Movie Analysis: Wolf of Wall Street Money Team Organizational Behavior 1 The Wolf of Wall Street movie displays many concepts of organizational behaviors including leadership, motivation, influence and power that each focus on negative characteristics associated with the workplace environment that will be discussed. Jordan Belfort, founder of Stratton Oakmont, is an extremely persuasive and influential leader, however, he uses this distinguished quality to commit many white-collar crimes, promoting many workplace concerns and unethical behaviors. Jordan Belfort has the ability to sell you anything, allowing him to excel in selling stocks and becoming extremely wealthy. With his experience working for Wall Street, he and his friends started their own firm called “Stratton Oakmont”. Jordan is a natural leader, although his leadership was based on doing wrong, unethical, and immoral things. He has many followers who looked up to him and want to learn his skills on getting rich. Jordan also has the ability to formulate a clear vision and goal for his firm, Stratton Oakmont, to his associates. On one of the most important days of his firm, he presents to all his associates the goal that they should achieve by the end of the day. He stated that without his well-trained associates, those telephones “do not ring themselves and they are worthless hunk of plastics”. As a leader, it is important to give employees recognition to keep them motivated and Jordan was able to do this successfully. Although Jordan is seen as a great leader, he is also very corrupt. Those who held higher positions at Stratton Oakmont tended to bully those who were less useful to the firm and Jordan allowed it. On the New Issue Day, one of his associates got called out for wearing a bowtie, which was different from the others, and for cleaning his goldfish tank. Donnie, Jordan’s right-hand man, verbally and physically insulted him, and ultimately terminated him from the firm. Jordan was very supportive of Donnie's reaction to this associate, also ordering this associate to get out of his office. Recommendations for Jordan would be that he needs to show 2 respect for all his employees and not encourage unprofessional conducts. Since Jordan is the leader of the firm, encouraging Donnie’s unprofessional behaviors shows everyone in the firm that it is okay and acceptable, therefore, they start to cheer Donnie on, as the associate was leaving the firm. In order to be a strong leader, Jordan must prepare his employees to be successful and show professionalism. This means showing them what the right thing to do is and impose consequences to those who do not follow proper standards. He could have told Donnie to leave or even fired him for acting that way towards another employee. Bullying in the workplace should never be encouraged. As a leader Jordan must establish fairness and maturity in the workplace to show his associates that this is not acceptable behavior. Jordan Belfort’s strong yet corrupt leadership skills gives him the ability to influence the people around in negative ways. He influences his employees to live this lavish lifestyle but displays this in a very aggressive and inappropriate manner. He is very persuasive in making sure his employees follow his footsteps to get rich and make clients pay for worthless penny stocks. His influence creates many unethical concerns in the workplace such as allowing employees to speak inappropriately, making fun of clients, hiding information from clients, and dehumanizing women. Jordan is aware of the bad decisions made for his company and his employees but he embraces it because in the end, it makes them money. Jordan is sneaky and shows his employees this behavior is acceptable. When it comes to the clients at Stratton Oakmont, Jordan uses many clever tactics to get the rich to buy into penny stocks by maintaining a strong persuasive attitude, powerful negotiation skills and conveying confidence. Additionally, he stresses that his employees keep secret the amount of money they are making and hide information from the FBI who try to investigate so they do not get caught. These are examples of information control as Jordan hides the real facts of these stocks from the clients and authority to present them with 3 information they want to hear or information that shows everything is legal (which it is most definitely not). In one scene, Jordan is on the phone with a client trying to make a deal while his friends who work for Stratton Oakmont are listening. Jordan is pretending to be helpful to the client and tells him all the great possibilities that may come when investing even though there is almost no chance they will come true. They all laugh and make inappropriate gestures when the client seals a deal for the stocks. When the client hangs up they call him names and laugh. This influenced his employees to act like that with clients throughout the movie. Not only does Jordan influence unprofessional behavior with staff and clients, he degrades women and uses them for pure entertainment. When Stratton Oakmont has a big event or they go on a trip, Jordan hires women to pleasure him and his employees. His company is male-dominated which leads his employees to also view women in a degrading way. Some recommendations for Jordan’s negative influence is to be assertive and speak professionally at work to decrease aggressive attitudes among employees and create a positive work environment. Jordan should show empathy towards his clients to prevent them from losing money and making a bad investment. He also needs to embrace diversity in the workplace to show equality and respect for women. Essentially, Jordan should use his persuasive influence for the greater good instead of for deviousness. Jordan should have created a code of conduct for everyone to follow in order to