A STUDY ON LEADERSHIP : A CASE STUDY OF RICK GRIMES FROM THE TELEVISION SERIES “THE WALKING DEAD”

Abstract

The independent study aims to study the leadership of the character Rick Grimes from the television series “The Walking Dead”. The methodology mainly focuses on textual research by studying and analyzing theories, models and related studies. 

            The result of the study is that Rick is a leader following the trait theory of leadership, consisting of intelligence, personality and ability suitable to be an effective leader. Also, he is a great transformational leader who encourages staff in his team to hold on to hope and to look for the better future, inspires followers to survive, and considers each in the group as an individual with care. Moreover, Rick is seen as a situational leader in four different specified situations with affiliative style and democratic style at the highest, followed by visionary style and coaching style in order.

            When the researcher applies Rick Grimes’ styles of leadership to find the connection between leadership styles and the way he deals with the problems, it is found that his characteristics following the trait theory, his transformational leadership and the situational leadership mostly in democratic style and affiliative style lead to negotiation, which can be divided to distributive negotiation and integrative negotiation. The solution can also be reflected with the game theory and Nash equilibrium.