“Old models of leadership are colliding with new realities,” says Dr. Klay Dyer (above), associate chair of NAIT’s Bachelor of Technology in Technology Management. “Something’s going to give and it sure isn’t going to be the new reality.”

Which means leadership may be due for an overhaul. While technology develops at an ever increasing pace, globalization continues despite the shift and swing of economics, and as the Internet asserts itself as the dominant vehicle of culture, Klay isn’t sure today’s leaders, by and large, are keeping pace.  

“These things aren’t going away, so leadership had better start to evolve, or industry and society are going to be rudderless time at a time when being rudderless is particularly dangerous.”

That was the kernel of his presentation at the NAIT Students’ Association’s inaugural Leadership Summit, which brought a variety of speakers – including a “mentalist,” a career coach and a veteran soldier – to campus this November.

“‘Greed is good’ and the nine other reasons leaders fail,” told through popular films featuring what Dyer calls “the performance of power,” illustrated the lessons to be taken from missteps by leaders.

More subtly, it was also a call to action for young people to step forward as to become well-rounded, intelligent, sensitive and, in short, modern leaders.

Here is a selection of clips from Dyer’s film picks, each one demonstrating the power and peril of leadership and, therefore, a mistake to be avoided. Watch and learn. – SM

Wall Street
1987

When he works within the law, the leadership of stockbroker Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is effective and innovative: he departs from the status quo, he is compelling, he believes deeply in his ideas and he is skilled at spotting and optimizing opportunity.

But he is also a leader driven only by self-interest. He operates according to the philosophy that “greed is good,” becoming a role model because of it, exemplifying the benefits of leading through arrogance. Ultimately, he proves a victim of his own charisma.

Watch the clip from Wall Street >

Dead Poets Society
1989

A larger-than-life motivator, unorthodox teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) encourages his class at a boys’ prep school to “seize the day:” to question authority and resist conformity. With courageous ideas and manic charisma, Keating inspires extraordinary devotion amongst his followers, and is the kind of leader who changes lives.

He is also the model for bad leadership. He is impatient with organizational politics and does nothing to promote brand loyalty or to facilitate change from within. In the end, his legacy is a student dead from suicide, a pink slip for himself, and a lingering message that the world can be changed by a single person, but not a naive one.

Watch the clip from Dead Poets Society >

The Bridge on the River Kwai
1957

Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guiness, pictured above) is the proud British officer who directs his men – prisoners of the Japanese army in World War II – in the construction of a bridge on the vital Burma-Siam railway. Protocol is paramount for Nicholson, and even in the employ of the enemy he places an emphasis on the primary deliverables of project leadership: efficiency, quality, deadlines, and so on.

The irony of his leadership, of course, is that the best interests of the allied forces – which are in fact plotting to destroy the bridge – are not served by Nicholson’s strict adherence to codes and etiquette of command. He is, instead, helping the enemy improve its strategic supply chain.

Watch the clip from The Bridge on the River Kwai >

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1969

In this classic fight scene, Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) underscores several key leadership strategies. He makes the first move, he definitively removes his rival, and he even manages to expand the boundaries of his gang’s business, in the process, moving its focus from robbing trains to robbing banks.

But he is also a leader, like many in westerns, who is stuck in the past. “Everything is different now,” he laments upon finding his leadership in question. It’s an excuse. He’s unable and unwilling to move his team and his partnership into a future he recognizes as being at odds with the past, either through facilitating collaboration or through the power of his own influence.

In short, he offers no compelling vision of the change that is coming, nor does he embrace its possibilities or make a strong case for others to do the same. As a result, the tragic, final message of the film is that a leader who cannot see the future really doesn’t have a future – (spoiler alert!) Butch and Sundance meet their deaths struggling to rob banks in Bolivia.

Watch the clip from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid >

Jerry Maguire
1996

Any model of sustainable leadership is clearly designed so as to manage a triple bottom line – people, planet, profit – rather than the single bottom line of profit alone.

Initially too focused on the latter, sports agent Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) reaches a point of crisis. After finally recognizing his actions to be in conflict with his conscience, he is forced to reinvent himself and his approach to his work, starting, essentially, from nothing.

To sum up, as any transformational leader comes to understand – and to have his or her followers understand – money alone is not the only issue.

Watch the clip from Jerry Maguire >