Pricing, Production, and Break-Even Analysis

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 is simply leaving the U.S. 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 are responsible for ensuring that their followers are equipped to handle the situations in which they are placed. Due to the tremendous odds in manpower that Moore's cadre faced, his training for this particular mission was inadequate. In one scene Moore tells his men that "We'll be landing under fire, gentlemen." Such a statement is actually an egregious understatement, in much the same way that the training Moore provided for his men was insufficient for the extremely difficult odds they faced -- which may have reflected a larger decision on the part of his government (Arnold, 2002).

The scene in which I would have reacted quite differently than the way that Moore does in the film comes near the end, after the fighting is over, and Moore's side has endured enormous casualties. A reporter asks Moore how he managed to succeed victoriously, and Moore fails to respond. However, I believe that as a supervisor Moore was obligated to answer that question to account for the lives of his dead men. Were I Moore I would have told the reporter that there was no victory, and that my side had been roundly bludgeoned, and that only stupid luck had preserved the lives of me and others. As a supervisor, Moore should have denoted the hopelessness of his situation -- and that of the U.S. In this martial encounter.

A high stress environment like war affects supervisory techniques in that it helps to truly prioritize them. A perfect example of this fact is Moore's failure to respond to the reporter in the aforementioned scene. Had he not witnessed many of his men violently perish before him, Moore might have cared about conveying the truth about their deaths and the desperate situation in which he was placed. However, high stress environments such as that which Moore was placed in force people to prioritize their battles -- in Moore's case, quite literally.