Looking “Inside” the Leadership You Put “Out”

November 5th, 2020

9:40 AM Class

After we took our Quiz, the rest of the class seemed to focus a lot on the last question of the quiz which was “How many heterosexual white men have we studied in this course so far?” I personally answered that question with 5 but Dr. Sandridge pointed out that we actually studied none. This question was surely a difficult one which caused a large debate within the class. Personally, I am still stuck on whether or not we actually did study these men however, I would also say that Dr. Sandrige is right only because none of the men we studied openly classified themselves as a heterosexual white man.

Group 1 Presentation

November 10th, 2020

Inside Out

Today was the first day of group presentations and my group was the first one to present. For this project, we were instructed to create a lesson that modeled the previous lessons we’ve done in class. For our project, my group and I originally went back and forth choosing a movie until we finally all agreed on doing the movie, Inside Out. This is one of my all-time favorite movies that I can literally watch over and over, so I was very excited that we all agreed on using It for our project. We chose this movie because there are a variety of emotions and feelings that can be found within the mindset of a leader and Inside Out does a great job of showing us that.

In Disney Pixar’s Inside Out we take a look at the inside of twelve-year-old Riley’s mind aka “headquarters”, where her emotions literally control her everyday actions and feelings. Throughout the movie, the five embodied emotions all work together to guide and protect her as she continues to grow up. The emotions “mentoring” Riley are Disgust, Fear, Sadness, Anger, and Joy. Not only does Riley’s emotions have a major impact on her but, so does her core memories which power her Islands of Personality, Family, Goofball, Friendship, and Honesty. We observe how her emotions adapt and change to the new feelings that come with growing up, going through a big change such as moving nearly 2,000 miles away from her home, and the inability to express sadness and joy during this time. Overall Inside Out is a story about how developing the expression of emotion and expanding your personality is necessary for mental health and healthy interpersonal relationships.

The Disney animation film producers consulted several psychologists including Dacher Keltner of the University of California, Berkley. His neuropsychological findings helped shaped the story as it called for the focus on how emotions can cause relationships to abate.

Riley’s Emotions:

Fear: Fear’s main job is to protect Riley and keep her safe. He is constantly on the lookout for potential disasters and spends time over evaluating the possible disasters, pitfalls, and risks that are involved in Riley’s daily activities.

Disgust: Disgust’s main job is to keep Riley from being poisoned, physically, and socially. For as long as Riley has lived, her expert judgment has kept from eating gross broccoli and has helped her avoid boys. She is highly opinionated and extremely honest, but has the best intentions for Riley and avoids to lower her & Riley’s standards for anybody.

Anger: Anger tries to keep his cool however when there's so much injustice happening in the world, it makes it very much difficult for him to do so. Anger’s responsibility is to fight for fairness in Riley’s life however, he does so in an overreacting way. For as long as Riley has lived, he’s been fighting the good fight by organizing tantrums for important causes such as “no more naps ” and so much more.

Joy: Joy loves Riley more than anything and has been her lead emotion throughout this whole movie. Hope and optimism dictate all of Riley’s decisions and Joy works twice as hard as anyone to make sure of this. She sees life’s challenges as opportunities and the sad bits as bumps in the road to something which she also tries to instill into Riley. Overall, she just wants to make/keep Riley happy and will do whatever It takes to make sure she is.

Sadness: Lastly, Sadness seems to have a very weird role, that a lot of the other emotions seem to not understand. Sadness tries her hardest to be optimistic however, sometimes she just finds It really hard to stay positive and just wants to lie on the floor and have a good cry.

Our group then decided to include an assignment within our project. The assignment given was,

Assignment: It’s time to get inside of your own head! For this assignment, first, identify the essential emotions that one needs to become a leader. Now, imagine you have emotions controlling your brain too. Which emotions would be in charge of the consol inside your head and why. Are the emotions in your head essential emotions needed for leadership, and if not, what can you change or reflect on in your own personality that can help you figure out how to cultivate the right emotions for leadership (be honest!)? Finally, let’s take it farther and think about based on these emotions what type of core memories you would have that make up your emotive islands and what those memories consist of. Have these memories helped you in your own leadership development or aided you in becoming the leader you are today?

During our presentation, we had a large group discussion on this assignment and we got some really great answers from the class. Before actually presenting the assignment, a few of us in the group decided to do the assignment beforehand.

• There are many emotions that one needs to become a leader, however the essential ones I think are joy and sadness. I feel like sadness is what helps build one to become a leader and joy helps their leadership shine through. When thinking about the emotions controlling my brain, I’d like to think that all five emotions that Riley has also control my brain but I feel like Joy and Sadness are the two that control it the most. I think these two are essential emotions needed for leadership and I’m glad that I carry them, no matter how much the emotion sadness puts me through. In addition, if I had any islands in my brain that make up my personality and core memories, they would be Goofball Island, Friendship Island, Dance Island, Activism Island, Family Island, and Mentorship Island. Each of these Islands would be driven by a core memory of mine. For example, Activism Island would be drive by the first time I spoke at a Black Lives Matter protest and Dance Island would be driven by the day I entered dancing school when I was younger.

After the assignment portion, we began to present our commentary of some of our favorite scenes and how leadership is shown in that scene. One of the scenes I did commentary on was the falling of all the Islands in Riley’s mind. Since the Core Memories are absent from Headquarters, the Islands are shut down, eventually breaking down and falling into the Memory Dump, causing Riley to gradually lose her personality.

Commentary: When watching this scene, we were able to see the hardships when it comes to being a leader. Joy tries her hardest to be the perfect leader all throughout this movie, however, in this scene we begin to see the trial and tribulations that her and Sadness face when trying to bring the core memories back to headquarters. This scene does not represent or show us the ‘surface beauty’ of leadership, but more so shows us what a leader goes through which in the end makes them a great leader. What makes someone a great leader is being able to restore themselves and others even when their world is falling apart. In the end, we see all five emotions restore their Rylie, however, in this scene we see their fight to keep her ‘alive’ which represents the root of their leadership as a whole.

I strongly believe that this movie shows a lot of leadership in which our emotions control the most. Emotions are very important when becoming a leader and this movie helps us see how much our emotions truly do play into becoming one. Working with my group members had to be the most fun I had doing a project. When given this project, I immediately assumed that working with a group, online, was something that would be extremely difficult. However, my group members and I worked diligently and perfectly together, which I really enjoyed and appreciated. :)