"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."Some people aspire to be leaders and managers but they lack the skills and committment to be successful in this role. They react poorly to a changing business and financial landscape and failure often results.
Take the movie, 'Jaws' as a metaphore for a failed business venture and let's examine the circumstances surrounding one of the lead characters. Quint, played by Robert Shaw is a very good example of someone who is forced by circumstances beyond his control to lead others and ultimately meets a bloody death in the jaws of the great shark. We could see Quint's demise unfold from the beginning. The audience knows that his fate will not be a pleasant one because he is inherently such an unsavory character and if someone is going to get their just desserts from the great shark we know it will be the reviled Quint. If you remember the film, we meet the hunter in his harborside shack full of shark trophies. Great steaming pots are boiling the shark flesh from their dead jaws and the walls are festooned with proof of his fishing and shark killing prowess. Quint lives to kill sharks and he accepts the other two men on his boat as useless cargo only because they are paying for the charter. Chief Brody and Hooper learn along with us who this extraordinary character is and how far he will go to destroy the great white shark he has been hired to kill. In the end, the boat is sinking, the shark is winning the fight and still Quint does not give in. He cares nothing for the passengers and it is not in his nature to recruit others to help him to kill the shark the way he has killed thousands of other sharks. To Quint, the other passengers on the boat have nothing to offer, no recognizable skills that he can draw on so in the end he dies alone, with the other two helplessly looking on.
Quint becomes more human to us when the ordering and shouting die down during the first calm evening at sea as the three men sit down in the galley for a shared drink. "Here's to swimmin' with bow legged women!" Quint cackles to his charter mates as his way of lightening the mood and attempting to bond at some level with the two partners he is forced to endure. As the scene unfolds and he and Hooper find common ground in comparing their various shark induced wounds, while Brody is left to contemplate his minor surgical scar and to question his own self worth. Ultimately, the shark scores the final coup de grace and Brody, with the boat sinking beneath him, manages to redeem himself with his weapon and blow the shark and his ingested oxygen tank to smithereens. In an earlier scene you recall that Quint expressed his scorn that Brody's little police handgun was next to useless to defeat this shark.
Leaders great and small with various skill sets and levels of committment dot the historical landscape of every country, town and business. Compassionate, altruistic, genuine world renown figures such as Ghandi, Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela change the world for the better one unselfish act at a time. Monomaniacal potentates such as Sadaam Hussein inflict their malignant narcicissm on humanity and only manage to litter the world with grief and dispair.
Our leaders, bosses and supervisors need to want to lead and inspire, to want to share and experience the advancement and to expect ultimate success from the people in their charge. Inspiring others and stewarding them to become all they can become is an innate skill. Some are better leaders than others. Some companies thrive and succeed while others are devoured by 'sharks' as a result of their poor stewardship.
Quint knew everything there was to know about killing sharks and he had been successful for years. There was no one better and he could prove it. In the end, his lack of ability to develop and implement a creative plan of action for achieving his goal when the landscape of his venture changed led to his undoing and the failure of his mission. Worse yet, in failing to enable and inspire his subordinates, Quint was unable to rely on them when his boat was sinking. Hooper and Brody clearly had skills they could lend but Quint ignored them and passed them off as worthless idiots instead of members of a team that could help him to salvage his downward spiraling shark hunt. Quint ultimately chose the only course he had ever known and followed his own gut feelings, (which ultimately led to his personal contribution to the sharks gut feelings...).
'Leaders' quote by Ralph Nader
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