Manager Analysis Podcast

Four girls in their 20s host a podcast called Critics' Corner Chronicles where they analyze movies. This week they discuss the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" and focus on Miranda's management style and its impact on her team. They discuss the high-pressure and competitive environment Miranda creates, the norms and expectations placed on the employees, and the fear-driven atmosphere that leads to a lack of trust and collaboration. They also talk about the conflicts in the movie, including Andy's struggle to meet Miranda's demands, the competition and jealousy between Andy and her colleague Emily, and the power struggle between Andy and Miranda. Overall, they explore the challenges and pressures faced by the team members and the negative effects of Miranda's management style. Welcome to another episode of Critics' Corner Chronicles, where four girls in their 20s analyze a different movie each week. For our loyal listeners, welcome back. And if this is your first time listening, where have you been? Your life isn't complete without us four girls mixing comedy and your favorite movie reviews live from New York City. Just kidding, we're sitting in the Lacey School of Business. This is Lauren, Sydney, Maya, and Bella, and we are the Critics' Corner Chronicles. This week's movie victim is The Devil Wears Prada. If you have not seen it yet, you are definitely missing out. The Devil Wears Prada follows the story of Andy Fax, a young aspiring journalist who lands a job as the assistant to the super scary and formidable fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly. Dun, dun, dun! Miranda has a lack of empathy and a major attitude problem, which creates a stressful and intense work environment. As Andy experiences the cutthroat world of high fashion for the first time, she discovers the demands of the industry and questions her own values. With all that being said, today we will be focusing on Miranda's management style and how it negatively affects her team in and outside of the workplace. We'll touch on how Miranda manages her team, deals with conflicts, develops her power, exercises her influence, and leads others. Now let's get into it. Let's start off with how Miranda Priestly creates a high-pressure and competitive environment within the team. The physical space, the fashion-focused office, reflects the industry's standards, emphasizing a glamorous yet very demanding workplace. Miranda's emphasis on meeting tight deadlines and achieving perfection in all tasks contributes to the team's stress, but also can create a major sense of accomplishment for the employees when they complete her seemingly impossible tasks successfully. Rewards, in this case, are more intangible, such as acknowledgment and approval from Miranda, which drive her employees to strive for excellence at all times. There are many, many, many specific norms placed on Miranda's team, which all lead to the idea that employees have to live and breathe the runway lifestyle. One thing that kind of stood out to me is what the employees wear to work, so I have to ask you guys, what do you guys wear to work every day? Personally, I wear jeans and a sweater. I would say like a sweater, something like that. Yeah, maybe slacks and a sweater. Not runway. No. Higher than runway. Well, this is not the way that Miranda runs her show. Employees are expected to wear the right clothes and be able to incorporate high fashion into their everyday outfits. There is also an unspoken and unwritten expectation for employees to prioritize work over personal matters, which I would freak out if that was me, which is a direct nod to the cutthroat demands of the high fashion world. But Miranda's feedback, it is more intense than a spotlight. It's a very high stakes environment where deviating from these norms could mean risking your job. Her criticism and perfectionism creates a culture of walking on eggshells, where everyone on the team is absolutely terrified of not meeting those sky high expectations. However, despite this immense pressure, Miranda's team learns how to adapt to her management style. The remaining employees develop resilience and strong work ethics, which is a testament to their ability to thrive under such demanding conditions. Miranda's management style creates both positive and negative aspects of team cohesiveness. The team members who understand the pressure of the fashion industry almost have a bond because of the pressure put on them to meet Miranda's standards. Do you guys kind of feel like that in your workplace, that you bond over the management style with your co-workers? Oh yeah, absolutely. Definitely? Yeah. Well, on the other hand, there's a fear driven environment that leads to a lack of trust and collaboration. Miranda's selective praise and occasional recognition can create competition among the team members rather than a fostering and collaborative spirit. The atmosphere is way more competitive as the team strives for Miranda's select praise because she doesn't usually give that, and her recognition occasionally. She usually just singles out achievements and kind of pits the team members against each other for her approval, which is part of the competitive nature. Overall, the team's cohesiveness is tied to shared challenges and pressures imposed by Miranda. Okay, so now I want to talk about trust in the movie. Do you guys feel like you guys have a good trust with your co-workers, or is it, you know, kind of bad? Honestly, no. I kind of feel like secretly we're all competing for the same thing, and we can be nice on the outside, but we're kind of all very competitive. In my office, I 100% trust all of my team members. We are very collaborative, and we lift each other up and support each other. Yeah, same with my workplace as well. I think that a lot of that has to do with how my boss really wants to foster that kind of culture. Yeah, well, Bella, I think you'll like this, but I found that the biggest type of trust within the team members in the movie was calculus-based trust. They were basically only able to trust each other to get their work done because they all feared what Miranda would do to them. There was, I feel like more towards the end, a possibility of knowledge-based trust and even identification-based trust that could have developed between members in various parts of the movie. However, Miranda effectively ruined any type of trust that the team had by pitting them against each other. Bella, is that how you feel, too, at your workplace? I do feel like that, especially also being a dancer, I feel like everyone's just trying to get the best part, the best role, and kind of just trying to put each other down to build themselves up, and I feel like that is really apparent in the movie. We are