Leadership

12 Angry Men illustrates leadership values and principles. Especially showing how to work as a team and decision making process. There are many principles recognized in the film that are be used as a leader. The film examines the twelve men's personal prejudices, biases and weaknesses, indifference, anger, personalities, unreliable judgments, cultural differences, ignorance and fears, that threaten to taint their decision-making abilities, cause them to ignore the real issues in the case, and potentially lead them to a miscarriage of justice. (http://www.filmsite.org/twelve.html)

As a leader, Henry Fonda stands out for a lot of reasons. One of the most notable is at the beginning of the movie. Fonda begins to display task-related functions by coming up a new idea to the group. In this case, it was the idea of the boy being not guilty. Although the men were very upset with him, the thought had crossed their minds long enough to realize he may be right! By offering his opinion and a new idea, he opened the door for development of the other jurors but, he also creates tension and new power struggles. The juror who had the picture of his son put up the biggest fight in the beginning of the film. In the beginning, certain traits, such as his forcefulness or persuasiveness, may have identified him as a leader. In the middle of the movie, Fonda had persuaded about half of the jury to be not guilty! They even started to go up to him and ask him what he really thought about the case.

Fonda used the contingency concept throughout the movie. He chose the leadership behaviors deepening on the situation. He knew he was going to get criticism from all the jurors

but he was opened to suggestions from the other jurors. He was always asking what they thought. He was a great listener and they may have earned him some respect. He was successful in leading the jury through there decision. He gained respect from the other jurors and I am sure they learned a lot from him.