Leadership within the movie "We Were Soldiers Once and Young" Perhaps due to the very nature of the United States military, it regularly provides examples for some of the most salient concepts associated with leadership and the roles that supervisors must play while guiding others in an organization. This fact explains why there is a reoccurrence of military themed movies to populate the U.S. filmmaking market -- these films are about more than simply patriotic propaganda; they actually show some of the most difficult challenges that human beings face while in positions of leadership. This explanation accounts for the original research performed in this paper, which merely consists of viewing the 2002 film We Were Soldiers and identifying some of the most visible aspects of leadership that the movie presented. These aspects are in turn deconstructed so that they can provide insight into the role of leaders for virtually any organization. The facets of leadership that this film portrays the most intimately, and which is most deserving of study in this document, are the difficulties that leaders incur when they are placed in arduous situations. A review of this film and of the decisions made by the central protagonist, actor Mel Gibson's Colonel Hal Moore, sheds a considerable degree of insight into how leaders should perform in situations of extreme duress.

DISCUSSION

After viewing this film, there were three distinct supervisory techniques that Moore employs to assist his men with the difficult position they are faced with -- namely that they have just been transported to one of the first major battles of Vietnam (the three-day Ia Drang encounter) in which they are egregiously outnumbered and effectively surrounded by their North Vietnamese army counterparts. The first supervisory technique that Moore evinces is effectively preparing his soldiers for the tremendous adversity they will face. It is critical to note that prior to their engagement with the enemy, the principle form of adversity the men will face...

And their loved ones and traversing to a foreign land. Such a prospect is daunting for anyone -- even professionally trained U.S. military men. Thus, Moore presents one of the best quotations of the movie when he tells his troops on the evening before they are leaving that they are "going to what home was always supposed to be" (movie). There is a fair amount of psychology in this supervisory technique, which is to acclimate one's followers with a new environment. Moore is effectively telling the men that they are replacing their home in the physical sense (America) with a more pervasive sense of home, one with a "simple, unquestioning sacrificial devotion stronger than the bonds of home or family" (Scott, 2002). This is an effective supervisory technique because it helps to reinforce the camaraderie the men will feel and need to even come close to surviving the considerable odds that they will encounter.
Another extremely effective supervisory technique that Moore employs is to lead by example. There is one particularly gripping scene in the film when the colonel assures his men that regardless of the consequences, he will be the first of their cadre onto the battlefield and the last to leave it. Although this scene is particularly powerful, the concept behind it is even more so because it implies that Moore is not merely a strategist or an armchair leader, but rather a literal one as well. As such, he effectively leads by example when the cadre is involved in military engagement. This is a particularly effective technique -- to lead by example -- because it demonstrates to all of Moore's follower's his own commitment to their mission, which similarly inspires them to foster the same level of commitment as well (Hope, 2012).

The least effective supervisory technique was the training that Moore provided for his men when they were still in the U.S. And had yet to reach Vietnam. The training that Moore gave his men was ill-suited for the situation they faced in Asia. All supervisors…