WonderTour

Welcome to Lead Wisely by Wondertour.

Today, episode 115, we are looking in our villains series.

We are looking at the movie, The Batman, and we're going to be talking about two villains
from the movie, The Batman.

So this episode, we're going to start out with the mob boss, Carmine Falcone.

So Drew, why don't you get us started here?

What does Falcone's leadership style reveal about the long-term consequences of
prioritizing personal gain over anything vaguely resembling public good?

Carmine is awesome in this movie, or well played we'll say.

He's definitely not an awesome leader.

Previously we've talked about Hans Gruber and we had some good things to say from Die
Hard.

We talked about Darth Vader and there were some positives in Anakin and Darth Vader.

Not a lot positive to say about Carmine Falcone.

Carmine is, if we were just to kind of diagnose what his problems are as a leader.

At some point in his life, he made some wrong decisions and rather than try to make those
right, rather than owning up to those and paying whatever the cost was to the person he

wronged or society or something, what he does is he just keeps doubling down.

He is the perfect example of the person who gets caught up in a vice, gets caught up in
doing the wrong thing, and they just can't.

get away from it and so they just keep getting more and more just entrapped into this
person that they're becoming.

We talk on Wondretor about becoming magnanimous and that's our goal as leaders.

Carmine is kind of the opposite.

He's becoming anti-magnanimous.

He's becoming more and more controlling, more and more violent, more and more necessarily.

He's becoming more and more controlling, more and more violent, more and more necessarily.

limiting of others and pushing away of others because that's the only way for him to stay
afloat.

He's kind of gotten to this point of moral justification.

And when I say moral justification, what I mean is comparing yourself and your actions to
others and then judging them accordingly and being like, well, that's not as bad or like,

well, if they were in my position, then, you know, they might do the same thing.

And in the end, what's the goal of that?

so that you can feel decent about yourself, so that you can sleep at night.

But the problem is, if you continually do that over and over again, then you start to
build up a habit of bad relationships with others, very little trust.

And so in order to get anything done, what do you have to do?

You have to lie, you have to coerce, you have to use your leverage as the only means of
getting anything done.

And that's how we find Carmine.

The issue is that...

He's not really a leader.

When we talk about leaders, leaders are inspiring people to do big things.

Carmine has nobody he can inspire to do big things.

The only way he can get anybody to move on any initiative he has is to coerce them into
doing it.

The only way he can get anybody to move on any initiative he has is to coerce them into
doing it.

Yeah, no, that's a really I love that I love the way you set that up because when we
looked at you know, we looked at Darth Vader and Anakin like we talked about how in his

downfall arc, he like he keeps doubling down on his mistakes.

Like he's never willing to just say like I'm wrong.

Right.

And so that you know, that comes back to bite him.

And I feel like what we're seeing here in Falcone is that he is at the furthest logical
extrapolation end of that arc.

He's been doubling down on

It's all about me and I have to take care of myself and I can't possibly be wrong and I
can't possibly lose and I have to be in charge and in control and winning all the time.

He's been doing that for so long that he has no other options.

Like you said, all of his relationships are fear and leverage.

That's the only interaction that he's got with the rest of the world.

Right.

And so he's

He's wealthy and he's living in this club and he's got people hanging out with him.

He's got beautiful women around and he's got, you know, all the glittering elite come to
bend the knee and you know, he has all the money he needs apparently, right?

Like, you know, it's, it's kind of sort of working for him, but it's also kind of sort of
not like he seems, you know, you could see what's coming, right?

Like, you know, it's, it's kind of sort of working for him, but it's also kind of sort of
not like he seems, you know, you could see what's coming, right?

You can see all of his relationships are like, you know, his own daughter is trying to
kill him and his lieutenants sort of despise him and would be perfectly happy to be out

from under him and the people that

the people that are around him are all sort of under his thumb in one way or the other.

And we see this so often.

I mean, it's common no matter where you look in any sort of a corrupt organization.

It's like you're just a Jenga tower that's one block being pulled away from all tumbling
over.

As soon as the method by which you convince people to do things is strictly, like you
said, leverage and fear, they will turn on you in an instant.

