Leadership In The Film Beasts Of No Nation

As leadership becomes an increasingly popular field of study, research continues to support the concept that there are numerous complex factors that play a role in effective leadership. For leadership to be effective, these factors must be aligned in a way that is beneficial for both the leader and followers; in some instances, however, the misalignment of these elements can cause ineffective, or even abusive leadership. Cary Fukunaga’s film Beasts of No Nation, takes the audience on a heart wrenching and disturbing journey as the film follows a battalion of child soldiers in West Africa (Kaufman & Fukunaga, 2015). The film shows the complexities of military leadership as well as how motivation, traits, influence tactics, situational leadership, and charismatic leadership interact to form the leadership process. Beasts of No Nation also gives insight into how leadership can change, and how the change of some factors can cause the leadership process to fall apart.
A general consensus amongst leadership …show more content…
While military leadership specifically needs to motivate followers to risk their lives, motivation is needed in other areas besides combat. Motivation is essentially anything that “provides direction, intensity, and persistence to behavior” (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2014). Motivation is linked directly to performance and job satisfaction; the more motivated followers feel, the more effort they are willing to put forth towards the job, and this will likely make them more satisfied. Often times, leaders who understand that there are multiple ways to motivate followers have a higher success rate when actually trying to motivate them (Hughes et al., 2014). One of the most well known motivational theories is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which can help explain why the Commandant has such a high success rate when motivating his