Macfarland Movie Leadership and Lessons

                MacFarland                

                Hazelle Gulane                

                Introduction to Management: MGMT1101                        

                Deborah Hooker        

                March 15, 2018                

MacFarland Leadership and Lessons

                 It's a great opportunity to watch the McFarland movie where it shows the compassion, strength, and power of leadership.  Each character displays important roles and twists to make the movie meaningful, expressive and relevant to the viewers. Moreover, this movie plays the essence of being a leader that could make possible ways to bring a change for each and everyone. Some of the people might have different intuition and opinions about the story but for me, it portrays all significant factors and qualities of a leader that we need to execute in a real-life situation.

            Jim White is one of the main characters of the story. He portrays the role of a father, physical education instructor, running and football coach. As the story goes on, Jim White lose his job due to profanity and fight with students in Saint Paul and chairman of the school board. Therefore, he decided to move with his family in a faraway land of MacFarland, California, which is one of the poorest town in America. On this scene, he developed the behavioral theories of leadership where it has three components such as democratic style, autocratic style, and laissez-faire style.

             Firstly, he showed the autocratic style by being the head of the family and dominant chain of command in decision-making where the family members had no opportunity to against on his plan to move other place and he dictates what is good for the sake of his own family.

These are the characteristic of being autocratic where most of the decisions within himself, no or less consultations, dictates all strategies and methods to be used, and commits on highly structured and rigid firm and discourage open ideas to group members (Cherry, 2018, para. 2). These things can cause resentment, lack of cohesiveness and creativity among members. I learned that in autocratic style has strengths and weaknesses. It depends on the situation how that person handles the decision-making. Basically, they do a decision based on their own perspective and judgment. Therefore, the wife and her kids have no choice but to stay and live in the new house in McFarland.

            Furthermore, the story flows smoothly when he discovered seven young men students who were proactive and energetic individuals. After that, he realized why not try to use this potential strength and talent to make a big break in running and be part of the first cross country team. Secondly, he also demonstrated the value of democratic style where he encouraged each of them to participate and don’t ever quit on the game. Lastly, I noticed how he executed a strategy through empowering the members of the team by providing practice sessions and training due to their hectic schedules and personal life. In addition, giving responsibility while the competition is ongoing he talked quickly to Thomas Valles to back up his fellow teammates and boost their performance level to get on the finish line. The power of democratic style brings openness and confidence among members such as collaborative effort in decision-making, giving a chance to take responsibility and acknowledging participation (Study.com,2018, para 2). As a result, they built a strong foundation of relationship and successful achievements in the running competition. On this scene, I felt democratic style prepares people not to depend on the leader but to take part them achieving the goal.