Patience

I have been eagerly anticipating Carol for quite a while: the trailer was engrossing and the crits fully starred. But every now and then a film comes along that seems to attract glorious reviews but leaves me unmoved. Don't get me wrong: this is a good movie with some very fine acting. But it is not a great movie.

I would probably award Oscars for the costumes, makeup and sets: all brilliantly crafted to transport us back into the 1950s. The acting is subtle and textured. But the narrative is tedious, slow and unexciting. Maybe it is all symbolic and that is what lesbian relationships were like in the 1950s (although I doubt it!) And the narrative turning point in the movie was inexplicable. So perhaps I will have to see it again to try and understand what everyone has been raving about. Or maybe not...

Leadership takes patience (something I didn't have it with this movie - although the characters displayed endless amounts of it...) Patience is not just waiting for the sake of it: it is active waiting, waiting for the right moment. Patience requires acute awareness of all the factors that can influence when is the right time to act and when it is not.

Someone said to me the other day that animals (especially those likely to attacked) are never fully relaxed: they are always in a state of active awareness, ready to flee or fight at any given moment. It struck me that leaders are often like this, patiently waiting for the right time to make a decision, take an action. (Although leaders do need to relax sometimes.)

Are you a patient leader?

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This is Blog 135 in my 2014/2015 series of blogs about leadership ideas to be found in the movies of our time. You can read here as why I began doing this (with an update at the end of 2014). Please subscribe to this blog if you want to read more. Thanks. Click the label 'film' to see all the others.