🎬 What Can Materialists Teach Us About Leadership?

When expectations lead, authenticity disappears.

When you fall in love with metrics, not people

🚨 SPOILER ALERT!

Materialists is not just a film about relationships or dating culture.
It’s a mirror held up to a society obsessed with standards, entitlement, and external validation.

At its core, the film explores a dangerous idea that quietly governs modern leadership and relationships:

“I deserve…”

And how that belief — when disconnected from self-awareness — slowly destroys everything it touches.

💭 “I Deserve” — The Silent Engine of Disconnection

“I deserve more.”
“I deserve better.”
“I deserve someone taller, richer, smarter, more impressive.”

On the surface, this sounds like self-respect.
In reality, it often masks something else: disconnection from self-worth.

In Materialists, characters don’t fall in love with people.
They fall in love with attributes:

• height

• status

• lifestyle

• image

• idea

They measure, compare, optimize — and in doing so, they lose something essential:
humanity.

Leadership collapses the same way when people become KPIs instead of humans.

📏 When Size, Status, and Metrics Replace Humanity

One of the most striking metaphors in the film is how physical traits — like height — become symbolic measures of worth.

As if:

• taller = safer

• richer = more lovable

• more impressive = more deserving

But people are not dimensions. And leaders are not résumés.

When worth depends on comparison, nobody wins:

• Those who “have it” fear losing it

• Those who don’t feel never enough

This is fear-based leadership in disguise:

• Fear of not measuring up.

• Fear of being invisible.

• Fear of being left aside, alone.

• Fear of being rejected for who you are.

🪞 Expectations Don’t Elevate — They Replace You

The real tragedy in Materialists isn’t rejection.
It’s self-abandonment.

Characters slowly stop being themselves to fit expectations:

• saying what’s expected

• wanting what looks right

• choosing what appears optimal

They trade authenticity for approval.

At LeaderNess, we see this constantly:

Leaders who shape themselves into what they think the others want — and then they feel empty.

Expectations don’t help you become more.
They help you become someone else.

💡 The LeaderNess Lens — From Entitlement to Inner Worth

Materialists exposes a key leadership illusion:

🔹 Find

Expectation-driven lives are rooted in fear:
– fear of not being enough
– fear of being chosen last
– fear of being seen as ordinary

🔹 Feed

The system feeds comparison, entitlement, and constant evaluation.

🔹 Fuel

This fuels disconnection:
– from self
– from others
– from real intimacy and trust

True leadership begins when worth becomes non-negotiable.

Someone’s value cannot depend on how tall they are.
Or how impressive they look.
Or how well they match an idea.

✨ Final Reflection

Materialists reminds us of a simple, uncomfortable truth:

You cannot build love, leadership, or life on expectations alone.

Expectations reduce people to objects.
Metrics.
Ideas.

But leadership — and love — require presence.
Curiosity.
Humanity.

The moment you stop asking “What do I deserve?” and start asking “Who am I when I’m not performing?” everything changes.

Because people don’t need to be measured.
They need to be seen.