Why modern CEOs need to think more like film producers
There is always a moment on every film set where the atmosphere completely changes before anyone says a word. The light shifts, actors lose confidence, crew members seem frantic. Everyone is checking each other’s reactions before making the slightest changes.
Nothing has collapsed yet, but everyone can start to feel pressure moving through the room. Then, someone comes to steady the air. That someone is the producer.
This isn’t because they hold the greatest authority on set, it’s because they understand something deeper about leadership under intense pressure. People respond emotionally before they respond logically.
The producer’s job is not simply to manage logistics, budgets and schedules. Their real responsibility is to regulate momentum and reshape energy before tensions kill the potential of the set. I explore this in my new book Yes Yes Yes: The Playbook for Persuasion, where I dive into my years as a producer on cult Aussie hits like Fat Pizza and Cedar Boys.
People respond emotionally before they respond logically.
My time toggling between the entertainment and corporate world showed me that leadership in business was often treated as a solely structural exercise. You set the strategy, deliver the plan, drive execution and maintain authority. But the emotional conditions surrounding modern leadership have drastically changed.
Teams are more fragmented than ever before. Attention is more divided and trust is more fragile than at any point in recent corporate history. Employees, customers and stakeholders now move through environments saturated with uncertainty and emotional fatigue.
In that atmosphere, traditional command-and-control leadership begins to lose effectiveness surprisingly quickly. People need coherence. This is why more CEOs need to think like film producers.
Emotional fragmentation in the workplace
Producing a film is one of the clearest studies in persuasion under pressure – this is because uncertainty is built into the process itself. In filmmaking, budgets shift unexpectedly with timelines collapsing and creative disagreements emerging by surprise.
Every day requires hundreds of simultaneous emotional calibrations happening in real time. This is often alongside enormous financial and reputational pressure. Despite the instability, the producer’s role remains consistent: to keep the room emotionally functional and preserve the vision.
The best producers understand that emotion spreads faster than instruction ever will. Anxiety has the power to alter tone, pacing and decision-making before a problem is acknowledged. Conversely, one grounded presence can reorganize the emotional rhythm of the room just as quickly.
On Fat Pizza, I learnt this lesson in a completely different kind of chaos. What began as off-season filler television for SBS unexpectedly exploded into a cultural phenomenon while we were living it.
One minute you are making a scrappy comedy with modest expectations. The next, crowds are gathering in the street while you are filming, fans are chasing autographs between takes and cast members who had ordinary day jobs months earlier are suddenly becoming cultural icons.
Success can destabilize teams just as quickly as failure can if leadership cannot regulate emotional momentum.
Success creates its own instability. Expectations rise. Egos shift. Pressure intensifies because everyone suddenly realizes they are no longer simply making a show, they are standing inside something with genuine cultural momentum.
That changes the emotional chemistry of a set fast. As a producer, your role becomes less about managing logistics and far more about managing momentum. Keeping people grounded while the noise gets louder. Protecting the work from hype, distraction and emotional overreaction.
Fast-growth businesses experience the same thing. Success can destabilize teams just as quickly as failure can if leadership cannot regulate emotional momentum. Modern CEOs are forced to operate under similar conditions.
Most organizations today are not suffering from the lack of information, if anything they are overwhelmed by it. What many workplaces are struggling with is emotional fragmentation.
Teams are exhausted by constant change and are increasingly sceptical of leadership language that feels over-polished and detached from reality. In this environment, leadership is less about controlling outcomes and more about regulating emotional momentum.
A CEO enters a room with urgency and sentences shorten, creativity narrows and people become cautious rather than collaborative. Another leader enters a different room to the exact same situation but applies calm timing, measured pacing and emotional clarity. The problem suddenly feels manageable.
How atmosphere influences change
External facts don’t make change, the atmosphere surrounding them does. Film producers understand instinctively that atmosphere is never accidental. It is shaped through rhythm, pacing and emotional control. They know when to accelerate it and when to soften it.
