Have we talked about Dead Poets Society?

“Dead Poets Society” is a movie that was released in 1989 and it had a huge impact amongst the people of this generation. Many reviews of the movie refer to it as a masterpiece and it is considered from many to be a classic movie with an inspiring topic. The movie is about a literature professor that starts working at a school with male students, a very traditional institution in which he used to be a student himself, and the relationship he develops with the students of his class. From the beginning of the movie, the viewer can understand how strict this school is and how people follow traditions and rules in it. This can be understood from the ceremony of the school year start, the uniforms of the students, the members of the faculty as well as the parents and how strictly they perceive goals and success and how crucial they consider studying in this school is for their children’s future. This movie can be used as an example to approach leadership theory in school and companies. Teachers can be leaders. They lead the class of students and they have power of a group of people, hence the parallelism of leadership in schools and in companies.

The basic leadership figure is the young literature professor (John Keating) and through the movie we see his interaction with his students. There is also an informal leader, one of the students that is very popular among his peers and highly believed from his professors (Neil Perry), but he has issues with his over-controlling father. Neil Perry is an informal leader in favour of his professor. In a reality’s situation, we would expect to see more informal leaders, not all of them agreeing or feeling comfortable with Keating’s approach.

School functions in a strict, almost military way, and it gives the impression that rules are always followed, because that is the only way to success, rules and hard work. The students get a lot of homework and have a lot to do, so they have to stay focused on their studies as much as possible. The school system and the teaching methods could be categorised as autocratic (authoritarian) (Mullins, 2010), meaning that the focus of power is on the manager/ professor and the manager alone exercises decision-making and controls rewards or punishments. We should reflect on why the current school system is an autocratic one. It is a common knowledge that autocratic style of leadership is very popular and is widely used. There must be a reason for this fact. My guess would be that it is most easily applied, it does not require any effort from the leader’s perspective to understand the people they lead and make them feel creative and it is fast, it works better in a crisis situation and of course, it does not demand any special abilities from the led people, except for following orders and completing tasks. But why would a teacher follow an autocratic leadership style? In my opinion, because of two reasons. Either because of high self-esteem and trust to themselves and their knowledge, or the exact opposite, high insecurity. In the former case, a teacher that has faith in their knowledge might believe that no other opinion than their own is worth heard and that they know the best way to lead/ teach, so there is no need or room for discussion and creativity. In the latter case, the teacher perhaps has low self-esteem and low trust in their knowledge, and by not leaving a lot of room for discussions, liberties and brainstorming, they can avoid the possibility that their lack of knowledge or their knowledge gap can be understood from the students.   

Continuing with the movie, the first contrast is between the current system and what the new professor represents. The former is a traditional environment while the latter represents new ideas and methods, different approaches and supports deeper thinking and reflecting instead of learning by heart. Students, especially teenagers, cannot be happy with the current system, but they do not have a choice but to follow the rules that the school, the society and their family consider as fundamentally right.

Keating brings a new air to the school, tries a new approach that is different than what students are used to. He encourages them to go against the status quo, he changes the rule of the teaching and he wants his students to differentiate from others and “seize the day”. He tries to teach them to see things in another way, which is intriguing. Keating’s personality could affect and influence students even without the proximity. Just by students using his writings or messages that he could have left. Perhaps his physical appearance could not be considered necessary to make a statement, or to be the students’ “guru”. But, we can’t be sure about that. I believe that his presence and his being a real, live example of what he represented and tried to instil to his students made him an even stronger role model to follow.

In a company’s environment, Keating’s leadership could be characterised as democratic (participative) (Mullins, 2010), but in my opinion, in a classroom setting I would characterised his leadership style as laisez-faire (delegative) (Mullins, 2010). The democratic style, according to the same source, is the one that power exists within the group as a whole and not just the leader, and the group members have a saying at decision making and procedures, while the laisez-faire style is the one that group members work on their own and the leader observes. In order to support my view, I would say that being delegative might be effective when it comes to adults that are skilled, capable of working on their own and understand their responsibilities, but it is not an applicable leadership style in a group of students, because students do not always have the maturity that is needed or the right motivation. Being democratic with students, as well as with employees in a company is a nice leadership style to follow since it maximises satisfaction and creativity in working environments (Mullins, 2010). There are different leadership theories, but one could say that they agree on the characteristics of a good leader and what qualities that leader has got compared to a less good leader.

The school’s leadership style (autocratic) maximises productivity during routine work. That is, in my view, the biggest mistake. Learning should not be a routine work, it should be an iterative procedure that will help people realise the change they are submitted to and of course reflect. Keating comes as a “rebel”, as a different approach to what they have been used to until then, changes the norms and tries something that the students could feel creative through. Keating’s way of teaching/ leading, the democratic one, make students productive by increasing their creativity and the discussions. He managed to raise the productivity by using the democratic leadership style and teach students to understand poetry. However, by introducing a new approach to things, a new teaching/ leading method, he managed to weaken the method of the rest of the teachers, because of the unavoidable comparison between the two. The majority of students preferred having an opinion and contributing to the way their learning took place against the following instructions, studying and learning things by heart and not having any chance to disagree. I can distinguish a parallelism with Abrashoff (2012), when he stood up against the power and the rules and in that way he gained the trust and the dependency and power of his crew. Keating does not agree with the textbook about poetry, so he asks the students to rip the pages off, and defends his decision in front of a senior colleague professor and in front of the whole classroom. And he was one of them, he was a former student of this school who followed his dream. I personally believe that helped the students to follow his example even faster. Quickly, the informal leader, Neil, follows his example, by standing up to his parents’ decisions of him not participating in any extra-curriculum activity in order to focus to his studies. Neil wants to become an actor so he defies his father’s decision and takes part into a play.

