Autocratic Leadership In The Devil Wears Prada

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The Devil Wears Prada movie showcases an autocratic leadership style in Miranda Priestly, the Editor of the fictitious Runway magazine. The movie begins with the hopeful and naive graduate student interviewing for a much coveted position as Miranda Priestley’s 2nd Assistant. This highly regarded position was within a fast paced and competitive organization and unfortunately, before our main character, Andrea, could be selected for the job she needed to run the obstacle course of the self-serving and somewhat indifferent leadership style of the 1st Assistant, Emily. In this plot, there are a multitude of leadership styles and characteristics that are identifiable throughout the movie displayed both by Miranda and her second assistant …show more content…

She initially wanted to simply survive and was afraid to fail. By movie’s end, she displayed much more confidence in herself as a result of Miranda’s style. She was able to buy into the mission and vision of her organization and leader, Miranda. Now as it relates to trust, Miranda was not one to easily trust others and Andrea was made aware of this fact early on when he was not allowed to deliver the “book” to the art department until she could gain Miranda’s …show more content…

Creating a vision, carefully crafted, can help the team know who they are and who they are not. Miranda was able to get buy-in to her vision through her reputation and strategic thinking. Creating a vision for Runway proved to be very effective for Miranda to motivate the organizational member and get them to perform well.
Effective leaders are usually exceptional motivators and great coaches as well. This will help employees to get involved in their work and excited about working for their particular organization. Miranda however, was very contrary in her style when it comes to coaching. She was absolutely not interested in coaching or even assisting her employees with doing their job. She required them to anticipate her needs instead. While she herself was not motivational, she did possess the power to enable Andrea and others to attend the aforementioned fashion week in Paris which was motivation enough itself
It is often said that art will imitate life, and this showing of The Devil Wears Prada is a perfect example of just that. While some may look at this movie as purely entertainment, we can learn a massive amount of information on effective and ineffective leadership alike. While there is no one style that works best for every organization, there are styles that are effective and important to

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