Movie Leadership Analysis A Focus On Stand And Deliver

Running head: LEADERSHIP 1

Movie Leadership Analysis: A Focus on Stand and Deliver

Name

Institution

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Movie Leadership Analysis: A Focus on Stand and Deliver

Leadership can be broadly conceived as a process of creating followership among groups

of people to realize certain set goals or accomplish a task (British Council, 2017). In the context

of organizations, the leaders may be the managers, while the followers are comprised of

members. In the convention, the managers will command good leadership if they lead by

example and possess certain values that make the employees trust their followership. The

managers should also be able to know the employees, recognize their needs. In essence,

leadership could be broadly seen as characterized by the relationship between the stewards and

the followers in relation to what makes the team realize desirable results. This paper explores the

leadership and follower relationship in the film, Stand and Deliver.

The Primary Leader in the Movie

The primary leader in the movie is Jaime Escalante, a mathematics teacher at Garfield

High School. He teaches in a school dominated by Hispanic students who have learning

difficulties and performing poorly in class. Because of his exemplary leadership skills, Jaime

Escalante is able to transform the school culture and motivate his students to excel in academics

(Menéndez & Musca, 1988).

The Elements of Leadership

The film evidences different elements of leadership that are exhibited by Jaime Escalante.

In particular, the leadership potential is mediated by three factors largely influenced by the

intervening social environment: knowledge, integrity, and commitment. Leaders need to be

endowed with knowledge about task environment to be able to function effectively. In this case,

Knowledge refers to having awareness, understanding, or familiarity with an issue, and

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achievable through experience, learning, perceiving, or education. Knowledge may be practical

or theoretical, and encompasses complex cognitive processes such as reasoning, communicating

and perceiving.

Secondly, leadership also need to exhibit integrity potential. In this case, integrity is seen

as a trait that reflects honesty and desirable moral standards. Integrity is a personal choice that an

individual makes to follow moral and ethical requirements, which is synonymous with

truthfulness. In this regard, a leader will be said to have acted with integrity if he exhibits

internal consistencies to cling to ethical ideals as the guiding virtues, and which enables them to

shun from engaging in the practices that amount to the conflict of interests. Finally, commitment

is the engagement or involvement in tasks or obligations. Leaders are required to be dedicated to

group tasks to enable others to have confidence in them. They need to be fully aware of the

missions and visions of the group and be particularly involved in meeting them by leading

others. While there are various definitions of leadership, the most concurred view is that leading

is the process of creating followership. Jaime Escalante expedites perfection in these areas to

succeed in his leadership.

To create followership, exemplary leadership is judged by three elements: behaviors, the

consequence of actions and growth. In this case, the aspect of behaviors entails taking

responsibility for the group issues, and empowering people to create followership. Leaders are

needed to lead by example through practicing what they preach. As far as the impacts of actions

are concerned, leaders will be judged regarding how they can impart a positive influence on the

organization or teams. Leaders also align people inside and outside the organization with the set

mission. They also communicate the vision, mission, and direction frequently and consistently to

the members. Also, they establish informal networks depending on timing and needs. Such

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alignment brings about the unity that encourages cohesion and unity. According to Mellor and

Barnes, leaders also create and sustain an organizational culture. They deal in coordination and

division of work, for instance, organizing of work and recruiting staffs, delegating responsibility

and authority and implementing the vision. They motivate and inspire employees to work. This

type of motivation includes communicating a vision that aligns with people’s values, involving

individuals in decision making, supporting efforts, and recognizing employees’ successes. They

energize employees to overcome barriers to change. Leaders participate in controlling processes

and solve problems to make work efficiently and efficiently. They ensure that everything is

working smoothly based on time, budget, and set quality. They also monitor results, while

guiding people based on influence and the idea of persuasion.

Lastly, the aspect of growth is informed by the notion that the work environment is

always changing and leaders need to be involved in growth and development process, which is

considered as a way of increasing the capacity to keep abreast the emerging issues. Jaime

Escalante is able to study the potential of his class and embrace continuous change to enable his

class to succeed in academics.

The Aspects of Management

There are a number of management aspects that revealed in the movie. These aspects

include directing, controlling, monitoring and implementing the vision. The attributes of

management that Jaime Escalante exhibits include executing the vision of the school by

embracing a strategic vision and breaking it down to roadmap that is followed by the learners,

directing the day-to-day learning process and reviewing resources, managing process by creating

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the learning rules and procedures and monitoring and evaluating performance based on

institutional policies.

