An alien taught me everything I know about leadership.
What Project Hail Mary got right about curiosity, clarity, and collaboration.
So my partner and I watched Project Hail Mary this past weekend.
And I could not stop laughing at Rocky.
Rocky is an alien. He communicates through musical tones. Lives in ammonia. Has no concept of human social dynamics. And somehow out-leads most of the managers I know.
Somewhere between laughing and trying not to cry at the end, something shifted. Because Rocky isn’t just funny. He might be the best leadership model I’ve seen in a long time.
Thrown into an impossible situation — different biology, unknown language, literally life or death — he doesn’t spiral. He doesn’t wait for permission or a perfect plan. He just starts.
Here’s what he taught me.
“Bad problem. We fix.”
No ego. No politics. No hedging. Just clarity and forward motion.
We overcomplicate leadership because complexity can feel like competence. We hedge instead of commit. We hold twelve alignment meetings before making a decision. Rocky names what’s true and moves. That directness isn’t bluntness — it’s respect. For the problem and for the people trying to solve it.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Then act.
“What is that? I not know that.”
Rocky says this constantly. About human biology, about physics he hasn’t encountered, about things that confuse him. And every single time, it leads somewhere.
Most leaders I work with are terrified of that sentence. We’ve been rewarded for knowing — in school, in performance reviews, in boardrooms. So we perform certainty even when we don’t have it. Rocky has zero interest in performing certainty. He’s too busy actually figuring things out.
Curiosity isn’t a personality trait. It’s a leadership practice. And it starts with being willing to say out loud: I don’t know this yet.
Ask the question. Even when — especially when — you think you should already know the answer.
“You are good at thinking. I am good at thinking. We think together.”
Rocky doesn’t compete. He doesn’t defer. He collaborates — genuinely, without ego, from a place of real curiosity about what the other person brings.
The best teams I’ve worked with inside organizations don’t succeed because everyone is brilliant. They succeed because people actually let each other be brilliant. Collaboration isn’t additive. When it’s real, it’s exponential.
Know your strengths. Honor someone else’s. Build from there.
“Not possible... or not know how? Is different.”
This one stopped me cold.
Rocky draws a hard line between something being impossible and something being unsolved. He refuses to collapse that distinction — because one closes the door and the other keeps you in the room.
How many times have we called something impossible when what we actually meant was: this is hard, and I’m not sure how, and I’m a little scared? Rocky doesn’t do that. He stays in the room. Every time.
Before you call it impossible, ask: is it actually impossible — or just unknown?
“Amaze. Amaze.”
Every small win. Every breakthrough. Celebrated out loud, every time, with his whole chest.
We are so stingy with acknowledgment. We save praise for the big moments — the launch, the promotion, the quarterly win. Meanwhile momentum quietly dies in the middle. Rocky understands something most leaders miss: recognition isn’t a reward. It’s fuel. It keeps people moving when the problem is still hard and the finish line isn’t visible yet.
Celebrate progress. Not just outcomes.
I’ve spent years coaching leaders inside organizations — Genentech, Meta, Google, and others — and the pattern I see most often isn’t a lack of skill or smarts or vision.
It’s the weight of being watched.
Leaders who know exactly what needs to be said in a room but scan for safety before saying it. Leaders who see a problem clearly but wait for consensus before naming it. Leaders who feel genuine pride in their team but hold back the acknowledgment because it might seem soft, or premature, or unprofessional.
The higher up you go, the more the performance compounds. Every word gets managed. Every reaction gets calculated. After a while, the gap between what you actually think and what you say out loud becomes so familiar you stop noticing it’s there.
That gap is where trust erodes. Where teams stop bringing you the real problems. Where culture quietly calcifies around what’s safe to say instead of what’s true.
Rocky has no such gap. Maybe because no one taught him to close it. Maybe because he doesn’t have the social conditioning that tells most of us that being unguarded is a liability.
Whatever the reason — he shows up whole. Every time.
And here’s what I’ve seen in the leaders who do the same: their teams move faster. Not because they have better strategy or bigger budgets. Because people know where they stand. Because clarity is contagious. Because when a leader says “bad problem, we fix” and means it — no blame, no spiral, just forward motion — the whole room exhales and gets to work.
So I keep coming back to this: what would your leadership look like if you subtracted the performance?
Not the capability. Not the vision. Just the armor.
What if you said what you meant — clearly, without the hedge? What if you asked the question you’ve been afraid looked too basic? What if you celebrated the small win out loud instead of waiting for the big one? What if curiosity was your first move, not your last resort?
Rocky is an alien navigating the impossible across the galaxy.
He’s also the most grounded leader in the room.
I’m taking notes.
Amaze.
