Jerry Maguire: My analysis

“Fewer clients. Less Money.” In a business arena this statement is taboo. Especially in the world of a sports agent. But in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, this statement served as the premise for all business conclusions drawn by sports agent Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise. Before reaching this point in the plot, Jerry Maguire was a typical money hungry businessman who had overwhelmed himself with numerous clients making it impossible to insert quality into his career. It was at the point of an epiphany that he realized the kind of advice he gave to his clients and the quality of the relationships with his clients were more important than the number of clients he had. Maguire worked for a company named SMI: Sports Management International. The trends of the company leaned towards qualities that favored business only – work hard, play hard, and tell the client anything and everything so they will sign with the company. When Maguire reached a point of frustration with these business behaviors he decided to take a step towards change by writing a mission statement outlining a new way of business based on his new sense of morality. After being fired from SMI for publishing his thoughts, the new Jerry Maguire used his leadership skills, values, and behaviors to help him reach his new business objective – to become a successful sports agent with a close, quality relationship with each client.
Leadership skills are an important quality for any businessman to possess as he ventures out on his own. Jerry Maguire’s leadership skills, especially his organizational communication and his ability to sell anything, played a role in helping him achieve his objective. His organizational communication skills allowed him to see through the false images presented to him that would have hindered his success had he not addressed the issues. When his number one client began to make deals with other sports agents, Maguire’s knowledge of communication helped him realize that what he could have taken as a strong word was not a promising aspect at all. The client’s father would not sign a contract with him, but gave him his word. Later they signed with someone else, but Maguire was able to pick up on this information through communication. Maguire’s ability to sell also helped him reach his goal. As a leader in his business, he had acquired the ability to sell his ideas, which helped him to keep a number of people on his team. His only client as a new business man was a football player named Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) who had an egotistical attitude. Despite his arrogance and stubbornness, Maguire needed Tidwell; their individual successes were dependent upon the other’s success. Thus, it was important for Maguire to convince Tidwell to change his personality. It was his ability to sell anything that helped him sell this new image to Tidwell. These are two times when leadership skills helped this business man reach his goal of becoming a success.
Leadership values also play an important role in the business world. Jerry Maguire’s move towards an individual business man came from a spur of the moment change in leadership values. He had developed new morals and ideas that he would use to create a quality business. One of those values was respect. Often times at SMI, Maguire found himself showing little respect to the people who worked with him as business partners and as clients. However, as an individual business man he changed that. Once he began to value his team, he became more and more successful. For example, Dorothy Boyd was the only person who believed in Maguire’s mission at SMI. When she decided to join his team, Maguire made sure that she was respected by him. When she thought things weren’t going so well for the business and wanted to leave, Maguire assured her that the company would take care of her. He showed her great respect because he understood the importance of her to his company, as he did his clients. As a leader, Maguire also valued the motivation that kept him striving to reach his goal. He never once took disregard for the one thing that motivated him the most. He could not fail. If he was to fail as a businessman the many eyes that watched him walk out the front door of SMI and watched his every move afterwards, would look at him with false pity and cast a stare of humiliation his way. By valuing his motivation, he was able to bring his team together, make changes for the better of the business, and reach his goal of becoming successful.
Lastly, leadership behaviors influence a businessman’s success greater than anything. Leadership behaviors are the actual actions that the business man takes based on his leadership values and using his leadership skills. In the end the ultimate cause of Jerry Maguire’s success was his behavior. His leadership behaviors were most apparent in the relationships he built. In each relationship, whether with Dorothy Boyd his only co-worker or with Avery Cushman the backstabbing client, he thought not only about what the other person could do for him, but he paid close attention to what it was he could do for that person in order to help them do what he needed them to do. For example, Rod Tidwell, his only client for the majority of the movie, had the ability to make Maguire a complete success. He started off as a wide receiver that nobody paid any attention. For him to have become a star football player would have placed Maguire at the top of the sports agent totem pole. Maguire saw this, however, not as his ticket to fame. He needed to change Tidwell’s attitude, but he didn’t want to do it only for his personal gain. He had built the type of relationship with Tidwell where he wanted to make Tidwell a better person and player, as he did.
Jerry Maguire kept his team together and moving towards ultimately achieving the goal of becoming a successful independent business man in the world of sports agencies by combining his leadership skills and values to create a leadership behavior that had quality. Without these influences, Maguire would not have come out of his situation on top. Dorothy Boyd would not have stayed with him through the hardships had he not built a quality relationship with her. Rod Tidwell would not have respected him had he not treated him as a friend before a client. By choosing to take on fewer clients and less money, Jerry Maguire built a quality career with a reputation that would attract quality clients.


Jerry Maguire: The Things We Think and Do Not Say
(If you go to 2:29 of the video you will see where the thesis of my analysis came from) (Copy and paste the link into your browser)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH64hzWqnFk