now moving on to the conflict portion of this podcast because conflict plays a huge role throughout this entire movie. The four main conflicts that we identified were the issue with Andy and Emily, Andy and her personal life, Andy and Miranda, and then Andy versus her own self-identity, and we will dive a little bit deeper into those right now. Okay, so I want to talk about this one scene in the movie where Miranda asks Andy to get her twins the unpublished manuscript of the Harry Potter book. Andy knows it's impossible, but she also knows that Miranda is the key to her success. Andy, knowing that if she can just put up with Miranda's demands for a year, she will get a really good job as a journalist, gets the manuscript for Miranda. Miranda is essentially using a forcing conflict management style to get this problem in her own life dealt with. She has a high assertiveness and low cooperativeness, which basically means she's just used to getting her own way. She manages conflict by forcing her employees to follow her orders to a T. Another conflict that I'd like to talk about revolves around the competition and jealousy among Miranda's employees, especially between Andy and her colleague, Emily. I think that goes hand in hand with what I was saying about dance with the jealousy and competing with your peers for something that you may not obtain. Mm-hmm. So one scene that really stood out to me was when Andy and Emily were competing with each other during Paris Fashion Week. Both were vying for the opportunity to go with Miranda to the highly prestigious and anticipated event. I personally would do a lot to try to get to the fashion show. Me too. Definitely not as much as these girls put themselves through. The toxic competition escalates as they do whatever it takes to outdo each other in meeting Miranda's expectations. The tension peaks when Miranda tells them that only one of them will get to go with her to Paris. This news further intensifies their rivalry and creates even more jealousy and cattiness towards each other. Andy and Emily work until complete exhaustion for Miranda and oftentimes undermine each other's efforts to showcase their own dedication to the job. This conflict between the two girls captures the cutthroat nature of the fashion industry and the sacrifices individuals make to advance their own careers. It also highlights the impact of Miranda's competitive conflict management approach of forcing, which fosters high competition among her team members. The competitive dynamic between Andy and Emily adds a layer of complexity to their professional relationship, emphasizing the challenges faced by those working in high-pressure environments such as Miranda's world of fashion. Miranda uses forcing as her approach to justify her tight time constraints, high issue importance, high relative power, and low relationship importance. One of the conflicts we mentioned was the power struggle between Andy and Miranda. Their clash of personalities becomes evident as Miranda's high standards collide with Andy's initial lack of knowledge and interest in the fashion world. This conflict is not just about job expectations, but reflects a clash of values and priorities creating tension and challenges in their working relationship. An example of this is where Miranda assigns Andy the task of selecting the right unpublished cutting-edge designer for an upcoming issue of Runaway. This has high issue importance and time constraints to Miranda, as most of her other tasks do. Andy, obviously not meeting the standards of Miranda, is still navigating the fashion world and does not meet Miranda's taste. This conflict highlights the clash of their personalities when Miranda's authoritative and demanding nature conflicting with Andy's initial lack of knowledge with the fashion industry. This also shows her low relationship importance and Miranda's forcing nature. The conflict that stood out to me the most was the struggle on Andy's time as she tries to balance her demanding job with her super important personal life as well. I think that the two most important sources of conflict here are incompatible goals and task interdependence. Maya and Bella, did you guys experience that with your conflicts as well? Well, I think that the fashion industry's entire structure revolves around task interdependence because the success of one task or team is kind of reliant on the performance of another. And Miranda's role as the decision maker positions herself at the center of this task interdependence, which amplifies her influence. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, with mine, I kind of saw differentiation because Andy and Emily both came from very different backgrounds and very different training, and so each of them values something different regarding their job and in the workplace with Miranda. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. I want to also say that we do kind of see these incompatible goals all throughout the movie, but one of the main ideas that I notice is when Andy's job at Runway clashes with her commitment to her personal relationships. We see this quite a few times. We see her constantly canceling plans with her friends, which kind of puts a strain on those relationships, and this is due to last-minute work demands set by Miranda. Andy even had to miss her best friend's birthday, which is really unfortunate. Andy is super backed into a corner and has to choose between her job or her friends, definitely a position I would never want to be put in. I also think that task interdependence is a key source of conflict in the film because it starts at work and spills over into her personal life, only increasing the tension that she's already created by working here. Andy's job requires collaboration and synchronization with colleagues like Emily and Nigel, as well as Miranda as the editor-in-chief, and Andy's inability to navigate this interdependence efficiently affects her work performance and then consequently her personal life. For example, her struggle to align her tasks with her colleagues' schedules or dealing with last-minute changes for Miranda creates the stress, which then creates stress in her personal life, which leads to that frustration and anxiety out of work. I feel like we totally see this with Andy throughout the movie. Miranda's management style predominantly revolves around her asserting her authority, like what you said, Maya, and ensuring that her decisions are adhered to without any negotiation or any compromise, which definitely reflects that competitive or forcing conflict management approach, which I know we all kind of touched on. This is her main approach, and it is completely unwavering. We see this when Miranda expects her staff, especially Andy, to comply without