What The Devil Wears Prada 2 Teaches Us About Leading Well

Three lessons every leader needs to hear right now

If you've already seen The Devil Wears Prada 2, you probably walked out of the theater thinking about more than just the fashion. And if you haven't seen it yet, let this be your sign to grab your girlfriends and go!

The women of The Collective and I went this last week and had the best time!

The sequel brings back Miranda Priestly, Andy Sachs, Emily, and Nigel, nearly 20 years later. And obviously, it drops them right back into the beautiful, yet brutal, world of Runway Magazine.

While the movie is glamorous and sharp and wildly entertaining, you know I am always looking for the lessons. i can't help myself!

It's a masterclass in what leadership looks like when it's working, and what it costs when it isn't.

Here are the three leadership lessons I walked away with:

Lesson 1: Clarity Creates Boldness, and You Have to Try the Things to Find It

Andy didn't walk into Runway with a five-year plan.

She walked in with a journalism degree, a willingness to figure it out, and something underneath all of it she couldn't fully articulate. A sense of what mattered to her. Good storytelling. Truth. Work that meant something.

Runway tried to bury that.

The clothes, the access, the impossible standards, the intoxicating feeling of being inside the most powerful room in fashion. All of it was loud. And for a season, Andy let it be louder than her own voice.

Here's the deal, though—that season wasn't a failure. It was the work.

You don't gain clarity by thinking your way to it. You get it by doing the things, taking the rooms, saying yes to what stretches you, and paying attention to what lights you up as well as what slowly hollows you out.

Andy needed Runway to know what she was made of. The pressure revealed her.

By the sequel, she's not walking away this time. She's fighting for the story, for the integrity, for the journalism she spent years rebuilding.

Boldness doesn't always look like leaving. Sometimes it looks like planting your feet and refusing to let go of what matters most.

Try the things. Pay attention. And when you find the thing worth fighting for, you'll know it because you won't be able to walk away from it. That's what clarity does. It doesn't remove the hard decisions. It makes them inevitable.

Lesson 2: When Work Becomes Your Everything, You Lose Everything Else

Miranda Priestly is the most compelling cautionary tale in modern pop culture. She's brilliant. She's iconic. She's built something the entire world pays attention to.

And in both films, we watch her miss her daughters' recitals, push away every relationship that could've softened the edges of her life, and pour every ounce of herself into a magazine.

The sequel picks that thread right back up, and it hits harder the second time because she's had 20 more years to let it solidify into her identity.

The work became the whole thing. And the whole thing cost her everything else.

We're in a leadership season right now where the conversation is shifting.

Women are moving away from hustle culture as a badge of honor and toward something more sustainable. More rhythmic. More human. And I think it's because enough of us have watched what happens when the answer to "what do you do?" and the answer to "who are you?" become the exact same thing.

Your calendar reflects your values. That's one of the most honest mirrors you've got as a leader.

If you look at your week and every block, every margin, every early morning and late evening is work, that's a boundary problem. And it'll have repercussions you can't fully see from where you're at right now.

You can love your work deeply and still protect the life that makes the work meaningful. The most powerful version of you is a whole person, one who leads a company and still shows up for the birthday parties.

Lesson 3: The People Who Show Up for Your Comeback Were Built in Your Consistency

The Devil Wears Prada 2 opened to $76.7 million its first weekend. Nearly 20 years after the original. That number doesn't happen because of a great marketing campaign.

It happens because Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway spent two decades showing up. In other films. In other roles. Delivering performances that made people love them, trust them, and root for them. The audience that filled those theaters opening weekend wasn't built in 2026. It was built over years of consistent, excellent work.

Your business works the same way.

The clients who refer you without being asked. The community members who repost your content before you've had your morning coffee. The people who buy your new offer within the first hour. Those relationships weren't created by a launch strategy. They were created by the consistency you showed up with long before anyone was watching closely.

Loyalty is a long game. It's built in the moments that feel small. The email you sent when you didn't have to. The boundary you held so your clients could trust your word. The content you created on a Tuesday when the numbers weren't exciting yet. All of it compounds.

Twenty years between films, and the fans showed up. Your people will show up for you too, when you've invested in them the way these women invested in their craft.

The Best Leadership Lessons Come in Unexpected Places

A sequel to a twenty-year-old fashion film probably wasn't on your leadership reading list. But here we are.

Try the things. Protect the life that makes your work worth doing. And invest in your people long before you need them to show up for you.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

If you're ready to look at how you're leading yourself and what that's creating in your business, that's exactly the work we do together. Come find me.