🎬 What Can Awakenings Teach Us About Leadership?
Because the alternative is unthinkable.
The power of life
🚨 SPOILER ALERT!
In Awakenings (1990), Robin Williams plays Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a neurologist who discovers a treatment that temporarily brings catatonic patients back to life after decades of silence.
Among them is Leonard Lowe, played by Robert De Niro — a man who rediscovers what it means to feel, move, connect, and be alive.
But this film isn’t just about medicine.
It’s about leadership — and what happens when we choose to lead with compassion in a world that worships systems, control, and money.
⚙️ “Things are like that.” — Going Against the System
At the start, Dr. Sayer faces a wall of bureaucracy.
His patients are written off as “hopeless cases.”
The hospital staff, though kind, have adapted to the system’s quiet cruelty.
“Things are like that,” someone tells him.
But that’s the very phrase that stops progress — in healthcare, in business, in leadership, in life.
Because great leaders don’t accept “that’s just the way it is.”
They ask, “But what if it could be different?”
That’s where all transformation begins:
In the decision to see people where others see problems.
💠“Because the alternative is unthinkable.”
When Sayer is asked why he keeps fighting for patients who may never wake up, his answer is simple and profound:
“Because the alternative is unthinkable.”
He doesn’t act because it’s guaranteed to work.
He acts because not trying would betray his humanity.
That’s leadership in its purest form — when conviction outweighs comfort.
🎶 “They just move by music that moves them.”
When the patients begin to wake, there’s a magical moment: they respond to music.
Their bodies remember what the mind forgot.
They move — not by command, but by feeling.
It’s a breathtaking metaphor for what motivates human beings:
We move when something touches us.
That’s the secret of leadership too.
People don’t follow orders — they follow emotion, purpose, and meaning.
If you want people to move, you have to touch what moves them.
💰 “12,000 — we’re talking about money.”
When the hospital’s board refuses to continue funding the treatment, Dr. Sayer is told, “We’re talking about $12,000.”
And he replies, implicitly: We’re talking about lives.
This is where fear-based systems reveal themselves — prioritizing budgets over beings, convenience over conscience.
Effective leadership is not about efficiency.
It’s about values.
Because when you reduce people to numbers, you lose your own humanity in the process.
❤️ “That’s what we had forgotten.”
Near the end, after the treatment’s effects fade, Sayer reflects on what was gained.
He looks at his patients — some awake, some asleep again — and says quietly:
“That’s what we had forgotten.”
Forgotten what?
That being alive is not about productivity, or permanence, or perfection.
It’s about presence.
About being moved. About being seen.
In a world obsessed with performance, Awakenings is a reminder that the true role of leadership is to honor life — not manage it.
đź’ˇ The LeaderNess Model in Action
Dr. Sayer’s story beautifully embodies the LeaderNess model — the shift from fear to force:
🔹 Find – He finds his inner conviction: to serve life, not systems.
🔹 Feed – He nourishes it with curiosity, courage, and compassion.
🔹 Fuel – He leads through action — not for recognition, but because it matters.
His leadership isn’t about results.
It’s about integrity.
It’s about what happens when you choose to see people again.
✨ Final Reflection
Awakenings reminds us that leadership is not about fixing — it’s about awakening.
Awakening empathy.
Awakening connection.
Awakening the courage to act when everyone else accepts the system as it is.
You don’t need to change the world to be a leader.
You just need to remember what makes it worth saving.
Because in the end, leadership is not measured by outcomes —
It’s measured by what we choose to remember.