Leadership Traits

Jaime Escalante will certainly feature on the list of one of the most remembered leaders,

and there is evidence about his strong leadership qualities. During her time as a teacher, he

introduced policies that changed the way the learning operates, setting a framework academic

success. He exhibits various leadership traits.

As a transformative leader, Jaime Escalante was always listening and considerate to the

views of his followers. This trait reveals he works with the subordinates. In the running of

operations, Jaime Escalante appears to have utilized this trait and created a cult of following. As

a result, not only are the followers were the beneficiaries, but the institution has been enabled to

perform to the expectation. Indeed, this trait is significant to human resource motivation.

Jaime Escalante is also outgoing in the way he deals with the challenges, serving as an

example for followers to emulate. Indeed, Jaime Escalante does not easily give up because of the

setbacks that come in his ways such as poor school culture and resistance. In fact, he sees

positivity in challenges, which eventually makes him a successful leader. Jaime Escalante can be

seen to have considered failing is a stepping-stone to the next level. He does not believe in

complaining. In essence, he believes that failure presents an opportunity to learn and this means

picking important lessons to improve next time.

He uses his intellectual simulation to complement his transformation leadership trait.

Jaime Escalante has developed a different way of thinking, where his focus is on the motivation

of his learners. He believes that the perfect starting point is when the followers feel motivated.

His different reasoning makes him outstanding intellectually. Ideally, the learners are rational

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agents who must be engaged and motivated. Jaime Escalante is considerate to the learners’

needs. In essence, he is also a selfless leader who goes beyond obligatory duties of teaching to

discretional roles such as motivating and leading his class towards enrolling in advanced

mathematics.

Jaime Escalante is a motivating and inspiring leader who exhibits various personality

traits. He is dedicated to his job. Furthermore, he was frank when it came putting things right. In

case learners go wrong, he walks to them and corrects immediately. He encourages openness in

communication and sharing of learning ideas. He stays connected to the learners and he is open

to exchanging ideas that would transform learning.

Thus, it is indisputable that Jaime Escalante is a strong transformational leader. Indeed,

he exhibits all the qualities of the transformational leader, motivating, leading by example,

striving to empower the followers and being understanding and selfless. The evidence is revealed

in his famous quotes, speeches, and initiatives he undertakes while serving as the mathematics

teacher. Consequently, the environment he creates is attractive and makes learners to like

mathematics.

Ethics and Values

Moral, value-based and ethical approaches are common theories of leadership. Value-

based leadership strives to align the personal and organizational values into the missions and

practices. Moral based leadership, on the contrast, pursues the standards of morality, which it

integrates into the mainstream organization decision-making. Ethical leadership is concerned

about doing what is right. All these theories are crucial in regulating the organization practices.

However, they are potentially problematic because they are subject to dilemmas. In many cases,

the organizational goals may clash with morals, values, and ethical standards. Moreover, these

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standards tend to be varied across societies, implying the inherent difficulties of developing

regulatory frameworks that are supported by consensus. Interestingly, Jaime Escalante is able to

balance between these two competing demands to assure desirable results.

Ethics are crucial to institutional success in many ways. In one way, upholding business

ethics is a way through which firms regulate themselves and avoid problems with the law.

Ideally, being ethical includes observing the law, which would attract penalties when otherwise

violated. The impacts of penalties are far-reaching and can subvert the efforts of the firm in

realizing its goals, including revoking licenses and paying certain amounts. Upholding ethics is

also important because it is a way of winning clients. It follows that clients are conscious and

rational shareholders who are interested in supporting businesses whose practices are in line with

their values. Companies that fail to observe these values risk losing their reputation and

customers. Indeed, the environment in which contemporary businesses are operating is

demanding and characterized by heightened competition, which gives clients the enormous

bargaining power. Lastly, upholding ethics is important because it communicates the values of

the organization and sets the culture that employees should follow and avoid scandals.

Leadership Behaviors

There are various behaviors that build trust in a team. The notable behaviors of team

members and leaders that will encourage trust include leading by example, communicating

effectively, exercising emotion intelligence such empathy, sympathy, being a good listener and

understanding, commitment and dedication to team roles, and showing respect and fairness

Trust is the believing that a team member will be able to help fulfill the set vision. Trust is

important to team performance. It is a determinant of productivity. Teams build trust through a

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number of initiatives such as building skills, cultivating knowledge and encouraging

responsibility among team members. The working skill such as communication, understanding

and collaboration is important to help build trust in teams, yet it is important for the leaders to be

endowed with the knowledge to fulfill the needs of leadership such as trust. Discharging

assigned roles effectively is one way of asserting capability, thereby earning the trust.

