Leadership in the Movies: The Admirable Crichton and Adaptive/System Leadership
This is part of a series of articles that combine two great passions of mine: leadership and movies. The series explores leadership through the lens of selected movies. Today we are looking at the 1957 British movie The Admirable Crichton (released in the United States as Paradise Lagoon) directed by Lewis Gilbert and featuring Kenneth More as Crichton and Cecil Parker as The Earl of Loam. I always recommend watching the movie before reading the analysis (to avoid spoiling a great picture).
Set at the turn of the twentieth century, the film takes place in two contrasting locations: in a London aristocratic household, a “haughty aristocratic English home with everyone kept in his place”, and an uninhabited island in the South Seas. To escape a minor scandal involving the arrest of Earl Loam’s suffragette daughter, the aristocratic family sets sail on the Earl’s yacht, attended by his loyal butler, Crichton. After being shipwrecked on the island, the rigid social order of the English household is upended. The film traces William Crichton’s transformation from the “perfect servant” to a servant leader and eventual “Governor” of the island, demonstrating his adaptive, systems-based leadership.
Adaptive leadership is defined by Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (2009) as “the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive.” Others define adaptability as “the ability to change (or be changed) to fit new circumstances”. Paul Hersey characterises this as “situational leadership” in The Situational Leader where leaders “adapt their leadership style to meet the demands of their environment.” Adaptability lies at the heart of system leadership.
In The Admirable Crichton, the butler William Crichton exemplifies both adaptive and systems leadership. He demonstrates a remarkable ability to adjust his leadership approach in response to changing circumstances, effectively navigating and reshaping the social and environmental systems he encounters.
William Chricton does eight things in the movie which firmly establish him as a system and adaptive leader.
- He serves the situation.
In London, he is the “perfect servant” who knows his place and maintains strict hierarchy and professionalism. When the order to abandon ship is given, he becomes an outstanding crisis manager, ensuring everyone is safely evacuated from the sinking yacht. When they first arrive on the island, he quickly assumes the role of survival coach, teaching the inept family the basics of survival. He is later appointed the island’s leader and becomes an exemplary servant leader, creating organised structures and routines that serve the good of all. When they are rescued, he switches seamlessly back to being Earl Loam’s butler. At the end of the film, he leaves service altogether and sets out with his bride-to-be to begin a new life as an entrepreneur. In each of these phases and roles, Crichton focuses on the situation and adapts to the circumstances. - He deprogrammes his conditioned behaviour.
When first shipwrecked, the family acts and thinks through conditioned and automated behaviours. They look instinctively to their father, the Earl, for leadership; Crichton is instructed to “locate the nearest town or village, find some transport and bring it back”; they attach no importance to securing the boat, their only means of escape, assuming rescue will come within hours; they order Crichton to save the dinner service rather than practical supplies; and they insist on “going by the book,” attempting to light fires based on things they have read (“I read it somewhere”). Crichton, trained as a servant, quickly deprogrammes himself and faces the new reality. He reconditions himself from waiting for orders to taking initiative and acting instinctively. - He faces the reality of the situation.
Crichton tells it as it is: “We are not in England now. We are on a desolate island, hundreds of miles from anywhere, and if we are not very careful, we are all going to die on it.” He injects realism by leaving the family to fend for themselves briefly, forcing them to confront the seriousness of their situation. He balances this realism with motivation, telling them, “We can survive… with courage and good leadership.” - He breaks with convention to survive.
“Fate,” as Crichton says in the film, “makes its own rules.” He becomes the elected leader, the Earl becomes the Governor’s personal manservant, and the former maid Tweeny becomes the most desirable young woman on the island. The Earl’s early experiments with progressive ideas of social equality are fully realised on the island, where adaptive leadership and survival abilities create a natural hierarchy that shifts from aristocratic to meritocratic. - He adopts a learning mindset.
The admirable Crichton brings functional skills when they are first shipwrecked (swimming, sewing, making fire, cooking, building shelter), but he also displays a learning mindset. “You never know what you can do until you try,” he says. He continuously learns and experiments, eventually organising a remarkably comfortable existence, complete with hot running water, comfortable quarters, a homemade gramophone, and cuckoo clocks. It is this learning mindset (and not positional power) that makes Crichton an adaptive leader. - He maintains the vision.
Crichton keeps the vision of returning home firmly in focus. There is a straightforward procedure for lighting the beacon when a ship is sighted, and the group works daily on building a boat. When he senses complacency, he addresses them collectively, reiterating the importance of returning to civilisation. Being a system and adaptive leader does not mean abandoning vision or goals; it means pursuing what matters most in a flexible, adaptive way. - He serves his followers.
Crichton is the epitome of the servant leader. He does not seek status or authority for himself; instead, he organises life on the island so others may prosper. He consistently places others’ needs above his own and focuses on coaching people to help themselves. This emphasis on service and empowerment aligns closely with Robert Greenleaf’s model of servant leadership. At a celebratory dinner, the others tell him, “Thank you for teaching us happiness,” to which he replies, “If I have been the teacher, you as the pupils can all go to the top of the class.” When a ship is finally sighted after two years, despite being the happiest he has ever been and on the verge of marrying Mary (the Earl’s daughter), he sets aside his personal desires and lights the beacon, knowing it is best for everyone. In a final act of servant leadership, he dons his butler’s uniform and serves drinks to the rescuers, protecting the dignity and reputation of the people he serves. - He is a natural system leader.
In The Dawn of System Leadership (2015), Peter Senge and coauthors define system leadership as “helping people address complex, interconnected problems by engaging multiple stakeholders, fostering collective intelligence, and co-creating solutions across boundaries.” Ultimately, Crichton is a system leader.
The Admirable Crichton offers excellent pointers on how systems and adaptive leadership serve the situation by mobilising people toward collective success. This leadership model, explored in my forthcoming book, is the one best suited to the demands of Work and Industry 4.0, which will require a fundamentally different culture and approach to leadership.
Richard Kelly PhD.