"The Karate Kid" - A Situational Leadership Experience

Watching movies has been one of my most favorite and serious leisure time activities. With this orientation, after viewing it twice or thrice alone on Star Movies or other movie channels, watching ‘The Karate Kid (1984)’ during my MBA education at a leadership class was the last thing I could have expected. But, to my pleasant surprise, our professor at SPJIMR was creative enough to suggest movie-viewing as her ‘Androgogy’ for leadership course in class this year. And, guess what, the first movie she suggested was ‘The Karate Kid’. Bless the person who coined the phrase ‘The World is Round’ because in symbolic terms (and of course in literal terms) it is!

Our professor had guided us to view the feature film with an orientation to correlate Mr. Miyagi as a Situational Leader and Daniel as a follower to such a leader-cum-mentor. In the movie, we found Mr. Miyagi to be a ‘Telling / Directing – High task focus, low relationship focus’ (S1) kind of a leader at the beginning when Daniel had low competence but a high commitment to learn Karate due to his frequent defeat at the hand of his rival. Though he has good feelings for Daniel as a neighbor but Mr. Miyagi was very task focused when he just means business and puts in a pre-condition that ‘no questions be asked’ during the training. He first hands over Daniel just small errands that makes him work hard but with a purpose, which Daniel doesn’t understand. He is completely fed up of painting the fences and waxing the floors. When he was at the verge of giving up, that is the point when Mr. Miyagi understood that the commitment level may go down and though he has gained some competence of ‘blocking’ in Karate but he doesn’t realize. That’s the night when Mr. Miyagi showed him the target of these exercises and tries to head towards building a Mentor-Mentee relationship and understanding, along with task focused approach. He acted more as a ‘Selling / Coaching – High task focus, high relationship focus’ (S2) kind of leader when he started feeling that Daniel may drift towards a D2 type (some competence but low commitment) follower. Here again we see that the leader understood and transformed in the new situation.

Once, Daniel develops the trust on Mr. Miyagi that he actually means business and he also gave in to accepting him completely as a very reliable coach, manifesting his respect for him. At so many times, beyond this, we see moments of a strong bonding between the two. They started sharing great personal moments together along with preparing sincerely for the tournament. During these times, Daniel had started developing high competence but his commitment varied due to the physical pains that he had to go through and sacrifices that he had to make. Mr. Miyagi inclined himself more towards an S3 kind of leader who at times focuses more on the relationship than the task, as he knows that Daniel is learning at a good pace. Now, only thing that could help them win is the strength of faith that Daniel develops in Mr. Miyagi so that he understands the nuances of the game at the appropriate times when Mr. Miyagi signals him about his own understanding. This shows the impact during the finals of the tournament too, when Daniel was so badly injured. It was next to impossible for him to go in for the finals. At this point of time, Mr. Miyagi does a treatment with his hands in which Daniel believes because of the relationship they share. Finally, he was able to participate in the fight and win the tournament. Here, Mr. Miyagi’s ‘Participating / Supporting – Low task focus, high relationship focus’ (S3) approach to leadership actually worked.

So beautifully this movie taught us about the practical concepts of Situational Leadership and we never realized. Did we? Maybe we watch few other movies like this and we can develop leadership theories of our own. Shall we!!!

--By Shwetabh Singh