avoid getting Stratton Oakmont in legal trouble. At the end of the movie, Stratton Oakmont crumbles and his top associates get in trouble for the illegal practices. As for Jordan’s employees, they could have stuck up for what was right and formed a team to confront him about the ethical issues he influences, or simply found a healthier work environment to avoid the mess. 4 Jordan has the qualities of a successful and powerful businessman who leads his firm by example. He has a very strong personality, which is useful for selling to clients and especially for attracting more talented people to come work for him at Stratton Oakmont. Jordan shows in his office speeches that he has a strong ability to motivate his employees with his leadership style. There are multiple scenes of Jordan giving speeches to his employees in the office to help inspire them and light a fire beneath them to work even harder. Though he may do this in more of an untraditional way, he still is sure to be enthusiastic and brings a certain level of charisma. This behavior allows him to connect with the people in his office, which can be seen in the speech that he gives when he is about to step down from running the firm. Jordan gives a heartwarming speech where he talks about a few people individually and personally tells stories about their journey to becoming successful, powerful figures. He looks out to the entire office where there is a large number of people who look up to him for inspiration and guidance, and strongly conveys the message that he believes in them and knows that they can reach the level of success that they've always wanted. Through these speeches, especially this particular one, he inspires his employees to strive for greatness and work harder than ever before to find success and wealth. Jordan can also be seen as having and utilizing expert power. Expert power allows him to speak out to his employees and they listen because he is the founder and president of Stratton Oakmont. He has shown to them that he knows what it takes to grow a firm from scratch and become one of the most talked about and profitable new firms in the extremely competitive world of Wall Street. He also utilizes this expert power when he first starts the firm. He calls his first client with the handful of new employees who he has asked to work for him, behind him. They listen as he uses a step by step plan to sell a stock to a potential client on the phone. Jordan closes the deal and even upsells the client, convincing him to buy 5 much more than Jordan originally was hoping to sell. The new people who he has observing behind him are taking in what he has just done and in that moment, they all buy into the Stratton Oakmont idea. Jordan displays this expert power and shows these new employees that he knows what it takes to be a successful stock broker, leading to their instant support and joining of his new startup firm. Jordan Belfort’s leadership style may be slightly different at times, but the end result is nothing short of extraordinary as he fights for his people and gives them the confidence to become better. However, along with these behaviors comes inappropriate workplace actions, which made Stratton Oakmont a reckless and unprofessional setting for employees. Jordan and his associates partook in inappropriate women interactions, drugs, and reckless actions both in and out of the office. The employees were pulled in by Jordan’s charisma and potential success that he could bring them. They were clearly blinded by all of the inappropriate behavior happening within the firm and the corruption that the firm was running on. The environment of the firm resulted in getting busted by the FBI and found guilty for running a scam the entire time. The great success of the firm, Belfort, and his employees, was directly caused by the substantial financial losses of their clients. In finality, The Wolf of Wall Street movie includes incidents involving leadership, power, motivation, workplace bullying, negative influence, ethical concerns, and gender roles that were analyzed. Jordan Belfort was a stock market millionaire who has made a huge living off of his company, Stratton Oakmont, and helped his employees become rich as well. On the other hand, the clients buying these stocks were losing tons of money and being scammed. Jordan shows many skills that make him a great leader such as his confidence, persuasion, and motivation but he uses this power in negative ways. His influence showed that treating women poorly and 6 breaking the rules were normal. This created separation between genders and a rise of unethical behavior. A leader in a company is responsible for passing down morals and values that each employee should stand by but instead, Jordan focuses on making money and shows that bullying others is acceptable. This is an obvious example of how a corrupt leadership team can poison the entire company into becoming solely focused on their own selfish success, rather than working towards what is best for their clients and honorably representing the company. Belfort should have focused on building a code of ethics and having a more empathetic and positive tone when speaking to others who look up to him. The main takeaway was although making money is great, honesty is more important and would have led to a happier work environment for Stratton Oakmont. Showing ethical behaviorism is also extremely important for people with power so others can carry on those characteristics. Looking up to someone who shows respect and empathy towards others is crucial in successful companies. Money is not everything and it was too late for Stratton Oakmont to realize that. It was detrimental for Jordan’s employees to stand up for what is right rather than fall into his unethical business behaviors to avoid the collapse of the company.
