A seasonal basketball tournament. Carter discovers the progress reports filled out by the faculty reveal some of the students have been skipping classes and are struggling academically. Coach Carter initiates a lockdown on the gym, banning the team from playing until they improve their grades. Coach Carter is criticized by parents and academic faculty. The school board eventually confronts Carter who justifies his actions, explaining he wants to give his team the opportunity and option to further education so they won’t resort to crime.
Coach insisted that achieving a sound education is more important for the students than winning basketball games. In my point of view Coach Carters administration staff and basketball parents were disengaged. The parents did not have vision or hope for their kids, they could have created a different set of problems for the team players (Dotlich & Cairo, 2003:64). The school board members, the principal and the chairperson voted to end the lockout.
Carter is ready to quit in disgust. Coach carter was arrogant. The toughest balancing acts in leadership business is between confidence and over confidence. If any individual is going to succeed as a leader, you need to have confidence in your own abilities to lead. Arrogance was needed in coach Carter situations. Coach was shocked to find his players in the gym with desks and teachers studying and working to bring their grades up.
The team players decide to fulfill coach Carter’s original intention of pursuing academic achievement before continuing to play their next game, with one explaining that the school board can force an end to the lockout, but the players can’t be forced to play. They work hard in the classrooms after school, during practice time and eventually raised their grade point average to fulfills their contracts they signed. All leaders are vulnerable to the eleven derailment factors; these are deeply ingrained personality traits that affect their leadership style and behaviors.
However, identifying and managing these derailers is possible that failure can be prevented. It is who people are not what they know or how bright they are that leads to success or failure; how well they work with others, and how well they understand themselves. Some effective and successful leaders have many derailers and some derailers are both strengths and weaknesses. Dotlitch and Cairo (2003), based on their consulting and research data, believe that the average manager has two or three derailers. Derailers are most likely to emerge under stress.
It is hard to eliminate derailers are apart of one’s personality for a long time. It may take years before these derailers become a liability. A major difficulty is that these people rarely get adequate feed back to understand their own personalities. Fulmer and Conger (2004), in their book on best practices in succession planning, list five derailers from the Bank of America’s leadership competence model: Failing to deliver results: Fails to hold self and others accountable for results. Over promises and under delivers.
Betraying trust: Says one thing and does another. Makes excuses or blames others. Shades manages, withholds information to promote his/her personal or functional agenda. Resisting change: Has trouble with adapting to new plans, programs or priorities. Being exclusive vs inclusive and fails to understand and take into account others perspectives. Their results showed that dysfunctional behaviors associated with arrogance, cautiousness, volatility, and skepticism negatively affected performance ratings and these effects differed between supervisors and peers.
Chidester et al. (1991) examined the personality characteristics of more and less effective commercial airline flight crew. Effectiveness was defined by the number and severity of errors made by the crew. Captains of crews with the fewest errors were described as warm, friendly, self confident and cope well with pressure. Captains of crews with the most errors were described as arrogant, hostile, boastful, egotistical, dictatorial and passive aggressive. Personal awareness is vital for these individuals.
