Greatness as an individual’s ability

Wageman et al. (40) describe greatness as an individual’s ability to achieve their goals or whatever one’s heart desires with a certain degree of mastery and excellence. A person’s greatness can be seen in their accomplishments, skills, strength, and accomplishments. As a result, great people can be described as individuals who defy all odds to attain a given status quo, achieve their goals, or become the center of attention in their communities.
What does it take to reach greatness?
To achieve greatness, one must combine self-sacrifice with hard work. Resilience is the capacity to conquer problems in one’s professional or social life. However, attaining excellence is not easy, it may take longer than expected, from several days of perseverance to couple of years. The most challenging part of attaining greatness is sustaining the level for a given period of time since it demands one to be passionate about everything they do (Wageman et al. 42). From the movie Whiplash, Fletcher reveals the need to inspire greatness at any cost. He explains that great artists are born from pain and ashes just like the mythical phoenix that arose from its ashes. In addition, Charlie Parker become one of the greatest musicians out of provocations. Andrew’s motivation is driven by the need to be the best rather than the music itself. From another perspective, Andrew’s success is driven by a mixture of the need of the teacher’s approval and being the best. Moreover, he was twisted by ambition and love for music.

What it takes to be an Exception

Positive thinking, goal setting, and having self-confidence are also elements of great personalities. Besides, doing what you love and loving what you do not only triggers motivation and passion but also makes people to work hard and consistently produce desirable outcomes. Viewing passion as the engine that drives excellence keeps people focused on their dreams even if things get tough (Wageman et al. 34). Moreover, passion and performance make people to be satisfied with the impact such actions make in their lives. On the other hand, the film reveals that many great artists have risen to greatness from the humble backgrounds and unconducive environments. It’s unfortunate that great artists succumb to addiction and depression due to too much pressure they receive from their fans and people around them. People who want to achieve greatness must draw a boundary between morality and personal goals.

To be the model that others follow require people to be caring, motivating, and encouraging both by actions and how they carry themselves. A model must reach out to the followers, uplift them, and provide useful insights that can help people who want to be great make rational choices in life and go a notch higher to achieve greatness. For instance, parents would not imagine having kids who will end up making mistakes in future, but instead would want them to do better.

Physical and Psychological Effects of Teaching Styles

The level of seriousness and commitment learners have on a given course or lesson depends on the teaching style adopted by the instructor. (Wageman et al. 36) to explain that instructors who implements both exercise and motivation helps the learners to have improved functional ability thereby enabling them to adjust to the challenges they face. Moreover, the instruction styles adopted by the motivator or role model helps in improving the physical and psychological reactions of the learners or people being motivated. For instance, when Fletcher became ruthless, students like Andrew tried their best to escape the wrath of Andrew (Bong 2014). From this action, they adjusted psychologically and physical in order to achieve the goals. Andrew, for instance, could stay till late listening to the music and practicing to a great musician someday.

Best Practices

Focusing on strengths- Role models and great leaders take their time and understand the strengths and weaknesses of their teams, followers, or people they mentor. Focusing on a person’s strengths and weaknesses helps in avoiding actions that will demoralize them and focus areas that will motivate them. By cultivating and optimizing on individual talents and abilities, instructors can make the learners strive to achieve greatness.

Recognizing achievements- Teachers motivate the learners by recognizing the achievements and rewarding them. However, recognizing unprofessional conduct or substandard work may lead to complacency, or create overconfidence on the learners. Such actions may deter the achievement of set goals and objectives thereby hindering achievement of greatness. In all situations, teachers must make learners feel good about their little achievements hence helping them overcome challenges.

Empathy- Great leaders try their best to listen to their followers or team members. Empathy can help teachers and instructors handle their students best during emotional situations, thereby prevent cases of psychological problems. From the Whiplash film, many great leaders are reported as people who succumb to addiction and depression due to too much pressure. Empathy can help leaders understand the people they motivate and help them during emotional situations.

Creation of safe environments- Individuals can only be led to greatness by creating conducive environments for them to reason, think, and speak out their minds. Moreover, conducive environments entails being tolerant to mistakes and giving room for correction.

Works Cited

Bong, Steph F. “Whiplash.” (2014).

Wageman, Ruth, et al. Senior leadership teams: What it takes to make them great. Harvard Business Review Press, 2008: 33-55