Increasingly, this is also how leadership in business is being judged. The modern employee now evaluates leaders emotionally as much as strategically. They read confidence through tone and presence carefully, even more than they read numbers. Customers respond less to polished messaging and more to emotional congruence.
Modern audiences are highly sensitive to anything that feels manufactured or disconnected from reality. Stakeholders and investors are the same.
Film producers understand this because their audiences have always been emotionally literate. A film can be technically flawless but classified as a failure if the emotional rhythm is lacking. The audience disconnects the moment they feel an inkling of manipulation without sincerity behind it.
Modern audiences are highly sensitive to anything that feels manufactured or disconnected from reality.
People forgive imperfection remarkably quickly. Emotional dishonesty is much harder to recover from. This is why leaders with imperfect communication styles will inspire enormous loyalty whilst leaders who only focus on messaging struggle to create belief. One feels human, the other feels fake. I saw the same principle on Cedar Boys, but in a very different way.
When you are producing a feature film with recognized talent, the emotional ecosystem becomes far more complex. Actors bring vulnerability. Directors bring creative conviction. Agents protect their clients. Publicists think about optics. Financiers watch timelines and outcomes. Everyone enters the room carrying different pressures, agendas and sensitivities.
If emotional trust breaks down, performance narrows immediately. People become cautious. Conversations become political. Creativity becomes defensive instead of expansive.
That same pattern exists inside executive teams. Innovation rarely disappears because people lack capability. It disappears because the emotional environment makes honest contribution feel risky. Great producers learn quickly that psychological safety is not a cultural luxury. It is often the difference between a breakthrough performance and a room full of self-protection.
Great producers know that when pressure rises, people stop responding to direction and adopt emotional steadiness instead. They look for a rhythm which feels trustworthy enough for them to organize themselves around. Sometimes leadership in these moments has very little to do with instruction and more to do with slowing the pace of the room and reducing emotional noise.
Why emotional timing matters
Some of the strongest leaders I have encountered rarely dominate rooms through force or visibility. Instead, they shape emotional conditions subtly and consistently. They can simplify complexity without oversimplifying reality. They understand when tension needed releasing and when urgency needed sharpening. These leaders recognize that rushed communication creates anxiety rather than clarity.
The film set teaches this brutally fast. This is because pressure exposes emotional inconsistencies immediately. Creativity, a crucial element on a film set, crumbles under emotional chaos. When this happens, trust weakens and leadership energy becomes erratic. I have also learnt this lesson through endurance.
My current feature film Boxing Day, centred on heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, is finally tracking toward production in 2027 after more than 15 years of development. It has survived rewrites, financing shifts, false starts, changing market conditions and six Australian Prime Ministers.
Long-term leadership is not simply about driving hard when conditions are good. It is about sustaining belief through ambiguity. That is where many leaders fail. Teams do not lose confidence because uncertainty exists. They lose confidence when leadership makes uncertainty feel chaotic rather than navigable. That, too, is a producer skill.
Long-term leadership is not simply about driving hard when conditions are good. It is about sustaining belief through ambiguity.
Momentum completely disappears when people feel psychologically unsafe. Producers have quickly learnt that maintaining emotional coherence is not a soft skill adjacent to performance. Modern organizations are increasingly discovering the same truth.
The best CEOs today are often not the loudest, nor the most performative or the most polished individuals in the room. They are the individuals most capable of withstanding under immense pressure. Their authority comes less from control and more from emotional stability.
This extends to a customer perspective too. Audiences no longer separate corporate identity from emotional identity. Brands are interpreted psychologically. People trust signals more than slogans.
The era of corporate messaging is fading because audiences have become too emotionally sophisticated for it. A simple, imperfect moment of honesty can win the hearts of any audience, creating credibility because it feels emotionally aligned.
Cinema has always depended on emotional coherence. The audience doesn’t need nor want perfection. Something human, raw and authentic will do the trick. Leadership increasingly works in the same way.
The CEO needs to do more than manage operations and strategy; they need to focus on shaping emotional momentum across fragmented environments. They must decide if uncertainty becomes fragmentation or focus. It’s no longer simply management, it’s production.