And we're gonna talk about that in our next segment when we bring up our moment for this
episode.

Hi, I'm Brian Notwell.

And we are on a journey to lead wisely, to become better leaders by touring fantastic
worlds and inspiring lore by going on a wonder tour.

We connect leadership concepts to story context because it sticks to our brains better.

You can find out more at wondertorpodcast.com or on YouTube by looking up Lead Wisely all
one word.

Right, so Carmen Falcone, purely self-interested, calculating, thinking long-term, but
only in sense of how can I not ever get into trouble.

We see him manipulating the people around him.

Like in particular in the scene where Bruce Wayne comes in to confront him about the
history of how it turns out he was behind something, something, something, was, you know,

taking, rubbing out the journalist that was threatening Thomas Wayne back in the day.

We see him in this scene very skillfully manipulating people around him, in particular
Bruce.

Like he sort of spins the story several different ways.

Like, I was actually the good guy because I was friends with your dad because he helped me
that time by, you know, when I stumbled into his house and I'd been shot, he saved my

life.

And so I really liked him.

And so I helped him out when he was in trouble.

but then when he got shot, that wasn't me.

That was some other bad guy.

Right.

And so he's really good at playing other people.

He's really good at playing on.

his emotions and his weaknesses and sort of his perceived motivations to put himself in a
position of being, well, you actually, if you think about it, you kind of owe me a favor.

That is his only, I'm not even going to call it a redeeming trait, it is his only really
skillful trait is he's able to read somebody else, understand what they want, and figure

out how to give that to them but do it in a way that they owe him one.

Right, right, exactly.

Which is a very Godfather thing, right?

It's a very mob boss kind of way to represent a character, but it's also...

So this is the one thing, right?

His relationships are all based on manipulation and leverage, and he is perfectly
shameless about lying in the service of those relationships.

But that leads us to our other problem, right?

Which is that...

What is the consequence of when you make every decision solely about yourself and all of
your relationships are based on fear and leverage and lies which are inevitably able to be

seen through?

what situation does that put you in?

What does that lead to,

Yeah, he just has to keep building up this wall, building up this wall to protect him from
all of the other people and from all of the decisions that he's made.

And he just keeps building it brick by brick, decision by decision.

He's building this wall to protect him because that's the only way that he can be safe
anymore because he can't trust anybody because he doesn't extend himself for anybody.

He doesn't build strong relationships.

And then he turns around and

I don't even think he realizes it.

That's the crazy thing is he becomes so blind he doesn't even realize, dude, you just
built yourself a grave.

You just built yourself a prison.

You are now trapped inside of the wall.

If you're in an extremely secure building that you're afraid to leave or not allowed to
leave, like, what is that called?

That's called a prison.

Right.

And that is literally what he's done for himself.

Like, he's got this glittering prison, but he's in this club and he's surrounded by all
these people and he never goes anywhere.

Right.

And he's got all this money, but it's not like he's jetting off to Venice or something to
hang out.

Like, he's like, literally, he's just hiding in this club.

So what's our mountaintop moment?

What's the example of this?

that leads us up perfectly to the mountaintop.

Our mountaintop moment happens here, and I'll give us a little bit of a lead into it
because it's a really fun, it depends on how you think about fun, fun in the context of

the movie story, where we have Selena Kyle who finds out about even worse things that she
knew Carmine was a bad guy, obviously, but she finds out about him having Annika killed.

And so she goes in to confront him, she's got the gun, she's planning to kill him, and
that's where Batman comes in.

And we do get an awesome quote that we're gonna breeze by here, but she says he has to
pay, and Batman says, you don't have to pay with him, you've paid enough.

If you wanna learn more about that, we already did an episode on the Batman, I think it's
episode 64, probably.

Either way, think it's we talked about that in previous episode.

Either way, think it's we talked about that in previous episode.

Either way, think it's we talked about that in previous episode.

Cut.

So then he does convince her not to kill Carmine.

Eventually they go through, they have a fight, they get taken outside, Gordon comes in and
takes away Carmine.

And Carmine is of course immediately like, I'll see you out here real soon.

