The Imitation Game Directed by Morten Tyldum

Directed by Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game is a biographical depiction of the life of cryptanalyst Alan Turing. The film is set during World War Two and depicts the journey of Turing and a team of five cryptologists during their endeavour to crack the German Enigma code and aid Britain in ending the war. The enigma machine was the main form of telecommunication for German military operations during world war Two and was used to scramble and protect their communication from opposing militaries (Clements, K, 2014). Through much resistance and scepticism from Army hierarchy and his co- workers Turing designs and builds a machine, “Christopher”, that is able to compute and decipher the German messages coded by Enigma. This essay will use ‘Responsible Leadership for Practice’ theory to analyse and comment on the leader/follower behaviour in the film and the contextual factors in the film that have aided or prevented responsible leadership.

In the films temporal setting, Turing’s character is depicted as an eccentric and socially awkward man who is single minded in his belief that he is capable of breaking the German Enigma code. Turing is often arrogant and dismissive towards his teammates and disliked by most stakeholders due to his personality. He is displayed as ignorant to social cues involving humour, mateship and sarcasm and has difficulty displaying gratitude, happiness or affection. To a modern audience it is clear that Turing would be diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome which is an autism spectrum disorder that inhibits normal emotional, social and communication skills (Victorian State Government, 2014).

Leadership can be defined as the ability to influence a group towards the achievement of a vision or set of goals (Robbins et al, 2010). Turing is not a natural or charismatic leader, but he eventually gains followers through respect of his knowledge and expertise (Robbins et al, 2010). Although Turing does not embody the most responsible leadership characteristics within the team, he is the most appropriate subject for this essay as he his character has authority and is recognised as the leader by his team, furthermore he is the only member of the team to have followers, without which leadership does not exist (Pless. N and Maak. T, 2011).Turing’s leadership style is autocratic/authoritarian. In line with the characteristics of this leadership style, Turing prefers to have individual control over all decisions that are made, and he does so by using his own personal judgements and ideas, rarely accepting any advice or input from his constituency (Clegg et al, 2015). He is a task-orientated leader with poor leader-member relations due to his inhibited social communication skills (Robbins et al, 2010).

Responsible Leadership for Performance theory is focused on leadership that is responsible to both people and performance (University of Pretoria, 2010). RLP defines responsible leadership as ‘leadership