Although Keating brought a different angle to the teaching methods and thinking of the school, he also “demolished” the system that was in practice, but failed to replace it with a new set of rules, a new system. And that led to “chaos”. In my opinion, Keating could be a good, inspirational leader, but he failed to recognise the people that was about to lead. He did not understand the circumstances or the power that he had in his hands. He was a role model, who encouraged students to change a point of view in life, poetry, chances, but without providing them with the tools to do that. Neil, for instance, misperceived what Keating represented and used his own perception as a path to live his dream and stand up to his father, having as a role model and a reference his professor, who had power among them, who defied the rules, who did not follow the “book” and who “freed” their spirits. And, unfortunately, many things changed in their lives. Keating had his students depended on him. And dependency is power (Myers , 1996 ). He used his power in the wrong way, according to my perception, but not really consciously or on purpose. He should not show disrespect to the system and the rules without introducing a set of rules that would represent his believes better that the previous one. Although he had power over his students, I don’t believe he understood it or perceived its extent. Sometimes, I got the feeling that he wanted to be again one students, to belong to this group and he did not put himself into the position of the teacher/leader, and that behaviour can bring very negative results, because it might indicate immaturity from the leader’s part.

As a leader, it is great to delegate power and tasks and let people feel creative and express their opinions, but all these should be done in a structured, well-thought and communicated way. That was what Keating lacked. A challenge that all potential leaders have to keep in mind is that different leadership styles and techniques should be used in different situations, according to the human resources you have and according to the external influences of the system/ environment, not to mention that the leader should remind people what is important. (Mullins, 2010) Keating did not remind the students that it is important to follow some rules and act as parts of the organisation and group. And as mentioned earlier, he “defied” the teaching method of the rest of the school and that comparison made the teaching a harder procedure for his colleagues.  According to my point of view, Keating had qualities that a good leader has. He generated and sustained trust, he was charismatic, he had knowledge on the subject, he was interested in the people. But he did not use them in the right way and he forgot the reality of the organisation, which was an educational institution. That does not mean that he did not teach students, but he should instil the values of the school as well, and he should teach the students that they should seize the day, but not by ignoring other people completely. 

A lot of deeply rooted “pet” ideas can be found in the movie, and in a company’s situation as well. There are the ideas of those who believe that rules and discipline are the only way that an organisation can function (old professors /traditional teaching system), there is the idea that parents know what is best for their children and the children’s wishes do not play any role, and of course, there are the ideas of those who believe that changing the way things work is a great path to lead to the future, to knowledge and improvement. There are always different perspectives and this is why we should always do a stakeholders’ analysis. We cannot deny that Keating is a character that we all like because of his communication skills and because he is new and different that the ordinary. However, we should not victimise him, because the school should protect its structure and its way of working, so he could not do anything else but fire him. Having someone that is going on a different direction than the organisation is not beneficial and can become problematic. At this point, we should also consider the fact that the director of the movie did not clearly show us the reality of a school environment, but focused on the characters and the storyline that wanted to be shown (the inspiring teacher and the inspired students that follow his example- not the informal leaders that would probably exist in a situation like that in reality. So, from the movie’s perspective, we are led to focus on how good a teacher Keating is and how “unfair” the system that existed before him can be. But this is just one side of the story. Exactly as it happened in the book of Abrashoff (2012). We know only the successful stories and the successful side of the leadership suggested in the book. But there must be more that are not mentioned in the book, because of various reasons (marketing and sales reasons, for instance). From the parents’ perspective, the school is a means to get their children to success and success sometimes means a good degree, good grades and acceptance to the rules. I do not believe that people should pursuit only what others think is a good option for them, a good fit. That does not remove the fact that parents’ intentions are good and from their point of view, people like Keating can be considered as disturbance and noise that pushes their children away from their ultimate goal.

All in all, I believe that a good leader has specific qualities that are mentioned above. Leadership for me is situational, you have to adapt to the environment, the needs and the people and tasks you have. If you just follow blindly a technique, you are not considered a leader but just a person that manages a group. Leadership is reciprocal and a two-way process (Mullins, 2010).  I do not think that being a good leader is an easy task, but it is definitely manageable and one can become a good leader by trying and paying attention. It might come easier to people who have increased Interpersonal type of intelligence, because this is the group of people who are better at understanding other people (Gardner, 2006 ) , but that does not mean that others cannot become good leaders. Last but not least, I do not agree with the mass opinion of the movie, I do not consider it as a masterpiece and I would not consider Keating a successful professor/ leader after all.