Analysis of Leadership in Remember the Titans

Introduction

'Remember the Titans' The film takes place in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971. A time of segregation, T.C.Williams High school football team has just become integrated and has received a new black head coach, Herman Boone. He took the job of head coach from a white, Coach Bill Yoast. There are some racial tensions. Boone offers BillYoast a job as an assistant coach and he accepts after the white players threaten to sit out the season. During football camp, the boys become better acquainted and begin to bond and live in harmony.

Two players who really had it out for each other, Gary Bertier and Julius Campbell, learned to become the best of friends and lead the team to many victories. Right before the championship game, Bertier got into a bad car accident which made him paralyzed from the waist. These devastated everyone especially Julius. The Titans win the championship game and not only teach themselves that football has no race, but they teach the coaches and the whole town that integration has become more welcome to T.C. Williams High School.

The movie ends with the death of GaryBertier ten years later and everyone coming together once again. Within each phase of the movie, different leadership theories will be used to assess leadership style exhibited by Herman Boone in the film. This analysis will provide insight into how a team requires a path-goal model of leadership at various points of growth.

Path Goal Model Of Leadership

(DirectiveàSupportiveàParticipativeàAchievement) DirectiveàSupportiveCoach Boone use the path-goal model of leadership. Coach Boone leverages a combination of achievement-oriented and instrumental or directive leadership. Of the four path-goal theory leadership styles, it is not uncommon for leaders to use a mixture of more than one or all four. The nature of contingency leadership means that one or more of the different styles might be utilized to achieve goals in a path like a manner.

According to (Butler 2008) such a mixture is often the norm in the path-goal model of leadership, 'These styles are not mutually exclusive; in fact, the same leader can adopt them at different times and in different situations' (Butler 2008). Coach Boone uses a combination of leadership styles. Boone is very directive in leadership style with respect to motivating his players and coaches to achieve goals. Coach Boone assumes responsibility by delegating tasks, taking responsibility and making key decisions, Boone'sdriving was a commanding absolutism.

Actualizing a situation of zero-fun' that passed on to the Titan players that he governed with a tight clench hand. He did this to enhance the sincerity of their situation as one of the primary coordinated football teams and their interest in faultlessness and a want to win together as a team.

Conversely, Coach Boone is a dictatorial leader, he right away affirmed his approval over his team, Yoast and the other subordinate administrators. He delivers to the team that 'This is no democracy. It is a dictatorship. I am the law,' asseverating that he is a power to be figured with who will take their team to progress in as much as they are eager and focused on making as he says. On the events when his approval was tested.

Boone's activities influenced it to clear that his places caput supervisor was known to be usurped or fooled with. For example, at the point when the white skipper of the team. Gary Bertier, arrogantly advisesBoone the spots that all the white players will play. Boone snaps him once again into line by expressing him that the Titans are his team. He is the Alpha. Moreover, Coach Boone assumes responsibility by solving the racial differences between the players. On their way to training camp, Boone viably 'incorporates' by splitting the two buses by defensive and offensive players, not by race. He makes them grudgingly sit and live with a player, not of same race.

He gives each a task to learn one thing about every player of an alternate race on the team, saying 'I don't care if you like each other, but you will respect each other.' Later He informs each player, again in a dictating manner, that each of them must get to know every other player on the team, bringing to him a write up about each player as they move on to the next. Unless they do so and until they do so with each player, they will have to do 'three-a-days or even four-a-days' practices. In this way, Boone tends to the racial battle that time of societal convention has made to partition the team. He is conscious that his first key decisions to interfere with this scornful hindrance will let the team turn together as alone unit.

Coach Boone handled all negative responses with positive responses that defused the tension between all members. Coach Boone holds a key vision to supply way and courage to his team. Boone's vital vision was to handle the Titan's corporate vitality to achieve perfection as a team and change this push for faultlessness into a corporate want to win together as a team. 'You got anger, that's good you're going to need it, you got aggression that's even better you're going to need that, too...

Football is about controlling that anger, harnessing that aggression into a team effort to achieve perfection!' A segment of Boone's key vision was to request and have perfection from the team by handling their corporate vitality. He urged them to not use their rage against each other, in any case, rather change it into a vehicle to drive them to surpass achievement.

Pride and achievement

'Everything we going to do is changing, we got to change. We going to change the way we run, we going to change the way we eat, we going to change the way we block, we going to change the way we tackle, we going to change the way we win. It is desire. Desire!' Boone realized that no issue with the race of an individual, the team's desire to win would be the gum that would keep them together.  Boone uses diversity management as it should be, based on respect for skills and qualities, not culture or colour. As (Northhouse 2010) notes: 'For diversity management activities to be successful they must focus on accepting a range of differences between people. That is, they should not treat someone as special because he or she is a member of a certain group, but because of the unique skills or abilities he or she brings to the job.'

