Coach Yoast called a white team meeting where he announced his intention to take a year off and move on to a different high school next year to be a head coach again. The parents were outraged at the notion of their children playing for a black coach. The players, one by one, stood up and decided they would sit out the season if they weren’t playing for Yoast. Coach Yoast was immediately faced with the impact of his decision to leave, the breakup of an entire team, and the students losing out on everything they had previously worked so hard for.
In leadership, we are not always lucky enough to see the immediate repercussions of our actions. Coach Yoast was fortunate enough to see the consequences of his decision and, with a bold leadership move, decided to stay on as an assistant coach for the good of the kids. Heifetz and Linsky say that in leadership, “the goals extend beyond material gain or personal advancement.” (pg. 3) No longer swollen by pride, Yoast clearly puts himself and his ego in the back seat for the greater good of the students needs. The perception often times is that if you are not moving forward you are being left behind. Leadership often “means convincing (someone) to take a leap of faith in themselves and in life.” (Heiftiz & Linsky, pg. 26) By risking his pride and ego now for possible benefits later required a huge leap of faith for Yoast. It goes right to the heart of the loss associated with leadership that Heiftz & Linsky write about. The idea that giving up something now that seams terribly important, ultimately benefits you later is crucial in helping to facilitate adaptive change. Yoast saw the situation for what it was and effectively accepted the challenge to be a leader.
What Boone and Yoast weren’t aware of was the School Board had not expected Boone make it out of the two week training camp at the start of the season. After defying those odds and uniting the squad at camp, the School Board angrily put Boone’s job on the line, saying if he lost one game he would be fired. From the very beginning of the movie until the state semifinal playoff game, Coach Boone’s job is not expected to last. So in addition to the small matter of integrating a football team, being the focus of community hatred, you can add the fear of losing his job to Coach Boone’s challenges. Coach Boone never did tell Yoast that his job was on the line. At points, it was clear that Boone questioned if Yoast was part of the threat, if he was working for or against him. This was evidenced in Boone asking Doc, his Line Coach, if he thought Yoast was intentionally throwing the first game when the opposition scored on its opening possession. The failure to communicate led to this mistrust. However, had Boone articulated his situation to Yoast, the outcome may have been very different.
This is an example of how in leadership, especially in regards to leading through adaptive change, there are not necessarily right or wrong answers—some answers are better than others, but choices have negative repercussions. This is why leadership doesn’t feel good. This is why real leadership often involves doing what is unpopular. If real leadership was easy, organizations and communities would not resist it. Real leadership often involves reexamining your “habits, values, and attitudes” (H & L, pg. 27) and calls for “hard transitions, adjustments, and loss in people’s lives.” (ibid, pg 48) Both Yoast and Boone answered the call, and respond to these challenges in various ways.
By relinquishing some of his formal authority by accepting the assistant coaching job, coach Yoast put himself in a better position to lead. He was a role model for the white players who would eventually have to learn to swallow their pride by accepting lesser roles on the team. Coach Boone and Coach Yoast each had very unique styles of coaching which helped integrate the team. When needs weren’t being met by one coach, the other was there to offer the challenges and supports through their development. However, these benefits were not without consequence. At times, Boone articulated that Yoast was stepping on toes by babying the players, while Boone was trying to be very hard nosed with them. This was especially evident at camp before the Gettysburg run. When Boone had woken the football players up at 3:30 in the morning, Yoast comments in front of the players that they aren’t at boot camp. Boone gives a quick glare, turns around and starts running. Coach Boone was raising the anxiety level to the point where adaptive work could take place. Whether the intent was to get the players to unite and be angry with him, or wear them down to the point of exhaustion, the outcome was ultimately the beginning of a team forming that night.
The leadership of the coaches, serves as a model of leadership to the students. Gerry Bertier, a white All-American, and the team captain, gives the verbal okay for the white players to start playing that night by calling out one of his white teammates who had intentionally missed a block. By Bertier calling out his white teammate, he showed that it was no longer acceptable for players to hide behind their race as an excuse for not performing. Coach Boone had effectively orchestrated the conflict to a point where this adaptive change could take place. Just as the coaches had worked out their differences and learned to balance each other out, the players were called upon to do the same. The players, as the season progressed, began to offer their starting positions to teammates of different races if that teammate was more qualified. By the end of the season the team was truly functioning as a complete unit.
It was the player buy-in that eventually led the Titans to greatness. Two games into the season, when the team had gone 2-0 two of the ‘role players’ on the team called a team meeting. In doing so, they were exercising informal authority. Lewis Lastik, a white offensive lineman, and Darryl Stanton, a black defensive lineman, saw the team headed towards ‘Abilene.’ In this case, the team was not managing winning effectively. Although the team had won its first two games, they still hadn’t really come together as a team. After camp, they had returned to the reality of Arlington Virginia, a place filled with distrust and racism, and they had allowed the message from the community to resonate within themselves again. Lastik and Stanton called the informal team meeting and Bertier and Julius Campbell, the informal black authority on the team rallied behind their call, validating their cry for team unity. The team won the next game because of this team meeting but the team can’t look to this event as the catalyst for their perfect season.This sentence doesn’t make sense. There are multiple tenses, and the subject changes from the rest of a pretty good paragraph.