Jaime Escalante provides an opportunity to highlight various elements of leadership.

Firstly, leadership is role behavior and not management position; it requires one to go beyond the

management to exercising interpersonal and relationship skills. Secondly, instead of telling

members what to do, a leader shows them by example. Thirdly, leadership must be committed to

positive change other than just inspiring. Fourthly, leadership is about the unity of members;

leaders must strive to engage, valorize and accommodate diverse views of members. It should be

responsible to admit mistakes to enable the team to accept failures and commit itself to change.

Fifthly, leadership is role behavior and not management position; it requires one to go beyond

the management to exercising interpersonal and relationship skills. Leadership must commit to

positive change other than just inspiring, yet it should also be about the unity of members;

leaders must strive to engage, valorize and accommodate diverse views of members. More

importantly, leadership should not be toxic. It should acknowledge the diversity needs. It should

be able to recognize the emotional and psychological needs and devise strategies for engaging

them to be productive. It must also be driven by ethics. Leaders need to work closely with the

members and identify the needs for change (Moore, 2017).

Power & influence

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Jaime Escalante limits his power to get close to his learners, thereby creating an

opportunity understand their concerns and to influence them through motivation. Good leaders

do not need to control, but direct followers. Member autonomy and self-expression are one of the

key determinants of motivation. To provide this autonomy, leaders should develop a habit

directing, as opposed to commanding followers. The power relationship enables the students to

be free to the teacher and build trusting relationships that make them succeed in academics. The

leadership approach is also participative learning that enables every learner to be actively

involved in the learning process.

Contingency Theories

The social exchange theory ted motivation tends to play a crucial role in building a

reciprocal relationship between the leader and the follower. The leader builds the relationship by

embracing the humanist orientated theory of learning, which considers that learning is a personal

endeavor focused on fulfilling one’s potential. It regards the learner as a person who has both

cognitive and affective needs. Therefore, to realize the desired outcomes, the proponents assert

that learning should lay emphasis on the dignity, freedom and potential of the humans (Ashley,

2017). Moreover, learning needs to be student-centered and personalized, with learners receiving

facilitation from the teachers. The learning itself should be centered on the goal of nurturing self-

actualized people who co-exist in supportive and collaborative environment. In other words,

humanism learning approach recognizes the value of human freedom, potential and dignity. It is

hinged on the assumption that people act based on values and intentions. Therefore, it is opposed

to behaviorist theory that hinges on operation conditioning, and the cognitive views that

knowledge construction is critical for successful learning processes. Humanist considers that it is

necessary to study the individual learners entirely as they grow for that informs how the learning

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can be tailored to individual needs (Get Revising, 2016). However, this learning theory is overly

optimistic, assuming that learners are intrinsically motivated to choose positive learning paths.

This free will and motivation lack in some individuals. It also tends to fail when it overly

emphasizes on subjective experiences, which makes uniform learning difficult. More

importantly, the effectiveness of the approach cannot be scientifically ascertained because it does

not use rigorous and objective predictions that testable.

Followership

The followers in the film are Hispanic students who are struggling with academics. They

work closely with their leader, Jaime Escalante to identify the need for change. Consequently,

they work together to implement the change, which is essentially focused on improved academic

performance. Communication proves essential in facilitating the sharing of information between

team members and their leader. With effective communications, the team is able to work

together and achieve the change.

Teams

The team in the film comprises of the classroom and the teacher. The teacher is the team

leader. The relationship between the leader and team members leads to the inference that leaders

are not the only determinants of success, but team members. Therefore, success is best assured

by cooperation of the members playing their roles team, while the leader has to be a good team

player. Moreover, a good leader needs to be responsive to the needs of the followers and be

caring, listening, motivational, and understanding to the followers. The learners and the teacher

make up a team because they have a shared mission and objectives, and they share information

and engage in a relationship that reinforces the efforts of each other.

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Charisma & Transformational behaviors

Jaime Escalante is transformational. In this case, transformational leadership can be

defined as the approach that recognizes the social and psychological needs of the followers, and

works to address them as a means of empowering the followers to be productive (Rawung,

Wuryaningrat & Elvinita, 2015). This leadership approach aligns with the humanistic paradigm

that considers followers are special resources that needs to be treated through motivation such as

through inspiration and reward. This principle is necessary because the current teams have

various demands, which if unaddressed, could lead to lead to lack of employee morale, stress,

depression, burnout, turnover, and reduced productivity. The current workforce faces various

workplace challenges such as work overload, job uncertainties and reduced autonomy, among

others, and must be supported by listening and understanding and transformational leadership.

