Being a management student I have learned one thing that your learning isn’t confined to just four walls of the class. We have to learn from everything we experience. As I like to watch movies in free time, I decided to learn new things from it.

Recently I watched The Shawshank Redemption and got to learn leadership lesson from it. It’s a story of a banker Andry Dufresne who is condemned to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary and his friend, another prisoner Red. The movie tells their experience of the brutal life in prison and how they adapted it.

Though prison seems an unusual space for proving leadership qualities, Andy sets an example of a great leader. Instead of being defined by the situations, he shapes the future. He continued to keep optimism in the phase of failure. Andry keeps fighting for a better future and shows a strong determination to make it a reality.

To be a good leader, one must possess sympathy and empathy for the people working with him or her. In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy also has same kind of empathy for his people. Andy always stays optimistic and keeps hoping good from the future power of hope drives him to carry various acts of compassion with unselfish nature. And eventually it helped his friends to lift up the mood.

To boost the confidence of our subordinates it is significant to express the work efforts to the subordinates, explaining them their role and giving them guidelines to achieve the goals efficiently. Andy sacrifices to provide his fellow opportunities to rise above their circumstances. In the beginning of the movie, he risks punishment from the brutal prison aptain in order to earn couple bottle of beers for his friends (workers) on the factory roof they were coating.

Andy believes that the power of small actions is such that it can empower the hope of others and he works accordingly in order to raise his friends’ hopes and keep them motivated most of the time. Andy never gave up and kept working and that is why he succeeded in his mission. That is why finally he crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of foulness. He never considered himself as a “prisoner.” He influenced other inmates that they are not just “prisoners”, but rather capable human beings in prison.

The leadership is a state of mind and not any position to be filled. Therefore Andy became a great leader despite being in a prison. Being in a prison did not stop him from being a good leader. His inner qualities finally came out and he executed it very effectively.

These are the lessons I learned from The Shawshank Redemption which can be useful in our life.

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