Regardless of anything else, Boone makes them really put stock in themselves as a team. In this way he has solidly persuaded them that his vision of achievement is conceivable that they can cooperate and win, then made an organized team by expressing 'you don't have to like each other, but you will respect each other.' He realized that the mass of prejudice that isolated the two races must be ruptured in an intense way. From the moment he requested them to sit together and realize individual certainties about a player of an alternate colour. He was hindering down the hindrance that was obstructing the advancement of a genuine team. 

Participative Achievement

Coach Boone now being a transformational leader, leads his team to perfection and is able to promote unity, respect while changing bias and attitudes along the way. Coach Boone has the main traits of transformational leaders: charisma, self-confidence, vision, environmental sensitivity, intellectually stimulating, interpersonal considerate, and inspirational (Northouse 2010). Coach Boone has charisma. He is able to lure his players and his neighbours from being resentful of and prejudiced against him, to cheering for him when he succeeds due to his forceful personality. He is self-confident.

At one-point coach, Yoast tells him there is more to worry about than football. Coach Boone tells him, 'I'm a winner. I'm a winner'. He provides specific guidance and establishing clear and rigorous schedules and rules. He was legitimate and trusty. The team, while under his driving, always knew he had their best interests at heart. He was an overcomer and noteworthy, who stood relentless in his moral thought processes. He was at any point simply with every team part. with the arrangement that the best player will play, colour doesn't matter.' 

Above all else, his drive and determination to win stands out as one of the strongest element of his integrity. One may argue this as a segment of solidarity, however since there were numerous cases that uncovered perhaps narrow-mindedness. An individual battle inside Boone that was perhaps an underground inspiration for his going up against the team. Boone 'I did--we did--not come this far to just breakdown and lose now... I'm a winner, I'm going to win,' Regardless of this, it is still just to express that Boone's own charisma and integrity was the main thrust that really inspired the team. Later, Boone tells them.

In essence, Coach Boone is the perfect textbook path-goal model leader as he defines one:  'Subordinates will react favourably to leaders who are perceived as helping make them progress toward various goals by clarifying the paths to such rewards, the theory contends that the things a leader does to help clarify the nature of the tasks and reduce or eliminate obstacles will increase subordinates' perceptions that working hard will lead to good performance and that good performance, in turn, will be recognized and rewarded.' (Northhouse 2010). 

Conclusion

In conclusion, Coach Boone deliver different leadership approach at various points of team growth, assisting the team in overcoming challenges. The movie Remember the Titans provides an excellent study of leadership principles and challenges in the imperfect environment typical to real-life leadership, scenarios. The movie offers various lessons for leaders facing a similar situation. For instance, in the case where a leader's authority is challenged out of characteristics rather than ones' performance and capabilities, establishing a dictatorial leadership with clear guidelines for performance of tasks, would ensure members do not sabotage team performance.

However, once team cohesiveness has been established, a more transformational leadership participative approach would better the confidence of the members, thusallowing them to tap their strengths to the benefit of the team.

Accordingly, a principal lesson that is portrayed in the movie is that of matching one leadership approach to a prevailing situation. In the end, the team achieved its objective of being integrated and united towards one goal, victory, the Titans play better as one team in their last practice, they shout and cry victory, and they sing soul music together while riding their bus home. The outcome was ade-freezing or cementing of their united aspiration for victory. 

References

1. Butler, Timothy (2008) Power, People and Achievement: Three interwoven patterns. Harvard Business Press, ISBN-13: 978-14221-7602-3
2. Greenberg, J. (2002). ManagingBehaviour in Organizations, 3rd Edit. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
3. House, R.J. (1996). Path-goal theory of leadership: Lessons, legacy, and a reformulated theory. LeadershipQuarterly. 7 (3): 323-352.
4. Johnson, C. (2005). Meeting the ethical Challenges of Leadership 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SagePublications, Inc.
5. Northhouse, Peter G. (2013).Leadership Theory and Practice, 6th Edit. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
6. Oman C. & Bruckheimer J.,(Producer), & Yakin, B. (Director). (2000). Remember the Titans [Motionpicture]. United States: Walt Disney Motion Picture. Remember the Titans. Wikipedia.Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remember_the_Titans [AccessedFebruary 05, 2018].

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