Telling Gordon, like threatening Gordon immediately basically.

And as soon as he gets outside,

and he is no longer in the position of leverage, right?

Like you said, he leaves his castle slash prison.

Who's there?

But of course, Oz, the penguin, is there to throw stones.

And he could never have done that while Carmine was inside of the prison, but as soon as
he leaves the walls of his protection, the penguin is out to get him.

The penguin is considering shooting him, and before the penguin can even shoot him, we
just hear a shot go off and Carmine gets shot by somebody else.

So that's our mountaintop moment is, you what happens when you build up this castle slash
prison for yourself, when all you do is look out for yourself in the world?

Well, the problem is if you ever leave the premise, there's a lot of people who you no
longer have leverage on, you don't have protection from, and they don't owe anything to

you.

They don't want to help you.

They would be happy to take a shot at you.

They might've been waiting for years to take a shot at you, right?

Yeah, and so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

He is purely self-interested.

He treats everybody else as if he believes they are purely self-interested, and so the
only relationship he's willing to have with them is one where he's got more leverage.

And so that's all the relationships he has with anybody in the world.

And so as soon as he shows weakness, like, I love the framing of this in the movie,
literally the moment he steps outside of his sheltering prison, he's killed, right?

which he knew was gonna happen.

Like he was, he was, you know, he had this bluff going on, but the whole, the whole reason
he put himself in that position is because he knew he had to be in control or he.

Yeah, and can we comment on the fact that it's so brilliantly done from a cinematography
perspective too.

This movie probably uses dark and light better than any movie that I've ever seen before.

And it's so cool.

He's in this, like you said, when he's inside of the prison of the club, everything's dark
and grimy and neon-y.

And then as soon as he gets pulled outside, the light is blinding and you can barely see
and there's cop lights and there's paparazzi that are right outside.

And it's like,

BOOM!

For the first time in a long time, this dude is showing the light and the light is going
to purify and in the situation when you're Carmine Falcone, that looks like you just got

For the first time in a long time, this dude is showing the light and the light is going
to purify and in the situation when you're Carmine Falcone, that looks like you just got

shot.

Right, there's no partial purification happening here.

Exactly, you can't be cleansed at that point, you're just wiped out.

Yes, you are, you are the infection.

So yeah, so, so I love, yeah, I love the framing of that.

I love the visuals of that, but that is also like.

Falcone failed to learn the one lesson we always talk about on Wonder Tour, which is the
Dr.

Strange lesson of it's not about you, right?

The path to leadership, the path to influence over other people, the path to making the
world better or different in a way that you perceive, like the only sustainable version of

that is one where all your decisions are not necessarily about you.

Like you can, you can respect yourself and protect your boundaries and take care of
yourself.

But if you're just making it about you, eventually you're not a leader, right?

You're just, you're kind of tolerated as a, you know, as an overlord.

Yeah, and how do we think about that then?

Because it's easy to look at this and be like, well, I'm not as bad as Carmine Falcone.

I might justify a couple things to myself.

I might justify why I can eat a second dessert.

I might justify why I could have another drink, whatever, right?

But I'm not Carmine Falcone.

Well, sure.

And also, I think at least for me, I can see myself in...

And it's a little bit scary and it's like you said it's it's like dr.

Strange you almost have to consider Always not what can I do for myself?

But what can I do for somebody else because as soon as even the smallest thing?

My consideration is like well, I should do this for me and like I deserve this Like that's
the risk of falling into the carmine falcon syndrome

And so the good things that we see about him, right?

Like he is very successful for a long period of time.

Right.

And the reason that he's able to do that is because he has a very strategic mind.

He's building things on top of each other.

He's trying to set up a sustainable system.

Right.

But also like his superpower is he actually is really good at sensing what other people
need and want.

It's just that he does the immoral thing with that, with that superpower.

And he says, okay, great.

Now how can I push them in the direction of doing what I want rather than, you know,
where, can I help them?

or how can I potentially set them up to succeed, or how can I teach them how to avoid
their own failure modes, right?

He's clearly, he's very clearly identifying other people's weaknesses.

Like he's good at that.

