Analysis of “Chicken run” from the leadership perspective. by Shary Torres

There are many kinds of leadership observed in this movie. We can see the kind of leader who is appointed and is authoritarian in the Lady (Mrs. Tweedy). Her followers obeyed out of fear. The other leader was one who had earned her followers’ trust (Ginger). There is also a third leader in the movie. He was charismatic and used his charms to get the crowd to follow him (Rocky).
In the movie we can see how the authoritarian leader not only fails in achieving his goal but also ends up hurt. She uses her position to get what she wants and has no consideration of her subordinates. Something else we can learn from her leadership style is the lack of organization. And when it comes to evaluating her team’s performance she is only concerned with the results and punishes the teammates that did not perform as expected. What drives her is greed; all she cares about is making more money and does not care about her team or anybody else. Moral values are of no importance to her.
The second style of leadership that we can observe in Chicken run is the one that is followed by the team because the group trusts him/her; in my opinion the best kind. As we saw in class the leader is a server, the leader must put the team’s needs ahead of his/her own. In the movie we can see how even though Ginger had managed to find a way out of the farm, she did not stop there because she knew it had to be the whole group that escaped however hard it may be. Another characteristic we can observe in Ginger is that she had a wide range view. She had the goal well established and hence guided her team towards that goal. A balanced emotional intelligence is also a vital trait of this kind of leadership. It does not mean that the leader does not have feelings but rather that he/she knows how to control them. Ginger was able to control her fear in many occasions (every time she was found by the dogs). She also managed to control her feelings towards Rocky when she found out he was a fraud, she put herself together and continued on working. This leader has a high standard of moral values. Honesty, hardworking, not cheating and
There is another kind of leadership shown in the movie: the charismatic one. Rocky has everything to make people follow his lead, the looks, the voice and he is good with words. We can see how he uses all his charms to make the followers go with him. Unfortunately Rocky, as many leaders like him, has no clue of where he is going and therefore not many clues of what he is doing. Since he does not have a plan and does not know what he is doing, most of the time he improvises. Rocky has a good heart but lacks many needed features of good leaders. The fact that he lied to his crew is what astounded me the most. I did not identified values but we can see that he considered motivation to get the team to work. This is a very desirable trait in a leader.
The hens showed all the kinds of followers there are, the ones that only do as they are told without questioning, the ones that give their opinions, the ones that work below average, the overachievers, the ones that motivate the rest and many more. We can see how they react in different ways with the different leaders they have, with the first leader they show fear and obeyed immediately, with the second leader they collaborated and performed better in a more relaxed manner and with the last leader they are eager to please him and are very relaxed almost blinded by him. The hens have a well structured and organized life; they have found solutions to all the contingencies that might occur.
This movie was an excellent opportunity to see what we have learned in class.