Their were two key intra-racial exchanges that took place that served as the true catalysts for the adaptive work that was to be reflected in the whole of the community. At training camp, Bertier called to his white teammates to start playing as a team, a big step to getting a football team to win games. He had essentially mirrored what Yoast did by joining Boone’s staff, putting aside differences to come together and win. I feel like you already make this point earlier. I don’t know. However, when Yoast is out at dinner with the coach that he’d been with for over ten years, he made a decision that changed the course of events. When Assistant Coach Tyrell calls Yoast to choose sides, black or white, Yoast responds to Tyrell stating that, “you gotta do what you gotta do.” Coach Yoast told his friend and assistant coach for 10 years that he won’t tolerate racism. Tyrell, unable to change his ways, walked out of the restaurant. How deep seeded was/is racism? It was easier for Tyrell to walk out on a friend of 10 years than to treat Boone as an equal.
Bertier had to make the same difficult decision with his best friend Ray Budds. Budds had intentionally missed a block in a game resulting in an injury for a black teammate. Bertier saw what happened, went to Coach Boone, the formal authority, and asked that Budds be kicked off the team. Boone, steadfast in his rules that he doesn’t cut any player, gave the task back to Bertier. As Team Captain, Bertier had to make a choice similar to the one Yost had made earlier: friendship and loyalty vs. doing what’s right, even when the “right” thing was extending beyond cultural norms. Bertier waited outside for Budds and released him from the team. Budds’ response was that Boone doesn’t cut players. Bertier acknowledged that and told him that it was his own decision. Again we revisit the Heiftz and Linsky “(leadership) asks them to take a loss, experience uncertainty, and even express disloyalty to people and cultures.” (pg. 30) For Bertier, the disloyalty was not only to his best friend but to his race as well. He didn’t allow Budds to hide behind his color anymore, and wasn’t going to be used by him any longer.
There were several other intra-racial events that occurred throughout the film. They were however, exclusively white on white instances. This is no coincidence. The adaptive work that needed to take place needed to happen within the white community. Whites needed to start making whites accountable for their actions. It is with great precision and calculation that these events took place. The risk of assassination is extraordinary when calling for adaptive change because you’re asking so much of the people changing. Naturally this raises the risk factor for those leading. Whites serve as the informal authority to other whites in this battle, calling their brothers to go against the formal authority, in one case it was Yoast calling out a referee who was throwing the game. In this instance, Yoast threatened to go to the press to take the referee and even himself to jail if need be, in an effort to persuade the referee to not listen to the Hall of Fame Committee members that had solicited the referee to throw the game. The referee, from that point on, called a fair game. Again, it was with great risk on Yoast’s part that he made his white brother accountable. Time and time again, Yoast and Bertier were called upon keep their brothers accountable. Without this component, the success of the team would have been meaningless.
The community does not have to support a winner. Assistant Coach Tyrell walked out on an undefeated team. Ray Budds allowed teammates to be injured. It could have been just as easy for the community to turn its back on the Titans as it was for Tyrell and Budds. However, the answer is quite clear. Player buy-in. The coaches began modeling appropriate behavior, as they began to believe in integration. As Bertier and other formal and informal authorities on the team broke down and worked through their racially motivated personal barriers, and their belief in integration shifted, the practice of integration grew to be functional, and became a positive shift for the communtiy. It was the mindset of the characters that drove the reality of the situation. Their reality mirrored their predominant thought. Once they believed that integration was good, it was good. The football team believed in it, so the families believed in it. This attitude rippled through community until they had a shared vision in the form of a team, and consequently and cause, that they could believe in.
When watching the film closely, you notice that after the third game, and the caners Tyrell and Budds are removed from the team, the wins come easier and the crowd becomes more integrated. There are no clear white and black sections anymore, instead unified crowds cheering on the Titans. Wins alone weren’t enough. The players were faced with tough choices and made good decisions. Through the examples of Coach Boone and Coach Yoast the team was able to mirror their excellence.
In the montage of footage during their mid-season winning streak a quote on locker room mirror flashes briefly on the screen which reads: “reflection is the better part of a champion.” Adaptive change can call authority figures to be role models and in some part victims of positive adaptive change. It is in this context where we can look to emulate leaders. Let us not forget the distinction between a leader, an authority figure and a manager. Leaders call us to do what is right for the right reasons. In doing this, the integrity of the process is as important as the outcome. Authority figures and managers however, aren’t necessarily as concerned with the process as the product.
Remember the Titans offered many opportunities to examine various leadership styles. It was also an opportunity to take a look at the different ways authorities interact with one another, as well as other leaders. The movie is a reminder that adaptive work is a slow and tedious process. Every step forward in the process is small, while any setback may be huge. With this in mind, we must not become victims of our experiences and of our lives. We must stop reacting to situations and begin to look at why we are conditioned to respond the ways that we do to different stimuli. Many of my struggles with this class have centered around my desire to inspire adaptive change within others. I now see that I alone can do little to help this process. Adaptive change is the result of partnerships and collaboration between leaders and followers. Each plays an integral role in the process. The eventual success of the T.C. Williams High School Football Team was the product of the hard work and dedication of the coaches, players, players families, teachers and Arlington community. Without even one of these components, the process couldn’t have happened. When facing adaptive challenges now, we can look to the Titans spirit for inspiration to reflect the integrity, strength and courage they demonstrated.