And that's a skill that a leader should aspire to, but then helping them work through them
rather than encouraging them to succumb to them, might be a better, something we would

encourage.

that, the power dynamics, like what you choose to do when you have power, but also the
consequences of not doing that.

or what we see comes back to him, right?

As the consequences of like, he doesn't have anybody he can trust.

doesn't have anybody that has been, that is actually loyal to him.

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about those power dynamics because we've kind of been
skirting around it.

This idea of and of course, power dynamics are natural.

This idea of and of course, power dynamics are natural.

There's any time there's two or more humans in a room, there's some or even animals,
there's some level of power dynamics going on, right?

And that doesn't mean that like the human that is has more power in a position is
necessarily a better human or anything like that.

In fact, often it is the person who should have the most power who chooses

to lay that down or to serve somebody else instead, like wouldn't that be the greater
human?

But what we see here is, like we talked about, builds this castle, Carmine Falcone builds
this castle of power dynamics where the only way that he can relate to another human is

through holding something over them.

Like we see that with Selena, right?

His daughter, he is immediately like,

She's distraught.

Of course, she's using what she learned from him and is trying to, she's trying to
manipulate him, but she's distraught.

And the first thing he's thinking is like, okay, how do I figure out what she wants and
then hold that over her so that I can get what I want?

And so there's, it's not possible for him to have a healthy relationship anymore.

And then Brian, for us, for the practical application, it's, it's to recognize that those
power dynamics

It's empty because as soon as you have the power that you can hold over somebody else,
what you're holding in your hand is a pile of dust basically.

It doesn't fulfill.

And the, I mean, the, you use the phrase very like the pathology of control, like the, how
that's this, you know, it's, it's almost a disease of the mind of like, have to be in

control.

And it seems to me like the, the, the times when I succumb to that, the times when I see
people succumbing to that, right.

It's, it's almost invariably fear.

Right.

It's I'm afraid that something bad is going to happen.

So I have to be in control so that I can keep the bad thing from.

Right.

And we'll talk about that a little bit more with, with Batman and Riddler in the next
episode.

But in the context of Falcone, that fear causes him to never trust anybody.

It causes him to not have any relationships based on trust.

causes him to not ever get anything positive back from anybody.

And so it just sort of, it's sort of professional.

Like he just lives afraid all the time.

Like, and all he can do is ride the wave of trying to stay ahead of the fear by being more
in control.

But that's not really winning, right?

It's just surviving.

No, it's just emptiness in the end, right?

It's like you said, yeah, it's just surviving.

It's just surviving so that you can continue to just fight away another meaningless
battle.

Right.

Right.

And that's because, you know, it's because as we keep talking about with magnanimous
leader, like the goal is to be somebody that can aspire to a goal that is larger than

And that's because, you know, it's because as we keep talking about with magnanimous
leader, like the goal is to be somebody that can aspire to a goal that is larger than

yourself and can motivate other people to pursue that same goal.

You don't actually believe in anything larger than yourself and you're kind of screwed.

Like you're not going to, that's not available to you.

But

But you can't build anything that will outlive you.

You can't build an organization that works when you're not present.

You can't build a group of people that will be able to sustain things or come back and
help you when you falter, unless you're willing to trust them, unless you're willing to

empower them, unless you're willing to act and interact with them in a way that isn't
solely based on fear.

And so there's, know, this is what we see is he falls into the dead end and then he just
lives in that dead end until it finally catches up with

But what we're trying to encourage in Magnanimous Leaders is this, even if you have the
fear, look for the opportunities to trust.

If you have the fear, but you can sense other people's motivation, you can start to get a
sense of what they need or what they want, you have the opportunity to deploy trust.

You have the opportunity to deploy hope for a bigger picture goal.

And those are things that you can leverage into something that will then...

give you energy back that will then not require you to be in control all the time that
will then potentially outlive you.

give you energy back that will then not require you to be in control all the time that
will then potentially outlive you.

Yeah, and if you're in a office environment or whatever it might be, and you might even be
convinced that, you know, I just need to get a little bit more power so that I can do good

with it.

So that I can, you know, cause I'll do better than the current boss is doing or whatever
it is, right?

But I've been there, I've thought that before.

And that in those moments, it's tiring.

It really drains you to be thinking that way of like, just need a little bit more control.

mean, we have, do it in our own minds.

Like I just need a little bit more control so that I can have a peace of mind when in
reality, there's no peace of mind on the other side of that thought process.

I just need a little more control.

just, so in the opposite of it is you got to flip the script.

You got to do what Batman does with Selena Kyle.

You know, she has the opportunity for once she has the

power over Falcone when she's holding the gun pointed at him.

And he's like, no, don't do what he does.

Instead do the opposite.

He would kill you for you.

Like you let him live and that is what's going to bring you peace.

That is what's going to bring you success.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And the fact that he's there in that moment is they were, you they're doing something.

She was off kind of, she went a little bit rogue and she was off doing a thing without
him, but he went in not for his own goals, but actually to help her.

Right.

He's like, well, this is going to go badly.

I've got to go, you know, I've got to be available to support somebody.

Right.

And so that was, that's the thing that Carmine Falcone would never in his life have done.

He's like, yeah, wow.

She's, she's in real trouble.

I'm like, that's not going to work out for her.

I'm glad I'm not there.

You know, like he, you know, he didn't have anybody in the world that he would have done
that.

Mm-hmm.

so he then didn't have anybody in the world that would have done that for him, which, you
know, again, pays off in this movie, but is not a stretch to imagine that in the.

That was good, Brian.

So let's bring it home with some key takeaways.

All right.

So what do you got from this one so far?

Well, you gave the one that we always give.

Well, you gave the one that we always give.

It's great, it's cheating, but it's not about you.

Very clearly here, it's not about you.

We also talked about being wary of moral justification and considering, like we gotta
reflect on our thought processes.

When I am having to do mental gymnastics to convince myself that what I am doing is okay,
that what I am doing is right, that it is healthy.

that it is good for a relationship that I have or something, probably a good sign that I
shouldn't be doing it.

Or if you're having to explain that same course of action two different ways to different
people, right?

Probably you're not rock solid in your reasoning or you're not proud of your reasoning or
something.

that's a Falcon move right there.

Yeah, I just got to lie a little bit when I tell this person, but then it'll sound good to
both people and I'm off the hook.

It's like, no, that's probably a sign that you're something's unhealthy in your brain.

And we all do that.

Or we at least we are all tempted to do that.

Yeah, yeah, don't, don't lie to yourself.

Don't, you know, don't let yourself do it.

Right.

and then the, think the other thing we talked about was just the, you know, the building
your own prison out of like making all your decisions on fear is, is necessarily a dead

and then the, think the other thing we talked about was just the, you know, the building
your own prison out of like making all your decisions on fear is, is necessarily a dead

end.

Right.

And so what you have to do is not, not be afraid, but to look for opportunities where you
can trust somebody and bring them in with you.

Right.

And not be in the prison by yourself and not be, you know, sort of, you know,

look for those opportunities to build relationships and not necessarily just build
leverage, which is a very different dynamic to get skillful at.

Yeah, and if you do end up bound up, kind of like we see Falcone, if you are like having
to get on tiptoes to look over the wall that you're building in front of yourself, but

like it's okay, because you can still see that your family on the other side and they
haven't been totally alienated from you.

And it's gonna, you can tell like the cost is gonna be high to tear that wall down.

Like, please, please tear the wall down.

Whatever the cost is, there is no cost too high to.

tearing the wall down before you can't see over it anymore, before you can't walk outside
of it without getting massacred.

it just is a, I know the cost is high, but the longer you wait, the cost just continues to
multiply.

All right, so let's not do that.

Let's not be Carmine Falcone.

That's our first villain for the Batman movie.

But wait, there's more.

This movie offers us a selection of villains to choose from.

And we've saved the best for last.

We're going to go after the Riddler in the next episode.

And we'll talk a little bit about how he shines some light on the character and the
challenges of the Batman himself.

So we're looking forward to that next time.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this with us.

We thank you so much for joining us.

And just remember...

As always, character is destiny.