First Reflection Paper by Andrew Jaco

86710-LEAD-6050-02 Organizational Leadership

My challenge was to organize a brand new annual film festival from my pure

conception and vision when I was in college during my undergrad years. I had an

idea that would be different than other film festivals that I have seen at that time in

the 1980’s. The new ideas would make it challenging while being exciting and

something new for the university to see. The challenges were to do this without

charging film submission fees, without charging the public to see it, drawing a big

crowd without an advertising budget while going to school fulltime, as well as

holding a part time university audio visual technician job. The last challenging

element would be to have the film festival run annually long after I graduate and

after I located elsewhere from that university. This paper is to explore what

happened along with the successes and pitfalls of doing this annual event using

what was learned in the first four chapters of the Leadership text written by Peter

G. Northhouse.

After studying leadership styles and traits in the text and periodicals, I had a lot

to learn and also discovered what I did well in putting on this unique film festival

program for the university. The successes were that the crowds got bigger each

year and I was able to get access to bigger theatres and auditoriums without paying

auditorium rentals from anyone’s pockets including my pocket. This took skill,

management, resourcefulness, persistence, technical knowhow and most of all,

leadership. The three approaches of leadership that will be explored in this

reflection paper as to how the unique annual film festival got off the ground will

be: the trait approach, the skills approach and the style approach intertwined

throughout this paper as I describe what happened in getting the film festival off

the ground.

The trait approach to leadership describes what things are comfortable for me

that would fit my personality and are inherent, or what I was born with according

to the text: (Leadership: Theory and Practice 6th Edition by Peter G. Northhouse,

chapter 2). The Skills approach to leadership describes my competency level as a

leader at that time and is broken down into three basic skills such as technical,

human and conceptual (Northhouse chapter 3). The style approach to leadership

involves what I actually did regardless of what my traits and skills are and are also

broken down into two basic behaviors such as task behaviors and relationship

behaviors (Northhouse chapter 4).

The first step to getting the film festival going was to get a place to show films

as far in advance as possible with a guarantee of reservation without cost to

anybody at the university or me because I was not going to charge anyone for film

submissions nor charge admission. The obstacle was how to cover the cost of the

place without charging admission. The leadership style that I had was to treat

others fairly under relationship by publically thanking people for the auditorium

during the festival to publicize them while making them feel comfortable in the

idea as well as explain the concept of the program which resulted in bypassing the

rental of the auditorium.

Once I got the official date for the auditorium, the second step was to get flyers

made out that asked for film submissions giving the date and times of the film

festival itself as well as film submission deadlines. It was a double promotion on

one flier. To pay for thousands of flyers circulated locally, I got a sponsor and

thanked them in the flyer which promoted their business while the festival was also

promoted in the same flyer. This style of leadership of treating others fairly under

relationship again by thanking them helped get what was needed despite the zero

budget. The flyer also promoted free admission and free film submissions. Certain

leadership traits had to work to get these important first two steps off the ground:

Being articulate. I had to explain things well to keep people engaged and interested

since there was going to be no revenue for the auditorium rental and no revenue to

the printers to get the flyers printed. I also had to be self-confident that they are

going to associated with a unique film festival and that I know what I was doing

since I was a film major during my under grad years. I had to also be trustworthy

in that I was going to promote their help in making the festival possible during the

festival as promised. Since I scored high in the technical aspects of the skills

approach to leadership, I explained some of the new technical aspects to the film

festival presentation that was going to be new at the time to get their attention

instead of just promoting what films might be shown. That gained more curiosity

to get the flyers and the auditorium for free.

The next step was to get to deal with the film submissions that came in, and

there were plenty of them to go through. Some were sound, and some were silent. I

promised an interesting show. For the silent films I had to get a keyboard player

that had skills in thinking up music on the fly for silent moving images. For the

music department, I made a few flyers (again without cost – using those same

leadership skills, traits and styles again) that asked for a keyboardist to play live

music during the show for the silent films. The keyboard flyer was easy, but only

one keyboardist came forward. The keyboardist was reluctant to volunteer their

time to play without pay at first. To accomplish this, there was work to do and I

was fearful of getting no keyboardist at all. They want to get paid. This was a

challenge with a zero budget. Keyboardist got to play for the silent films during the

show for free because I showed flexibility as my leadership style. I offered the

keyboardist the option to have the silent films play between the sound films during

the show so he can take breaks between them; or have all the silent films shown

together back to back to get it over with while have continuous playing on the

keyboards. This showed flexibility in my leadership style. I gained trust from him

because he was going to be thanked during the film festival – a good leadership

trait in action. There was a big gap in the deadline for film submission and the film

festival date to give time for the keyboardist to rehearse also by seeing just the

silent films beforehand. This was good planning as a good leadership style since I

prefer planning projects out by gauging how long project steps could take to get

done.

The last step before the show was to get programs made and copied for free that

listed the films, and the thanking of people who helped me get the show to happen.

This was difficult because the printer offered the first ones for free the first time for

the first flyers and wanted to charge for the programs. I lost the battle there. To

overcome, I asked the University Program Council to make the programs since the

film festival became part of their campus programs. Determination as a trait was

needed to avoid giving up because a film festival without a program to pass out

would be disastrous because I would have broken promises made to the sponsors

who would have lost the trust in me that I had established. The programs were the

method of thanking the sponsors, the keyboard musician, etc. The University

Program Council became the sponsor almost at the last minute. Knowing a fellow

member of the program council helped. At a private meeting that I was not a

member of, the fellow member was delegated the task of convincing the council

(without me being there) on their next meeting to sponsor the event so programs

can get made without cost to me. Traits such as persistence, articulation self-

confidence and self-assurance, and determination paid off here as well as learning

to delegate authority. I was flexible in my leadership style in getting the programs

made out just as long as no film is left out and no sponsor was left out.

The only thing that was not delegated was the presentation. As a leader, I felt

had to demonstrate my strong skills approach to leadership which was the technical

part of the skills. I felt I had to “show off” somewhere. This was part of my trait of

being outgoing while being technical under the skills area. This was to set up and

run all of the equipment during the show to show media presentation skills that

dazzled, and thrilled the audiences and the filmmakers that showed up with their

films so they can be impressed also. The technical fascinates me along with paying

attention to detail and being good at making things work which scored well in the

technical skills approach to leadership.

In conclusion, I had a very balanced form of leadership traits, skills and style

without being a “tyrant” who likes to use a “coercive” leadership approach

discussed in the text in chapter one (Northhouse chapter one) telling people what to

do.

Andrew Jaco

References:

Leadership: Theory and Practice – 6th Edition – Peter G. Northhouse

ISBN 978-1-4522-0340-9 SAGE Publications, Inc.