Transformational Leadership in the Film Woodstock - Movie Review Example

? Transformational Leadership in the Film Woodstock Transformational leadership Transformational leadership entails possessing the capacity to inspire changes in a group. Transformational leaders, therefore, are enthusiastic, passionate and energetic. They seek to understand the needs and challenges of the members of the group under their watch and help them develop a focused and comprehensive approach for facing a challenge (Brower & Balch, 2005). In the Woodstock festival, there seems to be a mixed category of leaders with different types of leadership. Some of these leaders and their leadership styles have proved effective in attaining the various group or family objectives while others have failed to yield any positive result. Event organizers and musicians Woodstock begins with the music festival organizing team preparing the stage and venue of the festival. Under good leadership, the team seems to be enjoying carrying out their assigned duties for the benefit of the whole group. The union of the team is remarkable, perhaps a portrayal of the good transformational leadership traits displayed by the leader. Furthermore, good leadership among the event organizers is also evident when they remain with the organizers as it begins to rain. This is a critical element especially, when the main intention of the festival was to entertain. The move by the organizers and performers to remain behind with the revelers as it began to rain, could be deemed as a positive step that significantly reduced sudden commotions that could possible cause a stampede leading to death or injuries of those in attendance. They courageously and calmly steer the crowd away from acts that could cause accidents such as leaning on the towers and the stage. Subsequently, the event manager provides idealized influence on the crowd by assuring everyone to remain calm amid the confusion as a result of the sudden storm. Similarly, he calmly leads the stewards in covering the equipment and disconnecting electrical equipment. The event organizer also demonstrates a considerable degree of intellectual simulation, an important aspect of transformational leadership (Lang, 2011). He quickly initiates a means of helping the crowd to persevere the heavy rains by initiating a random song. The musicians and music bands also form another important group that displays transformational leadership styles and abilities. Cohesion is critical for a music band performance particularly in the quest to reach out to the huge crowd that had gathered at the festival. In most of the music groups that participated, there seemed to be a group leader that organized the group into the respective instrument players in creating harmony and entertaining. Without transformational leadership, it would seem rather difficult to organize each of the participants in the groups. This type of transformational leadership is deemed as overt owing to the fact that each member of the music groups has almost equal roles to play. As transformational leaders, the musician and the event organizers remain as a unit of genuine followers and do not in any way use exploitative or manipulative behavior to get what they believe they deserve. At the same, they also display some emotional connection with their followers, which is created through respect for individual desires of their followers. The musicians, who are transformational leaders, further enhance the emotional connection with their followers by encouraging them to experience their own worth by singing along. In an organization point of view, this can be regarded as a way of encouraging followers to utilize their own skills and deploy their cognitive abilities to transform themselves and an organization (Lang, 2011). The connection between the musicians and their followers, just like the connection between a transformational leader and his followers in an organization, is evident in the manner in which the followers admire ad identify with them and want to imitate them. Irrespective of the deviant behavior that the musicians instigated among their followers, the musicians and event organizers remained transformational leaders. What matters was that the leader’s performance was capable of transforming the followers’ attitudes and behavior. Parents Parents are also portrayed as covert transformational leaders who have fall to the games and desires of their children. This is evident on several occasions during the photographer’s interviews with some of the young revelers at the festival. Similarly, the young revelers also portray parents as dictatorial leaders ruling their children with an iron fist and do not relate well with their children. This goes to the extent of disowning their children rather than communicating with their children. Moreover, some young attendees portray their parents as liberal and full of wisdom, particularly when the parents agree to listen to them and let them pursue their own interests. Such parents can be considered as covert leaders influencing their children’s decision indirectly by allowing them to pursue their dreams. Stewards The presence of the stewards at the event was critical in ensuring that accessibility to various amenities was easy. Some were in charge of directing traffic towards the parking areas available, as well as directing various performers to and from the stage. By so doing, they ensured that the revelers were well entertained without interruptions. Furthermore, the stewards were concerned with the issuance of ticketing to enter the arena while keeping at bay those without tickets. As such, stewards also acted as transformational leaders that were geared towards ensuring that the festival ran as planned. They demonstrated their leadership overtly using force where necessary. In one particular incident, a steward can be seen keeping off some revelers off stage, who got carried away and jumped on the stage. Moreover, as transformational leaders guiding a group of people, some stewards were responsible for protecting the various instruments and appliances of the festival organizers. The yoga trainer As the festival proceeded into the third day, with tiredness taking toll on the revelers, the organizers arranged for a number of activities to keep the revelers entertained and as a way of enhancing bonding. One of such events was Yoga that was led by a Yoga instructor. With the main aim of Yoga being to calm the mind and exercise the body, the instructor served as a transformational leader acting overtly to direct the group towards achieving the aims of training. He provides an inspirational motivation by articulating a vision that is appealing and inspiring to the revelers. Furthermore, as a transformational leader, the yoga instructor also develops effective means of communicating optimism while actively demonstrating some of the yoga techniques (Bass & Riggio, 2012). Furthermore, the yoga instructor is mainly motivated to use yoga to help the people abstain from the use of drugs. His advice to the people to channel their energy into yoga as a means of avoiding drug use and abuse is based on personal experience. Additionally, he also possesses a transformational leadership quality of paying treating each individual as a peer by paying individualized considerations to the individual reveler’s concerns. Through this leadership technique, he manages to influence a significant number of people as evident in the crowd that is practicing the yoga moves alongside him. Some peers can also be considered as transformational leaders based on the manner in which they are capable of influencing and guiding their friends to join them in various activities. On some occasions, a young man could begin the mud sliding game and swimming, and was later joined by a number of other participants. The games would soon attract a huge crowd. How it happened From the movie, it is evident that despite the huge crowd, of nearly 300,000 people, the success of the festival was attributable to good leadership. Leadership was fundamental among the event organizers themselves who needed to ensure that all the systems and equipment were up and running and the performers appeared on stage on a certain sequence and keeping the revelers entertained according to their desires. In this context, a leader is regarded as a facilitator of peoples’ desire. They also to the extent of providing some of the basic social amenities such as medical supplies and services, as well as telephone services for the revelers to contact their families back at home and assure them of their safety. However, this is not sufficient enough to warrant smooth running, the leader is required to be visionary and aim at creating certain visions and guidelines to follow, especially in the event of confusion (Brower & Balch, 2005). Such was the case during the festival, where having provided all the entertainment that the crowd desired, the event organizer was required to lead and provide guidelines for controlling the crowd in some situations. References Bass, B. M., & Riggio, ?. E. (2012). Transformational Leadership. Mahwah, NJ: Taylor & Francis. Brower, R. E., & Balch, ?. V. (2005). Transformational Leadership & Decision Making in Schools. Thousand Oak, CA: Sage Publication. Lang, M. (2011). Transformational Leadership. Norderstdt, Germany. Read More