Twelve Angry Men

Sarah Valentin

Management 360

Rubino

October 10, 2013

Case #1

One of the most widely accepted models for categorizing characteristics that make up an individual’s unique personality would be the “Big Five” model. There are five traits that can be strongly related to leadership emergence – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Based on these traits, we can identify whether or not jury foreman represented a leadership character.

First, being open to experience, jury foreman was open to new ideas by letting everyone go around the room explaining the reason of their vote. He suggested everyone go around the room to have their fair share of discussion time. Secondly, jury foreman showed traits of conscientiousness because he was organized in setting up the jury for discussion, making sure they would stick to the issues at hand. He was systematic when taking votes, through ballots or raising of the hand. Also, he was systematic in organizing where to sit, who talks, and was conscientious by always asking if it was okay with everyone as whatever he decided to do. As far as being “extroverted,” outgoing, talkative, and sociable, he did not show too much opinion or talk to the fellow jurors of his view. He only sat and listened to what the rest had to say. Agreeableness was a trait of his because he tolerated most of the behaviors of the other jurors and never tried to start trouble within the group. However, there was a point where he asked if someone else wanted to take his place as foreman and lead the discussion since some of the men started complaining, which comes in the “neuroticism” trait. Being anxious, irritable, and temperamental, showed when the jurors started acting up and he joined in on the fuss.

Jury foreman’s main goal was to have a minimum of conflict and was focused on the structure of the discussion among the jurors. Foreman can be labeled as an achievement-oriented leader who is someone that sets goals...