A great new movie addresses two important aspects of leadership: the tendency to doubt ourselves when faced with leadership failures and our propensity to lead without revealing our weakness to someone who can tell us the unvarnished truth and help us grow.
The movie, “The King’s Speech,” by English film director Tom Hopper, is a historical drama about two leaders. One is a terrible stutterer whose most important job is appearing before people and speaking. It is not a job he can quit because he is England’s Prince of York and second in line for the throne. Played by Colin Firth, the prince is clearly a good man who wants to do the right thing for his nation and people but is agonizingly hampered by his inability to speak even in casual conversation without mangling words and delivering embarrassing pauses. The movie opens with a painful scene in which the prince is attempting to give a speech to a crowd of thousands but the words simply will not come out. In the aftermath he doubts, along with many who heard him, that he has what it takes to lead.
The prince’s wife arranges for a visit to the second leader in this movie — a speech therapist named Lionel Logue, played beautifully by Geoffrey Rush. Logue is a confident commoner of humble means from Australia who learned about speech problems by working with shell-shocked soldiers from World War I. He leads others to see and confront their dark inner world. Logue is the sort of gut-based leader who knows what he knows and has a clear sense of his failings.
The first meeting between the two men does not go well. The prince wants to work on his stutter as merely a physical problem, and the therapist does not want to follow royal protocol or molly-coddle the hiding of issues that may be the root cause of the stuttering. The therapist insists on first names and equality. The prince struggles unsuccessfully to let go of his regal walls and aborts the session just as the therapist shows him that his stutter is not innate.
Every leader has weaknesses; the need to see a vision, inspire followers and get things done does not wash away our humanness. Some leaders are poor speakers, ineffective delegators, sloppy time managers, permissive disciplinarians, ethical compromisers, impatient listeners or weak writers. Others simply lack the necessary education, credentials or preparation for the job. We see these weaknesses played out daily on the national leadership stage.
The most effective and truly great leaders are the ones who choose to acknowledge their weaknesses, take ownership of their failings and then turn to someone they can trust for help. Choosing to find someone with whom they can be fully open and honest is often the stretch that many leaders find impossible to make.
Eventually the prince chooses to stop hiding behind his title and lineage, humbles himself and returns to work with the therapist. Hopper crafts this working together into a number of hilarious and heartfelt scenes in which the men develop a close and trusting friendship. But when the prince’s father dies, his brother abdicates the throne just as the Nazis are pushing Europe to war and the prince is suddenly thrust into a leadership role he feels he cannot perform. At the same time the therapist must face failure and be confronted with his greatest weakness.
True leadership, the kind that gets things done and inspires people to gladly follow, is difficult to describe or contain in theories or textbooks. Make it a point to see this movie and let it inspire you to own your weakness and reach out to someone who is not afraid to tell you the truth and help you grow.
