Lean on Me, Essay Example

“Lean on Me” is a biographical-drama movie released at 1989 and directed by John G. Avildsen. The film stars Morgan Freeman as Joe Clark, real life high school principal in Paterson, New Jersey. “Lean on me” is based on a true story of a man, who has faced a challenge and turned a drug and crime diseased school, with students failing to pass even a minimum basic skills test, into a neat, successfully performing educational establishment, with staff members being devoted to their task and aware of their social responsibility.

Joe Clark initially shows himself to be a fine organizer, whose leadership style can be best described by Authority-compliance management. Clark is a self-assured, forceful, strong willed principal, perfectly confident of the rightness of personal decisions. Sometimes he demonstrates aggressive, overemotional behavior, with his energy being directed at sweeping away everything and everyone standing in his way. The scene when he fires the school music teacher illustrates how he fails to show enough respect and concern for people when pursuing the objectives of effectiveness as he sees it. He tends to get rid of people whose behavior he views as harmful to the common good. Those who disobey him are considered saboteurs, and he happens to fail to distinguish between people who are truly harmful and those who are merely more independent and less compliant then others. As the movie approaches the end, his leadership style takes on the features of team management, Clark and his staff members being sincerely committed to each other and common goal.

Poor performance in Eastside High is primarily caused by the lack of motivation and unfavorable environment. We can observe how teachers’ efforts and attempts to influence the situation are all in vain. The conditions they have to deal with are frankly terrible. As the result, they lack enthusiasm and inspiration. One of the first scenes in the movie when we observe the school corridors filled with the violent, aggressive, uncontrollable teenagers, and the teachers, driven into a corner, unable to deal with this utter chaos, illustrates vividly both the hostile environment and lack of incentive. The atmosphere at school is frustrating, the set goals and expectations concerning students’ performance can hardly be reached. The working environment lacks policies and regulations badly.

Joe Clark is a brilliant teacher. His mere choice of profession is quite instructive, – this man is definitely aimed at helping people. He comes to Eastside high full of energy and enthusiasm to turn the whole school around. His willingness to help other shows when he deals with students’ personal issues. For instance, such is the case with Kaneesha Carter, whom he helps to deal with her unemployed mother, and later on, with an unplanned pregnancy. He is driven by the mission to save the school and to bring prosperity to its students, and he invest all his skillfulness and knowledge to reach the goal.

I believe Clark was also motivated by desire to deliver a good service. His objective number one is to make those school teachers educate effectively and those students learn successfully. In no way can he allow himself to be in charge of a school students of which are considered to be inferior.  In his first speech as a school principle he declares: “This is an institution of learning. If you can’t control it, how can you teach?” and goes on concluding “You’ve tried it your way for years. Your students can’t pass a minimum basic skills test. That means they can hardly read! They’ve given me less than one year, one school year to turn this place around, to get those test scores up so the state will not take us over to perform the task which you have failed to do – to educate our children!” (Lean on me). I also discern some indications of need for appreciation in his behavior, which is quite natural and satisfying, – he does not want his efforts to be taken for granted, and nobody would.

To some extent, Strategic Benefit Planning is practiced in Eastside High. The school staff members have a specified objective of making students pass a minimum basic skills test in order to prevent the school from being taken over by the state.  However, I am not quite sure whether this case can be considered as an example of employee benefit program. Therefore, I did not observe any specific types of employee benefits in the movie.

When a sudden fight happens at the school corridors, Clark chains and locks the school doors, so that no bully from outside could ever enter the school. In such a way he keeps out the drug dealers. And even though it is illegal to bar the doors of public establishments, and his act is considered to be criminal, I believe it to be an example of an enforcing safety rules policy. Students appear to be following the rule willingly, and are encouraged to participate in an anti-drug-dealer program.

The scene when a teacher is beaten up unmercifully by the students at the school cafeteria, illustrates an example of workplace violence. The teacher suffers from dealing with a delinquent teenager. He is injured so badly that requires hospitalization. The incident happens while Clark is not yet a principle. Crisis management team is supposed to deal with physical aspects of a crisis. In the case of Eastside High, this role is performed by the hired team of professional security guards, who play significant role in the safety reinforcement.

Abuse of illegal drugs is a scourge on Eastside High. Most students in school, from the youngest to the oldest, are involved in this appalling activity. To avoid this disaster Clark excludes all the drug addicted pupils, and then locks the building from the destructive interventions from outside. However, school staff members do not seem to be involved in this process. Anyway, cases of employee abuse are not presented in the movie.

No doubt Eastside High is an extremely stressful workplace. It is almost impossible to name an employee at any level in the school who does not seem to be affected directly and profoundly by dealing with delinquent teenagers. All school teachers are experiencing numerous stressful situations, and Clark does not seem to make the burden easier. Quite the contrary, he increases the pressure by demanding too much and accepting no excuses. His managing model also lacks appreciation and positive reinforcement of the employees’ good performance. Therefore, job-related stress in Eastside High is caused by high demand and effort, low control and reward, frequent conflicts with management and poor working conditions.

When job burnout occurs, a person feels extremely over-worked and lacks the ability or resources to meet job demands. It is usually caused by prolonged distress experience. All teachers in Eastside High are obviously dealing with stress, but none of them seem to experience job burnout. However, the factors that can potentially lead to an emotional exhaustion are present (e.g. working hard without rewards and appreciation).

Progressive discipline is aimed at fixing employee’s mistakes through a sequence of progressing disciplinary actions (oral warning, written warning, suspension, discharge). Positive discipline implies that employee has to take responsibility for own actions, and perform correspondingly. When dealing with progressive discipline, the corrective actions come from supervisor, who does as much as needed to remedy the fault. When positive discipline is practiced, no solutions are imposed by management, – employee and supervisor are supposed to discuss the problem and possible solutions jointly.

Clark obviously practices progressive discipline with teachers and students. He does not remind them of poor performance and lack of responsibility, he reprimands and take decisive actions. We do not observe a staged process of disciplinary actions performed by Clark in the movie, but even though he cut the procedure short he still tend to make the guilty responsible for shortcomings, providing one with an opportunity to improve voluntarily, without superfluous discussions. Rarely can we observe him working on the problem jointly with the student.

I would definitely recommend the movie for the next Human Resource Management class. It does provide interesting material for analysis. The situation presented in the movie is intriguing and inspiring. Observing how one man managed to set the challenging goals and then achieved them effectively is an exciting process. I also loved the movie for the social message in communicates, demonstrating how a man can stand against society and win. Moreover, the actors, Morgan Freeman in particular, performed wonderfully.

Works Cited

Lean on Me. Dir. John G. Avildsen Prod. Norman Twain. Warner Bros. 1989.