Week 13 & 14: Leadership and the Dark Side
In thinking about this week’s post it was difficult for me to think of a real life leader. In everyday life I think it’s difficult for individuals to be leaders all of the time and more it’s more realistic to point out examples of situations in where people have displayed leadership qualities.
For me, I think a leader is someone who brings people together, it’s someone who turns a group into a unit, someone who inspires and motivates. An individual who helps maintain his/her organization working within the boundaries of what is acceptable and expected and someone who takes the responsibility of what happens to those members of the group. These traits might look different depending on the situation and depending on the goals the organization is trying to accomplish.
In films/shows, I can think of various examples of leadership that shows the qualities I described above. A few of those examples are: Harry Stamper from Armageddon, Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead, and Buffy Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These characters exhibit leadership amid the struggles they face whether it be saving the world from an impending asteroid crash, a zombie apocalypse, or demons and vampires. The Eisenberg book states “effective leaders often display a dominant style but were usually capable of behaving in other ways when the situation warranted. Moreover, the effectiveness of any given style depended on the consent of followers, who varied in their tolerance for different leadership styles” (Pg. 269). I think this is a very important aspect of leadership because it doesn’t only matter that the leader is capable of both being dominant when this type of approach is needed but also being receptive to what the needs of the members are given the situation.
In Buffy: She doesn’t start off as being a leader when we first meet this character but she begins to develop leadership traits as the settles into her role of “vampire slayer”. She really begins to take control of the situation she is in when she realizes that “slayers come with an expiration date” and she wanted hers life as a vampire slayer to be a long and normal one. The first sign leadership she shows is when she kills her vampire boyfriend(Angel) after he loses his soul in order to save the world from being sucked into hell, later in the series gets rid of the Watcher’s Council which is the governing body of vampire slayers and decides that while she is the slayer she won’t take orders from them. It wasn’t until this point in her life that she begins to take an active role in her leadership style. She no longer looks to Giles (her former watcher) for decision and confirmation and her relationship with him changes to a more advisory sort of relationship. Her biggest challenge comes when she goes up against the first evil and strategically defeats it by sharing her power with future slayers. Along the way she realizes that in order to be a good leader and to be successful at her “job” she needs the help of those around her. She learns to use their strengths to her advantage and to further her cause. Her friends “the Scooby gang” gather around her through the years coming into themselves, growing alongside Buffy and supporting her through her journey. Her organization understands the importance of the work they are doing and they all aim to perform well in helping save the world from an apocalypse.
In the clip below we see an encounter between Buffy and the council. Originally she allows the council to come in and take over, her humility of knowing that she can’t win this battle alone gives the council the opening to discredit her work. You can see in this clip how the members of her organization also step aside waiting for Buffy to do something. They themselves are discredited as being inexperience and civilians who play no real role in the the fight against evil. Buffy, eventually takes command of her space when she realizes that her organization has enormous value to the council. She reinstates the importance of the members of her group, outlining their experience and talents. Like the book states she demonstrates empowerment in her “willingness to share power and decision” [with her organization], and she delegates and motivates by “building feelings of self-efficacy” by stating how she views the Scooby gang ( as two powerful witches, an ex-demon, and a “boy who has clocked more field time” than any watcher on the council. She also illustrates supportiveness as each member of her organization attempts to find themselves whether personally (as displayed when Willow explored her sexuality), Anya when she become human and struggled to adjust to human life.
This is another one of my favorite scenes. Here Buffy is going up against the first evil, defeated and with no real strategy in mind she realizes that what her organization needs the most is motivation and to know that there is still a reason to fight. As a true leader she puts her doubts and feelings aside, her insecurities about the possibility of winning this battle and looks to take care of her people. She gives them the strength they probably wouldn’t have been able to muster in the face of imminent danger. This I believe is a good example of authentic communication as she used language to influence the members of her organization, she creates that “vision for the future” that the authors talk about and most importantly she uses her speech to inspire others to “choose those desirable future actions and to work hard to help [her] obtain them” (Pg. 279).
Another example that I thought about while reading this chapter is the movie Armageddon. In the film, an well-known deep-sea oil driller to help in destroying the asteroid that is due to crash on earth. The goal is to split the asteroid in two so that the pieces fly over and under planet earth avoiding the destruction of our planet. One of the quotes that I really like from this film relates to his ideology of what teamwork and leadership. He says that he is the best because he only works with the best… “If you don’t trust the men you work with, your as good as dead”.
I could see Harry Stamper as an example of trait leadership because to his group ( a group of tough men), Harry seems intimidating. His behavior give of a sense of power and it is this power along with the way he treats the members of his organization that make the men he works with respect him. He doesn’t really display open channels of communication with his team but he looks out for the well being of his group, he motivates them and keeps them level in the extremely stressful situations that they find themselves and eventually takes the greatest sacrifice for the members of his team and he does this when he takes the place of A.J (his daughter’s boyfriend) when someone has to stay behind to detonate the bomb within the asteroid.
The last example I could think of was of Rick Grimes from the Walking Dead. Rick was a sheriff before the zombie apocalypse occurs and throughout the show the story line follows Rick and his group trying to survive, attempting to build a life after the world fell apart while at the same time keeping their humanity. I would say Rick is a good example of trait leadership mainly because of his demeanor. In a world where visual cues are your main form of interacting and gauging people, Rick looks like someone who shouldn’t be messed with. He exudes a sense of power, authority and safety and these are important traits in situations where people feel displaced, confused and scared. Rick unlike Buffy starts off a leader, however his journey focuses more on how his leadership style changes throughout the seasons as a direct result of the experiences the group goes through. I think he starts off leading in a very democratic way, wanting people’s input and emphasizing the importance of the group. Dale plays an important part in this part of Rick’s leadership style because he reminds the group of the values of society, the values of humanity and why it is important to retain that.
This following scene shows Rick’s group trying to decide what to do with Randall, a young boy who was part of a group which attempted kill Rick, Glenn and Hershel. It really shows the change in how the group functioned in the beginning to how the dynamic of Rick’s leadership and how the members behave after several seasons.
Rick is a good example of various types of leadership styles because of how often they were presented with situations that really rocked the group and because of these experiences Rick changed as a person. He went from wanting to rule democratically to being a good example of Situational leadership as his decisions were based on his responsiveness to various situations. The Eisenberg book states “leadership became more nuanced as systems theories began to suggest that the appropriate behavior in any situation was more a matter of reading and responding to contingencies than it was a fixed condition of traits and styles” (P.g 271). The members of this group also changed, from being a part of dialogue and discussions to their willingness to follow Rick without question (for the most part). They only came to questions his decisions when his behavior and actions became erratic and savage. Additionally, I thought Rick was also a good example of an authentic communicator because of the emotions and inspiration that he provided the group when they questioned their ability to continue, or even when they didn’t see future. Below is a collection of speeches that Rick has given throughout the series. Does anyone else think that you can see the changes in his leadership style through the way he speaks and what he conveys?
