Leading by example

Our assignment for this week came as a bit of a shock to me.  Unfortunately, I had underestimated the "in-depth" nature that our blog assignments would be, and decided to wait until after our SLA meeting to start.  However, I believe that I can come up with my best work under a time crunch so here it goes:

In this scene from The Longest Yard, one of my favorites, Caretaker informs Paul Crewe of something that he already knew; their players are horrible.  So Crewe puts himself in harm's to get some "hershey kisses."  In this example, Crewe goes through the Five Stages of Exemplary Leadership in order to inspire some players to follow him onto the football team.  He models the way by entering the basketball game.  Inspiration for a shared vision derives from playing the guards.  The process gets real challenging once the game starts to get dirty, but Crewe manages to keep respect throughout by continuing to model the way despite getting ripped off several times.  He enables Rabbit to act  and encourages the heart at the very end by winning fair and square, but still getting ripped off in the result.

I love this example because it is very real.  I have played any amount of pick up basketball games and this is the best way to gain respect.  The more someone talks, the less everyone respects them.  By just standing up to the group on their own court, he was able to gain the respect from Rabbit and eventually from everyone.

At the same time, I think that this clip is a great example of servant leadership.  Crewe is the clear leader of the inmate football team and has a lot on the line.  He very easily could have asked the guards to force the inmates to play with him.  However, he knew that if he inspired the masses, he would get more dedication out of them.  Crewe went around to different players and gained their respect in completely different ways to inspire them all to join a cause and believe in him as their leader.

You're going to start to notice a trend in my videos, I LOVE sports.  I think that sports are one of the most vital aspects of a young person's development.  The humbleness and oneness that working together for one goal brings out in a person, is unmatched in any other activity.  In this clip from Remember The Titans, Coach Boone is taking the boys on a run at 3 A.M. during their week-long preseason camp.  Coach Boone is considered a very extreme and charismatic leader because of his military style coaching.  But in the hostile environment that he was coaching in where different races were at his neck, it was completely necessary.  If he didn't lead with ridiculousness, his players would never do the ridiculous, which playing with boys of the other color was at that time.  

Coach Boone talks about how much boys just like them gave up in the Battle of Gettysburg and how it was now their turn to come together or the battle will be lost.  Liking one another is different from respecting one another and all he asked was that they earn each other's respect.  From then on, the team finally decides to be open to each other's differences and start to respect that they all had enough skill to become a great team together.