In the movie, Coach Thomson is hired as a new football coach in a big club in Chicago. The town does not like him from the very beginning. The reason for this is that this small town is a town that doesn’t like change very much, for 10 years the football team has been playing zone defense, Coach Thomson wants to change to play a man-to-man defense, the townies don’t respond very well to this change. The club leaders arranged a conference with Coach Thomson in the beginning of the movie, here the town leaders question and told him that he must get a very unmotivated kid to play in order to be a contender.
In the middle of all the questions Coach Thomson ends the conference by walking out, he wants to lead the team by himself. In this situation Coach Thomson practiced a high risk/low relationship method. He tried to let the club leaders that he wants to lead the team by himself. At the first practice Coach Thompson uses High risk/low relationship again. He told the acting coach to leave his practice and he also changed their practice schedule. He tells his players that his practices aren’t designed for fun. He leads them by fear.
In the beginning the players fear him and they have absolutely no relationship. He intimidates the players by kicking two players off the team in the beginning of the first practice. This is again, high task, which is needed to develop a winning football team and low relationship.
In the conference in the beginning of the movie with the club leaders, they inform Coach Thompson that there is a player, named Henry that is not on the team but is an excellent player. When the coach talks to him he uses reverse psychology, he tells him that he doesn’t care if he is on the team. Here again he illustrates high task and low relationship leadership. Henry is a very important player to the team because he has the most skills.
In the first game the coach makes a rule that they must make four passes before they can shoot. They do this for a while and they are losing so Henry starts to shoot the ball every time he gets it. Granted he made every single shot and tied up the game from a huge deficit, Coach Thomson pulls Henry out of the game. He is enforcing his rule of the four passes then shoot rule. He shows here that he is not kidding around and is not going to play favorites. This is high risk and low relationship once again.
He uses an autocratic form of leadership. The first time that Coach Thompson starts to change the way he coaches the team is in the club meeting. He presents himself very independently and tells the club that he is very proud of the team. This is the first time he uses high relationship.
Coach Thompson believes that the autocratic leadership and high risk/low relationship method worked so well that he got intentionally kicked out of the game so prove to the players that they now have the skills to win a game and do it by themselves. Task was lowered here and the relationship was raised even higher than before. At the end of the movie the team made it to the state championship game.
In the locker room Coach Thompson didn’t give one of his usual speeches, he just talked to them like a friend, not a coach. He used low relationship/low task here. For the first time in the whole season he allowed the players to make a decision, they actually changed one of his decisions and he allowed it.
He allowed the players decide who would take the last shot to win the game. He went with the change because he knew that they had the confidence to do the right thing. He used low risk/high relationship and democratic leadership at the end of the game and the end of the season. Leadership styles are very important.
In beginning Coach Thompson used high risk/low relationship and autocratic leadership. He had to do this because the players didn’t have any basic skills. At the end they did have the skills therefore he used low risk/high relationship and democratic leadership. Not every method works with everyone, therefore leaders have to evaluate the situation and use the best method.
At the beginning the coach is an example of autocratic leader because he was telling the players what to do but do not listen to what they say (opinion). The Coach know what he is doing and how to do it, he give orders to the players and do not want much feedback from them.
However, at the end he changed to a democratic leader. This is shown when he starts to involve the player in decisions. He tends to listen to their ideas and ensure that they contribute to the discussion.
The Coach doesn’t achieve paternalistic because he doesn’t act like a father and he doesn’t let the players to try to do what is best for them. He doesn’t tend to tell employees what to do but will often explain their decision and also he is not concerned about the social needs of the players.
FACTORS WHICH AFFECTS LEADERSHIP STYLE
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Personality- leaders are supposing to instructions and make decisions immediately, with the speed required in a crisis (high risk). Minimal risk of coordination problems increasing.
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Risk-when a decision has to be made urgently and involves a high degree of risk e.g. selling a football player. The leader is likely to be quite autocratic.
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Time constraint-if there is plenty of time to discuss matters and only a low chance of it going wrong (low risk) the style may well be more democratic.
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Skills of manager and workforce-The leaders are expected to be backed up by a well-trained support staff of experts in a range of relevant fields. However workforce has to be well skilled and trained in the following:
- Responsible
- Teamwork
- Communication
- Friendship
- Self-respect
- Recognition
- Relationship
- Abilities
ANALYSIS
- Leadership style will depend on factors such as the task, the people involved and the amount of risk.
- Effective management training could be a useful way to persuade leaders to be flexible.
- The best style of management at any moment will depend on an enormous range of factors such as personalities and abilities of the manager and the worker and the nature of the task.
- The way in which a leader deals with his or her colleagues can have a real impact ob their motivation and how effectively they work.
- Leader who always involves discussion with his or her workers will gain better ideas and a more highly motivated workforce.
CONCLUSION
I conclude by saying that leadership is very important. The reason is because they provide vision and direction and are therefore a key element of business success. As a result, any successful company shows that it has strong leadership. When autocratic leadership is used at the beginning of a leadership it helps to see what how people will think that you are serious when leading them. But I prefer when democratic leadership is being used because it helps the employees to feel responsible of what they do; they get a chance to make opinions and decisions.
