Walt Disney released Remember the Titans in 2000, and it grossed $136,706,683. That success seems small in comparison to the accomplishments of the main character in the story, played by Denzel Washington. Coach Boone spoke at Canisius College about a month ago. As I learn more about the complexity of being a great leader, his accomplishment of the unification of such a culturally divided team, is remarkable.
Coach Herman Boone was chosen as head coach for the newly integrated TC Williams High School in 1971. The new organization was comprised of players who were formal rivals. From these individuals, in a time of war, desegregation and bussing, Coach Boone had to create a team.
Consider the definition of a team. According to dictionary.com, it is “a number of persons associated in some joint action.” How deceitfully simple.
The tactics that Coach Boone used to foster a team identity include demonstrating caring, remaining true to the vision and being positive while teaching a lesson. The lesson he taught to his team on the battleground of Gettysburg was strong. Thousands of people have fought and died for the same thing: the hate of different. Although Boone did not mandate love, respect for each other was demanded. This respect dissolved the boundaries that skin color had embedded and fostered a team.
Boone’s transformational leadership style resulted in cohesion among the coaching staff, football team, and the town of Alexandria, Virginia. According to Bernard Bass, transformational leadership occurs when:
- leaders broaden and elevate the interest of their employees
- when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group
- when they stir in their employees to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group.
Transformational leadership sounds almost mythical. How do you motivate employees (or teamates) in a manner that empowers and cultivates change, rather than demands it? When considering what the results of transformational leadership can be, it seems that the most difficult challenges can yield great results. For the Titans, it could be seen as the 1971 Virginia State Championship. But I don’t think that was why Disney made the movie- and neither does Coach Boone. The story is astounding because although this type of leadership is hard to maintain in adverse circumstances, remaining true to the vision and core values that you stand for, like Coach Boone did, can change the world you live in.
Thanks for the excellent post. It’s a very good & informative one.
For a few years, I am learning & working on the topic, Transformational leadership. Quite a lot of leaders in the human history have demonstrated exceptional success in transforming human life, work, economy, philosophy and above all well-being. I have recently analyzing some transformational leaders, their successes, traits and the secrets of their being of such kind of leaders.
My blog on this topic is http://www.squidoo.com/transformational-leaders . Here I have described the leadership of 3 great leaders. This list should be a bigger even. I have selected them not based on any category but on total impact of their leadership on their followers and the society or the community or even the world they lived in.
I think, transformational leaders need not to be a ruler or army chief or sectarian leader. Rather from the history of business, religion, technology we see a good number of individuals who marked their steps in this hall of fame. One thing is common in all transformational leaders, they are people’s leaders and they worked for collective well being and they succeed as a whole.
There seem to a few things to cover here Firstly, there is a whole ciaoersntovn to be had about who is a leader and the fact that everyone needs to be a leader from time to time but unless this is a group with which I have worked on a number of sessions in the past, this is probably not the time to to deal with this. Instead, I would be more pragmatic and try to give short quick reasons why it is still important to talk about the leadership competencies.The most straightforward one for me is to explain that focusing on leadership competencies during the action learning session helps us to be be more effective as a group. By choosing to work on specific aspects of our behaviour during the discussion, we will improve our own individual performance which will have the net effect of helping us to work more effectively as a group. I would also stress that because we will all be listening for examples of how other group members are performing against their leadership competencies, it will improve our listening skills and help us to be more constructive and supportive of one another.If it feels like the term leadership competency’ is too loaded then I think you could re-position the term as being an interpersonal work competency’. Later on at the end of the session (or when the group next meets and after having had a chat with the sponsor) you could highlight the competencies and use the opportunity to ask questions that help the group understand how those competencies link to leadership and how leadership links to their role.