🎬 What Can “One Battle after Another” Teach Us About Leadership?
When the need to prove yourself becomes a war zone.
The battle of fear
🚨 SPOILER ALERT!
In the gritty narrative of One Battle after Another, we are presented with a haunting paradox: leadership that is undeniably "effective" in terms of movement and action, but utterly bankrupt in terms of purpose. At its core, this is a film about fear, not about forces.
The story centers on three men who, in their own ways, allow their internal states to dictate the external reality of everyone around them.
Sean Penn: The Architect of Chaos
Sean Penn’s character, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, is a masterclass in the fear of irrelevance. His leadership is not driven by a mission, but by a desperate, obsessive need to prove his worth and status within an elite secret society. When a leader feels they have no internal "force," they often try to manufacture external "friction" to feel alive.
Penn’s character doesn't just navigate a conflict; he creates a war zone. For him, the battle is a stage where he can play the hero he doesn't believe he is in the mirror. This is the ultimate trap for high-achieving executives:
The Trap: Confusing activity with impact.
The Reality: If you have to create a crisis just to prove you can solve it, you aren't leading—you’re sabotaging.
DiCaprio: The Erosion of the Inner Compass
Contrasting this is Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Bob Ferguson, who serves as a tragic mirror. He doesn't start with an obsession; he starts with a path as a revolutionary. But under the gravitational pull of Penn’s fear-based world and his own history of substance abuse, he loses his way.
His journey represents the loss of Force. By retreating into a "weed-hazed paranoid limbo" instead of anchoring to his own values, he becomes a ghost of the leader he could have been. He stops deciding and starts surviving, often too disorganized to even remember the passwords needed to contact his allies. When a leader loses their "why," they don't just stall—they drift into the "how" of someone else’s nightmare.
Benicio del Toro: The Anchor of the Inner Compass
If Penn is the chaos and DiCaprio is the drift, Benicio del Toro’s character, Sergio St. Carlos, is the antidote. Sergio is the "soulful counterweight" to the film's violence. As a karate sensei and community leader, he is the only one in the film truly leading from an inner compass.
While others are manufacturing war zones, Sergio is quietly organizing safe houses for immigrants in what he calls a “Latino Harriet Tubman situation”. He shows us that:
Force is Quiet: True strength isn't loud; it's disciplined, patient, and rooted in community.
Integrity is Action: While Bob (DiCaprio) fussing over a dead phone, Sergio is corralling and saving his people.
The Compass Never Breaks: Even when arrested for helping Bob, Sergio remains calm, nonchalantly dancing as he is pulled over. His leadership isn't a performance; it’s an identity.
The LeaderNess Model in Action
Using the Find, Feed, Fuel framework, we can see where the structural collapse and success occur:
Find: Penn’s character "finds" only his insecurities. He mistakes his fear of being "less than" for a drive to be "greater than." In contrast, Sergio finds his force in community protection and moral clarity.
Feed: Penn feeds his ego with conflict. Sergio feeds his leadership through organized care and long-term planning for those he loves.
Fuel: Penn fuels a toxic war zone. Sergio fuels resilience and hope.
Final Reflection
One Battle after Another reminds us that the most dangerous leaders are not the ones who lack talent, but the ones who lack congruence.
Leadership is not about how many battles you win; it’s about why you are fighting them in the first place. If your leadership requires a constant state of war to feel justified, look to Sergio: the real hero is the one whose inner compass points toward unselfish, organized care for others.