“Scent of a Woman” (1992). Analysis of the headmaster and Colonel Frank Slade

Introduction

“Scent of a Woman” is a famous movie directed by Martin Brest. It was released in 1992 and featured Al Pacino, well-known American actor and filmmaker.

The movie was shown to us during one of the classes, and we were suggested to analyse it through the prism of ideas of management and leadership. The two characters suitable for review and comparison are Colonel Frank Slade and Headmaster Trask. Within the storyline, both were managing or leading other people in one way or another.

Colonel Frank Slade is a retired army officer. Throughout his life, he seems to have been a temperamental, emotional and, perhaps, somewhat selfish a person. He ended up being blind as result of an accident: a real hand grenade exploded next to him as he was tossing it to impress other officers or soldiers.

Headmaster Trask, as his title suggests, is the headmaster of the school where Charlie, a young man and a friend of Colonel, is a student at. Unlike Colonel, who is a very open and plain man (albeit not always in the best way), Mr. Trask gives an impression of rather unclear and, perhaps, even shady a person.

To evaluate these two characters as a leader or a manager, I would first think of what qualities and traits leaders or managers are usually expected to have, and then look at how the characters shown themselves.

Concepts of a manager and a leader

The idea of a leader and the idea of manager, although sometimes used interchangeable, are two different ideas.

The word “manager” usually refers to someone who is merely in a position of supervising other people, or having people work for them. Their duty is to administer work and ensure that all related processes are going smoothly, and tasks are performed.

The word “leader”, on the other hand, is used to denote someone who has the qualities and abilities to make people follow them. They can create and deliver the idea of their vision. They tend to follow some rules or principles, be it about morals, workplace practices or strategic ideas, and by being consistently true to those principles, they are able to show others their integrity and trustworthiness.

Being a leader and being a manager is not mutually exclusive, and, naturally, one can be both or none at the same time. A manager will usually be able to manage and supervise others to some extent without prominent qualities of a leader, but having those would certainly make a manager better at his tasks.

Headmaster

The deep qualities of the two characters were most visibly exposed during the scene of the speech at school.

Headmaster Trask was ready to punish Charlie and have him expelled for not agreeing to give away the names of his classmates (and thereby not agreeing to the deal the Headmaster secretly proposed to Charlie – a recommendation letter to Harvard in exchange for his public words). At the same time, he did not dare to take any action towards the other student, who was in the same position of a witness as Charlie, but was also a son of a rich and influential person.

That showed the headmaster as a person without integrity or consistent spirit. By his intentions of punishing and possibly even ruining the life of one student, who was not rich nor had an important father, and overlooking another, who was rich and had an important father, headmaster Trask showed himself as a sneaky, and even somewhat weak and insecure person with low morals.

So, despite being in fact a manager within the school, headmaster Trask was not very consistent with his guiding principles. That certainly did not make him look like a leader. This might also be proved by his unpopularity among the students.

Colonel

Colonel Frank Slade showed himself as the opposite of the headmaster. Not being any formal manager (although having been an army officer in the past), his brilliant daring speech at Charlie’s school earned him immediate respect of the crowd.

Even though, as he himself confessed, he had not been always following the harder life path of integrity and consistency, he stood up to defend Charlie and exposed the vile nature of headmaster Trask and the whole culture of the establishment that encouraged students to “sell out” their classmates in exchange for approval of superiors, and, in Charlie’s case, in exchange for a secret deal and eventually a better future. He praised Charlie’s refusal to give away the names, and, as he explained, he did not know whether the young man’s silence was right or wrong overall, but he knew that his integrity was something to be respected.

Colonel’s daring and powerful speech certainly demonstrated himself as someone with qualities of a leader. He challenged what he found to be wrong, and was able to see the right where others did not. His respect and appraisal of Charlie’s integrity showed Colonel as someone having this very integrity himself.

Conclusion

In my opinion, it can be said that headmaster Trask, in spite of his formal position as a high-level manager, did not have what it takes to be a good leader: integrity and consistency. Colonel Frank Slade, on the other hand, showed himself as someone daring and consistent enough to be someone that people would be ready to follow.

[...]