘It is too easy to lose all touch with reality when the world is praising their success; they take themselves far too seriously. Vanity destroys them. It’s happening today, just as it did in the last crash, after the internet bubble, when too many people started believing their own mythology.’
Our most successful leaders share Beowulf’s attitude to risk. But almost as important, they are brave enough to walk away from a situation and not to be concerned by the loss of face, says Cook. The failures are the ones who needed to take the ‘heroic’ course of action but didn’t face up to the risks they were taking and had to walk — recent casualties of the corporate world such as Stan O’Neal of Merrill Lynch, Chuck Prince of Citigroup and Adam Applegarth at Northern Rock all come to mind.
Can people learn, though, to be better leaders — or are they born? Philippe Truffert, who runs the Carpe Diem coaching business, says most of the people who come to him do so because they want to learn to be better.
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