Leadership Lesson from The Martian (2015)
Leadership Lesson from The Martian (2015)
Directed by Ridley Scott | Starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Jeff Daniels
The Martian is a 2015 science-fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon as
astronaut Mark Watney, who is mistakenly presumed dead and left behind on Mars after a violent
storm forces his crew to evacuate.
At first glance, the film appears to be a survival story. Watney must produce food, conserve
resources, repair equipment, and solve one technical problem after another. Its deeper leadership
lesson, however, is about communication: how people separated by distance, expertise, authority,
and even national boundaries create enough shared meaning to act together.
Coaching With Clear Intention
Good coaching depends on more than asking thoughtful questions. It requires a conversation in
which both people understand what is being explored, why it matters, and what should happen
next. The CLEAR Communication Model offers coaches and leaders a practical way to create
that understanding.
The Game Between the Signs
Baseball appears to pause between pitches. In reality, those pauses are filled with
communication.
The catcher lowers a hand between their knees. The pitcher nods, shakes their head, or steps off
the rubber. An infielder moves two steps toward second base. A coach touches an arm. A runner
extends a lead. The umpire settles into position behind the plate.
No words have been exchanged, yet nearly everyone has communicated something.
Baseball is often described through its visible actions: the pitch, the swing, the catch, the throw, and
the run. Underneath those actions is an extensive communication system connecting players,
coaches, umpires, fans, and even opponents. Some messages are intentionally sent. Others are
conveyed through posture, timing, movement, and reaction. Some must be understood immediately.
Others are deliberately concealed.
A baseball game is a conversation conducted largely without sentences.
From the Editor
Our first edition explored Understanding. This edition turns to Communication: how leaders
share ideas, invite perspectives, and coordinate action with others.
Communication is easy to mistake for a message sent. A leader announces a decision, explains
a plan, or asks for input and assumes the exchange is complete. Yet every conversation also
carries signals through timing, tone, body language, and context. People notice who is invited
to speak, which questions receive attention, and whether disagreement is genuinely welcome.
This makes communication a continuing leadership practice. It calls for clear expression,
careful listening, and the willingness to adjust as a conversation unfolds. Even a well-prepared
message can lead somewhere unexpected when others bring their experience and concerns
into the room.
Communication Reframed
The meeting ends with a clear instruction, a firm deadline, and no questions. The leader leaves believing the team is aligned. A week later, the work tells a different story. One person has pursued speed,
another has protected accuracy, and a third has waited for approval that no one realized was necessary.
Everyone heard the same instruction. They did not leave with the same understanding of what it
required.
The familiar response is to communicate again: restate the message, simplify the language, distribute
the slide deck. Sometimes that is exactly what is needed. But repetition cannot resolve a difference that
has never been brought into the conversation. Nor can it reveal a concern that someone decided was
unsafe to express.
The problem may not be that the leader failed to speak clearly. The organization may have treated
speaking clearly as the whole task.
Read the Scene Before You Solve the Crime
A detective arrives at a crime scene after the story has already begun. Something happened there. People acted, decisions were made, and events unfolded in a particular order. Some things may have been moved while others were left untouched. Someone may be telling the truth, someone may be lying, and someone else may be completely sincere and still be wrong about what they saw. The detective wasn’t there, yet the detective is expected to determine what happened. That requires more than finding evidence. It requires developing an understanding of the scene. The temptation, of course, is to begin solving the crime immediately. A broken window suggests an entry point. A missing object suggests a motive. A witness identifies someone who seemed suspicious. One fact connects with another, and almost immediately a possible explanation begins to form. That isn’t necessarily a problem. Detectives need theories because without interpretation, evidence remains a collection of disconnected facts. The danger comes when the detective begins seeing the scene through the theory rather than allowing the scene to shape the theory.
Arrival: Understanding Before Action
Arrival (2016) Directed by Denis Villeneuve | Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker.
Arrival is a 2016 science fiction film directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker. The film follows Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist asked to help the world communicate with mysterious visitors whose language, motives, and meaning are unknown.
At first glance, Arrival appears to be a story about aliens. However, its deeper leadership lesson is about how leaders interpret meaning when the facts are incomplete, emotions are high, and the pressure to act is immediate.
Twelve spacecraft have appeared around the world. No one knows why they are there or what their occupants want. Governments want answers. Militaries prepare for the possibility of conflict. Political leaders face frightened populations. Every hour without an explanation increases the pressure to make a conclusion.
Stay Curious About the Leader You’re Becoming
Leadership development often focuses on becoming better at something: communicating more clearly, making stronger decisions, building trust, managing conflict, or navigating change. We learn models, develop skills, gain experience, and gradually form ideas about what good
leadership looks like. Along the way, however, we can also become increasingly certain about who
we are as leaders.
Experience gives us good reason for some of that confidence. We learn what works. We recognize
situations we have encountered before. We develop instincts that allow us to respond without
having to reconsider every decision from the beginning. But experience can also make it easier to
stop being curious about ourselves. What began as a deliberate leadership choice can eventually
become simply “the way I lead.”
Curiosity offers another way to think about leadership development. It also has an important relationship with understanding. Curiosity keeps understanding open. When we remain curious, we leave room for something we have not yet noticed, considered, or learned. That matters when we are trying to understand an organization or another person, but it matters just as much when the subject we are trying to understand is ourselves.
From the Editor
The pace of change continues to accelerate. Organizations, communities, and societies are
navigating increasing complexity, uncertainty, and competing perspectives. As our world evolves,
leaders are continually called upon to interpret new realities, make difficult decisions, and guide
others through change.
Those demands require more than experience alone. They require an understanding that
continues to evolve.
Leading Reframed is founded on a simple belief: understanding is never complete. Every leader
interprets the world through the lens of current experience, knowledge, and perspective. Those
lenses are valuable, but they are never complete. Leadership requires a continual commitment to
expanding our understanding through intentional reframing.
Reframing is the intentional practice of expanding our understanding by examining familiar ideas from new perspectives. It does not ask us to abandon what we already know. Instead, it invites us to build upon it. The purpose of reframing is not to replace our understanding—it is to expand it, with intention. That simple idea shapes every issue of this journal. Whether exploring communication, influence, planning, coaching, organizational change, first-line leadership, or another leadership challenge, our purpose remains the same: to encourage thoughtful reflection, broaden perspective, and help leaders continually expand their understanding of the realities they are called to influence.