Football Player Motivation

This is a young high-school student who was interviewed following a big win after a football game. This athlete uses strong words of encouragement to not only motivate his team his but the mass media as well. Being able to motivate yourself is an attribute of a transformational leader and is clearly demonstrated through this clip.

This particular athlete is a transformational leader because he is a model of integrity and fairness, provides support and recognition, sirs the emotions of people, and inspires others to reach for the improbable. One major trait that this athlete demonstrated was his ability to inspire loyalty and trust to his team. Due to the loyalty and trust from his team, they were able to win. This athlete is also a transformational leader because he realizes that perfection doesn’t happen right away. In the interview he elaborates that his team was really struggling during the beginning of the game. He understands that in order to succeed as a leader, you must work on your own skills and set aside time for personal development.

Rob & Angie

Braveheart – William Wallace Transformational leader

In the movie Braveheart Mel Gibson plays the role of a transformational leader. He does this in 4 ways. The first way that he is a transformational leader is he has a vision throughout the whole entire movie. His vision is that the Scots will win their independence from the king of England. He creates a plan in his head that he wants to achieve and throughout the movie he is envisioning the plan working and never gives up on his hopes. Part of vision is that as a leader you are also working on inspiring others to share the same vision that you have. As a leader you must be enthused, confident, and be able to picture success.

Next transformational leaders must be authentic. They can not just think about personal gains and expect good things to happen. Transnational leaders must be able to work with others and not only think about themselves. If a leader only cares about what they want then it will be hard to get followers on board with what you want. Sometimes taking different viewpoints will open more options and the leader will be willing to change ideas or work off them. Part of working well with others is being able to motivate each other. Transformation leaders are always setting the bar higher and higher each step of the way while working with its followers.

Thirdly transformational leaders must have a growth mindset. What I mean is that they always have to be thinking on how they can better the group. They always want to be setting new standards for themselves as well as their followers. Once they achieve one goal they want to make another benchmark and reach that. In the movie Braveheart Mel Gibson shows this by at first his goal was to become a leader in the Scots army. Since he achieved that he set another goal; this goal was to defeat the English. Transformational leaders can also recognize individual growth as well as followers growth. A term that can be exchanged for growth is results. They don’t only care about themselves but, they also make sure the followers are achieving what they want to.

The last point is that transformational leaders are very creative. They encourage team members to create new ideas as well as embrace originality. They allow measured risks. This last part is very important in the sense of taking risk. Transformational leaders are not afraid to fail and have something not work. They take that as a new risk and try again. They never want to be doing the same thing for a longtime.

As you can see all 4 of the steps are very close, and the majority of them overlap each other. Transformational leaders must work well with their followers, share a common goal, motivate others and be authentic. The leaders can’t just worry all about themselves, they must work well with the followers.

Rob