🎬 What Can Practical Magic Teach Us About Leadership?

You don’t become powerful by hiding who you are. You become powerful by trusting others with the truth.

Your authenticity is your destiny

🚨 SPOILER ALERT!

Practical Magic may look like a whimsical story about witches and romance, but at its heart, it’s a deeply human film about fear, self-denial, and the courage to be seen.

It asks a fundamental leadership question:

What happens when we spend our lives hiding who we are, and what changes when we finally stop doing it alone?

Through Sally, Gillian, the aunts, and the final gathering of women, the film becomes a powerful metaphor for authentic leadership and trust.

🌙 Sally (Sandra Bullock): Safety Over Authenticity

Sally grows up believing that love is dangerous.
That being herself comes at a cost.
That authenticity leads to loss.

So she chooses safety.

She suppresses her magic.
She makes herself smaller.
She tries to live a “normal” life, not because it’s true to her, but because it feels less risky.

This is fear-based leadership turned inward:

• choosing control over truth

• conformity over identity

• survival over fulfillment

Sally’s pain doesn’t come from magic.
It comes from denying who she is.

At LeaderNess, we see this constantly:
Leaders who are competent, loved, and exhausted, because they are leading a life that isn’t aligned with their essence.

🔥 Gillian: Authenticity Without Anchoring

Gillian, Sally’s sister, is Sally’s opposite.
She is expressive, impulsive, and unapologetically herself.

She doesn’t hide.
She feels deeply.
She loves fiercely.

But Gillian’s journey also shows us something important:
Authenticity without grounding can become chaos.

She doesn’t fear being herself, she fears being alone.
And that fear pulls her into destructive relationships.

Gillian leads from force, but without support.
And force without connection can burn.

🧓 The Aunts: Trust, Wisdom, and Permission

The aunts represent a different kind of leadership:

• rooted in acceptance

• grounded in experience

• free from shame

They don’t ask Sally and Gillian to be different.
They ask them to be honest.

They model what authentic leadership looks like:
👉 Trusting life
👉 Trusting others
👉 Trusting that truth is safer than fear

They know something essential: Power grows when it’s shared.

🌸 The Final Gathering: When Trust Replaces Fear

The most powerful moment in Practical Magic is not romantic.
It’s collective.

When the women of the town come together at the end, not as judges, but as allies, everything changes.

What was hidden becomes shared.
What was shameful becomes human.
What was feared becomes held.

This is leadership in its purest form:
Community over isolation.
Trust over control.
Connection over fear.

Sally doesn’t become powerful by fighting alone.
She becomes powerful by letting others in.

💡 The LeaderNess Model in Action

Practical Magic beautifully illustrates the LeaderNess journey:

🔹 Find

Fear of being seen.
Fear of loss.
Fear of vulnerability.

🔹 Feed

Authenticity, trust, and shared truth.

🔹 Fuel

Collective support, sisterhood, and courage.

Leadership doesn’t grow in isolation.
It grows in connection.

✨ Final Reflection

Practical Magic reminds us of a timeless truth:

You don’t lose power by trusting others.
You lose power by hiding yourself.

Authenticity is not reckless.
Trust is not weakness.
Community is not optional.

Leadership, like magic, only works when it’s shared.