question. Last-minute demands and schedule changes are absolutely non-negotiable and leave no room for input from employees. We see this competing management style by Miranda's tunnel vision focus on results. She always prioritizes the success and reputation of the magazine above anything else, including her employees' well-being. Her relentless pursuit of perfection often leads to conflict with her employees' personal lives, which we see very, very clearly with Andy. In Miranda's eyes, she does see all of this as high issue importance, high relative power, and high time urgency, all of which are super consistent with that forcing or competing conflict management style. So we definitely see a lot of conflict and struggling for all of Miranda's employees, and a lot of it is just a result of Miranda's conflict management style being forcing and creating this super competitive and toxic nature within her workplace. And one thing that we can say about it is that she's consistent, but personally, I would not want to work for Miranda. Yeah, I completely agree. And I feel like what Lauren mentioned with those sources of conflict, like we constantly see that incompatible goal and task interdependence throughout the whole movie. Plus, Miranda herself, she's just so highly assertive and doesn't want to cooperate with anybody but herself. Which totally fits into that forcing conflict management style. Absolutely. Moving on now to our power and influence section, Bella here is going to talk about some different types of power and how we see Miranda exercising them and exercising her influence throughout the movie. So the first source of power I'm going to talk about is legitimate power because obviously Miranda holds a very powerful position as the editor-in-chief of Runway Magazine. Miranda maintains and reinforces her legitimate power by consistently exercising her authority over her team. She sets expectations and makes decisions that impact the entire organization. And her position basically allows her to control and direct the actions of her employees, creating a hierarchy within the workplace. Okay, the next power I'm going to talk about is expert power because Miranda possesses extensive knowledge and expertise in the fashion industry, which contributes to her influence over her team. She continuously demonstrates her expertise through her ability to make informed decisions about fashion trends, industry dynamics, and creative direction. Another source of power that she shows is referent power. Do any of you guys feel like there's referent power in your workplace or something like that? I would feel like, so we just got a new store manager at my work, and while she does have that legitimate power, she doesn't really have that referent power yet just because she's so new, like nobody really knows her. And so I feel like it's hard to find that, but yeah, that's my example. Yeah, well, I think Miranda's kind of the opposite of that because her employees aspire to gain her approval and recognition all the time because of her as a fashion icon. Miranda cultivates her referent power by embodying the qualities and standards expected in the fashion industry. Her style, reputation, and taste make her a figure to be emulated. This, in turn, fosters a desire among her subordinates to earn her approval and recognition. And the last power we're going to talk about is coercive power. Miranda's authoritative and demanding management style implies a certain degree of coercive power. Miranda shows coercive power by setting high expectations and applying a lot of pressure on her team to meet her standards. The fear of negative consequences, such as reprimands or job loss, motivates her employees to comply with her. I don't think that I've ever seen anyone have that many sources of power before. I feel like normally it's legitimate in coercive or referent in something else, but having all four is absolutely insane. Quadruple threat. I think that just shows that she's a force to be reckoned with and kind of makes sense when you think about how high of standards she puts on herself and her team for Runway to end up being successful. She does have all this power, so why not use it? Miranda's power is enhanced by the dependency of her employees for her own career success. The high stakes and competitive nature of the fashion industry creates a reliance on Miranda's guidance and approval, strengthening her control influence. Basically, the dependency of employees on Miranda for career success enhances her power by a lot. The organizational culture supports her authoritative role and her status as a fashion icon is amplified in an environment that values trends, reputation, and exclusivity. The fashion industry emphasizes on hierarchy and prestige supports Miranda's legitimate and referent power. Miranda consistently uses retribution influence strategies throughout the movie, but one specific example of coalition formation really stands out. The employees that are able to keep their jobs and work under Miranda tend to share common interests with Miranda. This example of coalition formation really isolates Andy throughout the movie. Although she built a relationship with fellow coworker Nigel, he is completely devoted to Miranda. Since Andy is the newcomer and has yet to prove herself as part of said coalition, no one really stands up for her due to their loyalty to Miranda. Although this idea is very isolating and difficult for Andy to overcome, I do understand the importance of making sure your employees support your ideas and positions. If Miranda didn't have this trust and loyalty from her employees, it may potentially influence the success of Runway. Although it may not be the best strategy, I think it does make sense for where she's at right now. Absolutely. I notice Miranda uses a lot of stress, demands, and assertiveness to maintain control and impose her impossibly high standards on her team. Miranda is portrayed as the most powerful figure at the magazine and the most intimidating, meaning her employees are often very easily influenced to do, as she says, no matter what, mostly out of fear of failure to meet her expectations. Miranda frequently uses threats to convey the potential consequences of failing to meet her expectations. She subtly implies that Andy's success and future career at the fashion magazine depend on her ability to navigate Miranda's demands successfully. This uses threats as an extreme layer of tension and urgency to the workplace, which I don't think I'd be able to handle if I had Andy's job. No, me neither. Now, I know we've already talked about this part of the movie, but it's such a good example of Miranda's influence, more specifically that retribution aspect that Lauren just talked about, focusing on the assertiveness part of it. