Can someone who pushed teams to great achievements through a demanding leadership style reform and get the same high-quality results? Filmmaker James Cameron confessed to delegates at the 2010 World Business Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported, he had to adapt his leadership style from dictatorial to one that was more respectful and empowering. "I don't think I was always a good leader where I worked with people to get the best out of them," said the creator of Avatar, adding that these skills weren't innate for him, and he had to be open to learning so he wouldn't seem phony.

Now, when conflict arises, Cameron's inclination is to solve the problem, rather than make a recriminating moment out of it, he told Bloomberg anchor Betty Liu during an onstage interview. "I turn it back on myself. Did I hire the right person? Yes. Then maybe I didn't communicate it well or they didn't understand." This new leadership style lent Avatar a sense of fun, authorship and ownership in an environment where people felt like they had permission to make mistakes but were now less likely to do so.

Putting the right cast, technical and creative teams together is critical for Cameron. Blending the people he already knows he can count on with new recruits who can push and challenge him has become his first step. Avatar operated more like a family than a conventional business team, he explained, binding the team together for 4½ years — longer than most film productions. Managing the stress, keeping up morale and maintaining the enthusiasm over this extended length of time was difficult, particularly when people worked all hours and had crises of faith that they couldn't overcome the obstacles ahead.

Added to the mix was a game-changing vision that was nearly unexplainable, and therefore, harder to get people on board. "We knew it was a difficult sell...non-human characters played by actors you'd never see. It was harder to communicate to investors who had to write this enormous check. We gave international marketing people a tour because we knew it would translate well to different cultures. The feedback from them helped get the green light decision from Fox."

Innovation drove the movie with Cameron's intent from the beginning to change the digital creation of characters. "The risks of doing something new with Avatar was not as great as not doing something new that would excite audiences," and he wanted to push his team to develop the movie technology wave of the future. One revolutionary innovation — the enhanced 3D technology — wasn't enough, said Cameron, and creating the 10 foot tall people was an even harder invention.

The investment in people, technology and capital resources plus energy and time mounted in the high-risk environment. From concept to screen took 15 years, although there was a decade when the project was untouched, the filmmaker said. He was 3½ years into the project before seeing the first shot. "I don't think you ever know if something is going to be a hit. It's hard to know. I knew we were doing something unique. There were risks involved in trying all of these new things. The biggest risk is not to be bold. You have to break away from the pack. Audiences are jaded. It must be the MUST SEE film of that culture."

The reward was all the sweeter, he noted, because of his self-stated propensity to set "goals ridiculously high and fail at a level higher than everyone else."

Robyn Greenspan
Robyn Greenspan is the Editor-in-Chief at ExecuNet, where she is responsible for setting and driving the editorial content engagement strategy across the private business network's publications and expert-led programming. She is also a Huffington Post blogger. You can follow her on Twitter @RobynGreenspan

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