10 Movies Every Leader Should Watch

Thinkers50 Ranked Thinkers Anne Morriss and Frances Frei thoughtfully mix business and pleasure with the leader’s essential movie guide. 

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman once said: “As a leader, you have to constantly shut off your own reel and watch all the movies playing around you.” He meant it as a metaphor for what we call not about you leadership, the kind of leadership where you stay doggedly focused on setting other people up for success. If you look closely at the mindset of the world’s most effective leaders, the central questions that animate them have little to do with their own performance as a leader (how am I doing?) and almost everything to do with the performance of others (how are they doing?).

If we pretend to take Hoffman literally, we also think there’s a lot to be learned about leadership from actual movie-watching. As humans, we learn most effectively through stories, and filmmaking remains one of the great storytelling mediums of the modern age.  

We gave ourselves the challenge of choosing the ten movies that can teach us the most about how to be an effective leader. Note that we’re very aware that this is a ridiculous exercise that reveals our deepest biases as Americans, English speakers, women-of-a-certain-age, and deep believers in sports as a metaphor for leadership and life. And yet. We promise you will be a better leader after you watch these ten films. 

1. Henry V (1989). We are not just pandering to our British hosts when we say that this interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays delivers one of the best leadership pep talks on film when Sir Kenneth Branagh drops the St. Crispin’s Day speech. This is how it’s done, people. Best line: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Runner-up: “Men of few words are the best men.”
2. 9-to-5 (1980). Still one of the great workplace satires, the story spotlights three frustrated, undervalued coworkers who abduct their terrible boss and run the business themselves. While the script is campy and over-the-top, much of its humour holds up disturbingly well almost fifty years later, exploring themes with stubborn relevance such as gender equality and fair access to opportunity. Best line: “I’ve killed the boss. You think they’re not gonna fire me for a thing like that?”
3. Moneyball (2011). A dramatised account of Michael Lewis’s bestselling book about a baseball team’s unconventional approach to recruiting and competing, which sparked an analytics revolution in and beyond the sport. We love this movie as an ode to rigorous, optimistic problem-solving and to what can happen inside organisations when leaders stop relying on tradition and sentimentality. Best line: “When your enemy’s making mistakes, don’t interrupt them.” 
4. Hidden Figures (2016). This is the true story of three Black female mathematicians who helped to remake the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1960s. It’s a stylized, family-friendly version of the dehumanising costs of segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement – and the competitive upside of inclusion. In this case, you get to restore the soul of a nation and inspire the world. Best line: “Here at NASA we all pee the same colour.”  
5. Margin Call (2011). Our one cautionary tale on the list, the movie follows the principal players at a fictionalised investment bank over a 24-hour period at the very beginning of the 2008 financial crisis. Themes include toxic workplaces, damage control, crisis leadership, and dynamics that can blur the boundary between competition and criminality. Best line: “There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat.”
6. Scoop (2024). This is a fictionalised account of how the Newsnight team secured its infamous interview with Prince Andrew. The story explores what it feels like to change creaky institutions – including the BBC – and offers an unsentimental look at high-powered women collaborating in a workplace, something we’ve rarely seen on film. Best line: “Imagine going on a hundred first dates and only getting one second date. That is effectively my job.” Runner-up: “Listen.”
7. The Caine Mutiny (1954). Based on Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the movie is set on a small, unglamorous warship during World War II – and in the military courtroom that has to reckon with the alleged mutiny on board. The story examines the fraught agreement between leaders and followers and challenges the kind of black-and-white thinking that’s on the rise in today’s workplaces. Best line: “Remember this, if you can – there is nothing, nothing more precious than time.” 
8. Remember the Titans (2000). Based loosely on one high school coach’s attempt to integrate an (American) football team in the 1970s, this movie delivers an unsparing look at the cost to teams of division and fear – and the energy, shared purpose, and leadership required to overcome them. Best line: “I don’t care if you like each other or not, but you will respect each other.” Runner-up: “Whatever kind of ambition it took to do what you did around here, this world could use a lot more of it.”
9. Schindler’s List (1993). An epic movie about the impact one leader can have, this is the true story of a flawed German businessman who saved more than a thousand Jewish-Polish refugees during the Holocaust. Director Steven Spielberg makes sure you feel this whole story, including the terror and cost of evil at scale. Still, you walk away feeling like we’re all underestimating ourselves and each other. Best line: “Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don’t.” 
10. The Shawshank Redemption (1994). This is a good time to confess that this is our favourite movie of all time. It follows the story of an innocent man who goes to prison and finds a way to hold onto his dignity and humanity, primarily through a deep friendship with a fellow inmate. In a world where the leadership odds are often against us, this story is a persuasive case for never, never, never, never, never giving up. Best line: “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.”

What did we get wrong? What did we miss? Which movies taught you something important about leadership? Share your ideas and we’ll crowdsource an updated list.