Final Reflection

 After watching the movies for my recent CBL Movies and Leadership class, I did enjoy watching each movie. While some of the movies chosen weren't my favorite movies ever, I do believe them not only to be entertaining, but also show examples of different types of leaders. For example, in the movie Devil Wears Prada, the boss Miranda Priestly is a hard working and accomplished fashion journalist. While being a boss in the fashion industry is an amazing achievement, she is shown to be extremely overbearing and can be extremely toxic by manipulating her employees against each other to find the best one. 

If I were to choose one of the movies to leave an impact on me was Office Space. That movie, while a comedy, kept me wanting to continue watching or watch again. Not only did it show just how a boss shouldn't be, but it is a comedy that was able to keep my attention with each scene and kept me guessing on what could happen next. 

My earliest memory regarding movies, it would either be watching the original Star Wars on VHS or going out to the AMC theater with friends when I was younger. While there are many movies that I enjoy and really stuck with me through the years, I don't feel as though there was a movie that changed my life. But having worked at an AMC theater before, it did change my perspective on movie theaters. With that I got an interesting perspective on movies since after working at a theater, I personally ended up not really wanting to go out and watch movies in theaters any more. And since then I have gone once with my friends to the theaters but that was a couple months ago and about two years after I worked at a theater. 

A movie that I can sit down and repeat viewing it, the movie would be . But if I were to recommend a movie to this class it would be one of the Transformers movies. This will be because each movie while action packed and full of animation and CGI, they are movies that have great examples of leadership in them. 

The Best Man

The Best Man, a political movie that came out in 1964. It is a great reflection on how politics are conducted today. It has politicians lie, cheat, and attempts to steal the election. But are those behaviors and skills legitimist to help secure an election or political race. While I do think lying is something I expect and don't really see a large problem with politicians using it but when it comes to cheating and stealing the election are not tools a politician should use. This is because it would create distrust in the voters much greater than a lie. It also makes people want to go against the person who may have cheated and vote for someone else in the current or next election. 

But when looking at The U.S. V. Alvarez, it shows how lying as a politician for so long, it completely turn his world over. He had lied for years about having received a Medal of Honor, and thus was charged under the federal Stolen Valor Act. The case itself was overturned by a 6-3 vote from the supreme court. Even though he technically won, there was great back lash causing much distrust in Alvarez. This raises the question about the relationship between leadership and truth. Now while I do believe being a truthful leader is important, having to lie about something can be important for a leader. I do believe telling a small lie or omitting the truth can be important when leading but it just depends on how big the lie is. 

Other Peoples Money

 Other People's Money is a movie starring Danny DeVito as Lawrence Garfield aka "Larry the Liquidator". In the movie, "Larry" pursues companies as a corporate raider, and he decides to go after the New England Wire & Cable Company. And since it's a struggling company, Larry plans on buying it out and paying back the stockholders back their money. But by doing this he leaves out taking care of the employees and everyone affected by the company shutting down. So Gregory Peck, played by Andrew Jorgenson, has to fight against Larry to try and make his company not struggle financially and to support the employees and the community. 

This does bring to attention how responsible a leader should be and if something like what Larry is doing is ok. Now while I do think most companies and leaders have to balance their attention with the community and stockholders, I personally think a leader should focus more on the community aspect if running a business. While I do think prioritizing one's financial duties is important since they are the ones helping fund the business making sure it still runs, focusing more on the community and workers ensures a company that employees will stay longer and work harder to bring in more money. This also helps the community out by giving the employees a good enough check so that they can be stable but also the community by opening more jobs. While it would be nice to only focus on those, a company with stockholders helping them out, leaders/businesses also need to help out the stock holders so that they stay or are able to trade it to someone else to help support the company because without that, a large sum of money will be lost by the company and would be hard to properly recover but also a good chance of it failing have having to be shut down.