Jaime Escalante seemingly acknowledges these issues and embraces charismatic and

transformational leadership behaviors.

Organization Culture

Organization culture can be conceived as beliefs, behaviors, norms attitudes and notions

that define an organization. The school Jaime Escalante teaches is marred by the lack of

supportive organizational culture, an aspect that he strives to transform through leadership. The

school culture is used to poor performance that has led to beliefs that Hispanic students cannot

perform well in mathematics. The teachers and students are less motivated to work hard because

of this belief.

Organization culture affects productivity in many ways. In one way, organization culture

could contribute to overall success of the organization by creating an environment that is

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conducive to the realization of organization goals. In the other way, organizational culture can

harm or impede desirable productivity, and this often happens when the organizational cultural

values are out of line and do not reflect organizational goals. An organization culture often

functions as a unifying factor, in which all members identify with and strive to conform, yielding

desirable outcomes. Subsequently, organizational culture functions to complement leadership

because both are oriented at ensuring the realization of organization goals. When this unifying

factor ceases to exist, leadership is also weakened, rendering the organization to lose track or

engage in conflicts. There are a number of scenarios that are likely to result when organization

culture is weak, thereby costing organization productivity. Some of the notable sensitive areas

that are likely to be influenced by organization culture include teamwork, co-existence, and

ability to fulfill organization goals.

Without a supportive culture, conflicts may arise within organizations because of the

differences in beliefs and ways of thinking among members. At management levels, these may

be ideological or cultural conflicts, hindering the process of reaching agreements in

organizations. Conflicts may arise due to action incompatibility among members’ values.

Conflicts are also associated with circumstances in which group members hold different

perceptions regarding the achievement of organizational goals, a scenario that would be easily

addressed by developing a unifying organization culture.

Organization culture is also a constraint of organization leadership from the perspective

of cohesion. Cohesion refers to the act of working together to realize a common or mutual

benefit. Cohesion in multicultural settings is hampered when managerial groups and stakeholders

fail to provide forums for teamwork awareness. All the parties of concern feel this practice.

Furthermore, group members in an organization do not necessarily fail to cooperate because of

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irrationality or ignorance, but also because of lack of supportive organization culture. Therefore,

when organization leadership recognizes the lack of cooperation as an antecedent of worsened

organization culture, the teamwork and other challenges would be easily addressed.

What has been Learned about Leadership and Team Work

Three points that can be learned about leadership from the movie are:

 Leadership is a process of creating followership to achieve a common goal and requires

follower’s trust.

 Leadership is role behavior and not management position; it requires one to go beyond

the management to exercising interpersonal and relationship skills.

 Leadership is about the unity of members; leaders must strive to engage, valorize and

accommodate diverse views of members.

There are various points that have been learned from engaging in this teamwork, notably:

 Team/Group communication is essentially team/group member’s interactions. Team

communication ideally applies to groups containing three or more people.

 Usually, communication is often useful when it is a simple dialogue between two people.

However, as the number of individual increases, communication becomes difficult

because dialogue cannot effectively serve the demands of all the members.

 Group settings are characterized by various forms of challenges that need to be overcome

by employing quality communication strategies, which are translated to effective

decision-making processes, idea sharing, conflict resolution, harmony, cohesion, and

openness.

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References

Ashley, A. (2017). Learning Theories and Law: Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism.

Retrieved from https://ripslawlibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/learning-theories-and-

law-behaviorism-cognitivism-constructivism/

British Council. (2017). Global Definitions of Leadership and Theories of Leadership

Development: Literature Review. Retrieved from

https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/final_leadership_composite_report_wit

h_references_26-06-17.pdf

Get Revising (2016) Humanistic Approach. Retrieved from

https://getrevising.co.uk/grids/humanistic-approach-2

Menéndez, R. and Musca, T. (1988). Stand and Deliver. Tom Musca

Moore, R. (2017). Managing Remote Teams: Management Theories. Retrieved from

http://pmworldjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/pmwj57-Apr2017-Moore-

remote-teams-management-theories-featured-paper.pdf

Rawung, F., Wuryaningrat, N. & Elvinita, L. (2015). The Influence of Transformational And

Transactional Leadership On Knowledge Sharing: An Empirical Study On Small And

Medium Businesses In Indonesia. Asian Academy of Management Journal, 20(1):123–

145

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Movie Leadership Analysis A Focus on Stand and Deliver

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