Badm 3103 - Human Capital - Angelina Jolie

Badm3103 Final Report

Team 6: Angelina Jolie

   Jake Fuller; Yao Guo; Jing Hu; Aya Ikematsu; Antonio Melchionna and Yichen Wu [pic 1]

Introduction

Angelina Jolie, a well-known celebrity, takes on various roles in her personal life and career such as an actress, a filmmaker, mother, humanitarian, and most importantly, a leader.

She started her celebrity career early on since both her parents were actors. In the early stage of her actress career, she was labeled as a “question” actress because she went through a phase of self-harm and depression, making her a possible liability. When she filmed Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001, Jolie traveled to Cambodia to shoot certain scenes and there she was exposed to the problems that people face in war-ravaged countries. She then spent 18 days visiting Sierra Leone and Tanzania to gain more insight on not only the conditions of these countries, but how she could help. This first field trip transpired her to get involved with humanitarian organizations, specifically the United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees (UNHCR), where she was appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador (Angelina Jolie, n.d.). She has visited more than 30 countries, even that some places are highly volatile and risked her life. She aims to help people who are in need, and do not have a voice to speak out. She uses her leadership and influence to inspire people to survive, to encourage the children in these areas, and to appeal the public to watch out for these people. With all that she has done for the community, she does not expect anything in return, but has been recognized countless times for her increased efforts. Since going on these field trips, Jolie has adopted three children from Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Vietnam, respectively (Angelina Jolie, n.d.). Moreover, she has raised over 20 million dollars and has successfully used the media attention she has gotten to shift the focus to refugees in need.

Angelina Jolie is an influential leader who is not afraid to help people in need, while she still focuses on her career and children. As an effective leader, her leadership is a very important factor to inspire and motivate people.

Leadership Description

To analyze Angelina Jolie as a leader we decided to observe her methods and her characteristics. We narrowed the leadership approach down to two methods, transactional and transformational. Transactional leadership is defined as “[a] style of leadership in which the leader identifies the needed change, creates a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and executes the change with the commitment of the members of the group” (Business Dictionary, 2017). These leaders depend on the relationships they build with their followers. Transactional leadership is defined as “ [a] style of leadership that is based on the setting of clear objectives and goals for the followers as well as the use of either punishments or rewards in order to encourage compliance with these goals” (Business Dictionary, 2017). This method implies more of a give and take relationship. We concluded that Angelina Jolie displays more of the characteristics of a transformational leader.

As a Transformational leader, Angelina motivates her followers to get involved to contribute to change; while she can have an impact on her own, she realizes it takes more than one person to create a change that is lasting. One way she did this is by creating the Jolie Legal Fellowship, where a group of lawyers from all around the world lobby for humanitarian causes in their respective countries and regions (Paul, 2011). Motivation ties into pushing her followers to fulfill their higher needs as a part of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Elsbach, 2016). This involves improving the life across the spectrum, to enable that higher level of achievement. As a member of the LGBT community, Angelina has helped both celebrities and everyday people by coming out and creating a sense of social belonging and raising self-esteem. While she helps people with their higher needs, she motivates her followers to work to establish basic needs everywhere, like in war-torn Cambodia. Lastly, it is evident that Angelina Jolie is a transformational leader due to her presence as a moral agent. She is quick to distinguish between right and wrong, and focuses on changing and improving the moral capacity of her followers by taking action when needed. This has been conveyed in many of her speeches to the UNHRC, in which she reminds everyone that we all have a responsibility to act and for her followers “to really step forward and say who we are and who we fight for and even work even harder” (“I am with you”, 2017).

On an individual level, Angelina displays two characteristics that contribute to her success as a leader. The first characteristic is her self-efficacy, the confidence someone experiences relevant to a task (Elsbach, 2016). Whether it’s overcoming her past, acting, directing, lobbying, or creating and participating in numerous organizations, Jolie has been up to the task. She is confident that her and her followers can make change in a multitude of areas. Her second strongest characteristic is her self-monitoring, defined as the the ability of an individual to adjust their behavior based on the environment in which they operate (Elsbach, 2016). Given that she works in various fields and countries, Angelina must adjust her approach based on her environment. To enact change in countries of various cultures, one must be aware of the proper way to go about things. Angelina has shown that she can work across the globe to push movements that are very different, such as same sex marriage and climate change.

Evaluation

Internal and External Criteria

Angelina Jolie will be evaluated as a leader through internal perspective and external perspective. With the internal perspective, the focus is on the Angelina’s personality and her experience. The external perspective will focus on the effect she has had on the community and is viewed through how the media and other sources view Jolie.

In 2003, Jolie established her own charitable organization—the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which is named after her first adopted son, and aimed at appealing to people to contribute their efforts on global peace, environmental development and human rights, especially in states of poverty and backwardness (Good Celebrity, 2015). In fact, the setup of this foundation gave a big boost to Jolie’s philanthropy in the matter of external perspective. With the help of her status of celebrity and media support, Jolie’s initiatives and personal leadership successfully pushed forward her charity works through encouraging her fans and the entire community to focus their attention to the extremely poor and scarce conditions in Africa. At the same time, she has extended her personal influence in global areas under her own foundation by intensifying her public image as a humanitarian leader. Creating close relationships with philanthropic worldwide organizations, Jolie has furthered enlarged her personal impact on improving the public’s awareness on poverty, women’s and children’s health, and education issues.