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Office Space

 Office space is a comedy movie directed by Mike Judge. It is about an employee Peter Gibbons at a software company called Initech. The company brings in consultants to help manage and fire people if necessary. Peter, along with his friends Michael and Samir, decided to go after the company for mistreating them. They infect their companies accounting system with a code that will send them fractions of pennies into a bank account. And from that hijinks ensues.

In some ways, the actions they take in the movie do reflect quiet quitting. Peter doesn't show up unless he is absolutely needed to work. As well he comes up with ideas he can do to not go to any company function where he isn't required. As observed by Professors Anthony C. Klotz and Mark C. Bolino have observed: “Quiet quitters continue to fulfill their primary responsibilities, but they’re less willing to engage in activities known as citizenship behaviors: no more staying late, showing up early, or attending non-mandatory meetings.” From this quote, it confirms that Peter in the movie is a quiet quitter.

Wag the Dog

Wag the Dog is an interesting movie. The movie goes over how in two-three weeks prior to the United States reelection, the president ends up in the middle of a sex sandal. So in this time the presidents adviser Winifred Ames ends up enlisting Conrad Brean to help with the next course of action. They come together to meet with Hollywood director Satanley Motss to produce and fabricate a war in Albania. While some hijinks did happen throughout the movie trying to produce the fabricated war, they are able to successfully able to fool the people into voting to reelect the president.

But when it comes to our leaders trying to pull something off like this for votes, it would be pretty hard today since not only do they have access to more technology, but the public has a large sum of technology as well. I could see a leader maybe a couple decades ago could successfully pull something like in the movie. But I do see a possibility that some leaders today could find a creative way to try and win more votes and hold onto power but it would be extremely hard to pull something like what happened in the movie off. 

When a leader has crossed an ethical and/or moral line, we as the people should try and attempt to replace that person. But in todays world there are vast amounts of "fake news" and other sources manipulating the people to be divided so some people end up excusing some of their actions, then proceed to call out the other side for a similar thing. That cycle just keeps on happening from what I see and there definitely needs to be a change in approach. I personally think there needs to be more civil discussions among the people to talk about the leaders actions that crossed ethical and moral lines and then go from there to try and change the power/leadership. 

Devil Wears Prada

When looking at the movie The Devil Wears Prada, it is certainly an interesting movie. This movie stars Anne Hathaway as lead role Andy where she becomes the assistant to a fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly played by Meryl Streep. In this, Andy has to question her survivability to the harsh workload that comes with working for Priestly; while also trying to get experience so that she may get the job of her dreams. But looking outside the plot, there are many topics that come up for people to talk about and question.

One of the major talking points that come up from the movie, is when Miranda Priestly mentions, that if she were a man that "everyone would be talking about what a great job he was doing." With the knowledge that Priestly's workload is quite overbearing and she comes off as a very busy and strong leader, this quote from her asks the question if strong female leaders face bias and treated differently for being women? Though I don't like it happening, I do think female bosses/leaders face bias and are looked harsher on. I think this because there are many people who are harsher to judge a female boss/leader.

Now in regards to Miranda Priestly's leadership skills, I would say that she is quite overbearing. Though at first it looks like she is quite demanding, that type of boss will give a large amount of work with high expectations while an overbearing leader will give large amounts of work with very little consideration towards others. But though she is overbearing, I will say she is an inspiring leader. Her harsh and overbearing attitude and workload is great for finding excellent talent and to those who impress her she goes off and makes sure that they succeed.

But looking at Andy, though she is a strong willed person who shares some a few similar traits as Priestly, I don't believe she is a good follow. For most of the movie, Andy would talk poorly toward Priestly and talk about how she just wants to use the position to help get a better job and nothing else. She also did zero research about the industry she was about to work in and didn't really care about it. Then she starts to fully embrace her work life which does impress Priestly, she ends up ruining multiple relationships and then screwing over another coworker from going to Paris with the boss. But for her other coworkers Nigel and Emily are great employees. They putt their all into their work and put 100% into their work because that industries they work in is their life.