Quotes And Leadership Lessons From Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

A Reel Leadership Article

My latest book, Reel Leadership, is now available on Amazon. If you love movies and leadership, you will love this book.

I’ve never been a big Dungeons & Dragons nerd. I knew little of the backstory going into the movie except that the kids in Stranger Things played D&D a lot. While watching, I was surprised to hear the names Neverwinter and Baulder’s Gate dropped. I didn’t know they were D&D related, but I had heard of or played games revolving around them.

I also knew that D&D had a bad rep in communities because people linked it to bad behavior, anti-Christian behavior, and more. Most of these have been debunked.

The new movie, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, only helps to break that stereotype more. As I watched the film, I saw so many connections to positive behaviors, repentance, and more. Don’t shy away from this new movie because of things you may have heard about D&D. You’ll miss out on a lot.

Everyone Won’t Be Cool With You

There’s an inner longing to be loved and adored. We all want people to like us. You even feel that way, right?

I’m pretty sure you desire to have people like you. I know I want people to like me.

But there’s a problem with wanting everyone to like you and be cool with you.

Even Mr. Freeze found out he could be uncool

Image by Gail Gray

So, what’s the problem? Why shouldn’t we want everyone to be cool with what we’re doing?

That problem is simple. People are going to disagree with you.

Your ideas may not align with the beliefs of others. Your methods may be different from what has been seen. Your personality may rock people the wrong way.

And that’s okay!

Really, it is okay that you won’t click with everyone. We weren’t meant to.

Words Will Fail You

Humans communicate so much through the words they use. We use Twitter, Facebook updates, text messages, blog posts, speech.

There is so much effort poured into the words we say. Sadly, at one point or another, words will fail you. Situations will arise where words are meaningless.

Worn out man, words have failed him

Image by Lucas Incas

I found this to be true during and after my wife and I had to make the difficult choice to put our dog down. People tried to comfort us with their words.

We heard:

You’ll feel better over time

You made the right choice

You did what needed to be done

You loved him and he loved you

You know, all of those words were true. Things have gotten better. We believe we made the right choice. We believe we did what had to be done. And we sure did love him.