Movie, Mcfarland: Community Leadership

In the movie McFarland, USA Coach White’s character, personality, and skills may be seen as questionable when it comes to his effectiveness as a community leader. When Coach White got angry at a member of his football team and threw a shoe at the player causing an injury. He should have employed leadership skills and managed this specific conflict. Kirst-Ashman and Hull (2015) state that this an important attribute of a leader because, “Knowing how to defuse conflict situations and help individuals and other systems resolve differences is a critical leadership skill” (pp.74). After moving his family to McFarland, Coach White was able to become an effective leader in his community. With the help from his students, their families, colleagues, and members from the community he learned how to be warm, empathetic, and genuine.

For example by working in the fields with members form his team and meeting their families in their homes he was able to show warmth and empathy. In order to do this he had to learn to be sensitive to cultural differences and learn first-hand why a lot of the parents needed their children to work in the fields, how important family and community is, and how to enable some of his team members to make time for both their job and cross country. By the end of the movie, Coach White was a leader who led by example. When he forgot his daughter’s birthday, he looked to his community for guidance and gave her a birthday she would not forget. He was not afraid to go out in the fields and work as hard as the boys he coached and helped them believe that they could do anything the set their minds