Princess Atta

Overview of Character's Role:
Atta is introduced as the colony’s princess and is second to leading the ant colony after her mother- the Queen of Ants. She also is a sister to Princess Dot. She is portrayed in the film as an leader, trying to gain approval by her mother and the rest of the colony while trying to please Hopper and the other grasshoppers by providing them with food. Throughout the film she appears stressed but is proving that she has every situation under control for example not telling the colony that the new friends are circus bugs. She demonstrates effective leadership styles, for example appointing Flik to help her with stopping the grasshoppers and also persuade the colony to get involved. Towards the end of the film, she finally gains authority by being appointed the queen of the colony.

Leadership Style

In relation to the film, Princess Atta is a leader of a colony. Atta is driven to improve her colony by keeping them alive and constantly under pressure by her mother and Hopper.

The following video shows Hopper providing Atta with the main principles of leadership

Hopper says “first rule of leadership... everything is your fault”

This clip shows that as an individual leader Princess Atta is quite nervous and appears to have little confidence in herself. She allows Hopper to intimidate her and is happy for the colony to assume their roles while she supervises even if she has little input herself. Although Princess Atta is seen as the leader, she is happy for others to make decisions while she just has a final word. This is seen in the beginning of the film when the colony’s council decides to allow Flik to leave to embark upon his plan. This is an example of Princess Atta having self-awareness in knowing that her own ideas might not always be as strong as others and therefore is happy to allow decisions to be made for her.


There is much speculation around the debate that do men and women lead differently? In the film, Princess Atta is a woman leader of the colony and also her mother and sister (who is next in reign). Women are expected to focus more on the relational aspects of leadership for example in the film, Princess Atta was concerned about the relationship between her and Hopper rather than trying to stop him. Rosener explained that women are trying to make people feel part of the organisation by setting goals whereas men are focused on the end results. Princess Atta showed this by setting up a routine whereby everyone collected food by certain time and pace so that they kept the grasshoppers happy. Therefore, Princess Atta is is able to build productive relationships with the other members of the colony. She is also able to develop high performing teams and is able to build a mutual trust with the colony as they all adhere to her suggestions and plans. This can be demonstrated with Belbin's model of teamwork, he discussed the idea of a team roles and the ability to manage people’s behavioral strength and weaknesses in the workplace. If carried out effectively this information can be used to; build productive relationships, develop high performing teams, raise self-awareness, build mutual trust and aid recruitment process. 

Belbin also looked into team roles which help Accenture a leader’s strength and identify their weaknesses. Princess Atta was identified as being a shaper. Shapers provide the drive to ensure the team stay motivated. Shapers must also be aware of the risk of becoming aggressive and bad-humoured in their attempts to get things done; in the beginning of the film Princess Atta displays these traits and vents her frustrations out on her little sister Dot, and she is extremely bad-humoured towards Flik upon finding out about his deception. 

Princess Atta might show little confidence in herself but she finds herself able to influence the other ants in the colony. Kort (2008) suggested that a leader must be able to have the ability to influence its followers to achieve a mutual goal and this is demonstrated in the film when Princess Atta is able to gain support and convince the colony of Flik’s decision to build the fake bird in order to scare of Hopper and his gang.

When Flik reveals that the warrior bugs he found were really circus bugs; Princess Atta is able to represent the other ants interests in banishing Flik from the colony and when she stands up for Flik in front of Hopper all ants agree with her decision to fight back. Klann and Cartwright (2004) recognised this important trait of a leader and suggested that effective leaders have the ability to influence others to make a decision that affects them all. 

 In addition, the film did have three female leaders which could show that women can also be leaders and breaking the glass ceiling effect. Nohria and Khurana (2010) claims there has been an succession of female leaders for example Hilary Clinton. This is because people are most likely to appoint female leaders because of their attitude to be demanding and straight forward. The moral of the story was to stand up to bullies, no matter how daunting they may seem and in the film it showed that even though you are a woman, you should not give into sexist remarks.

Stewart (1982) explained that there are three main ways of scrutinizing the job which are demands, constraints and choices. Demands related to Atta are not high as she is leader and whatever policies and rules she makes, it goes without any objection. Constraints are put on Atta because she has to please Hopper by finding food for them and in one scene Flik messes up the food pile and they have no back up due to limited sources of food.  Choices were made for Atta as she did choose to go ahead with Flicks idea on defeating the grasshoppers. This choice was only realised when Flick approached Atta about it, if that did not happen then Atta would have kept to her old ways and not stand up for her colony. 

Towards the end of the film, Flik and Atta did gain similar understanding of leading the colony as Flik became the emergent leader as everyone respected him at the end. Knauft, Berger and Gray (1991) explained that leadership and management has to be done effectively, but not always by the same person (in Pine and Healy 2007)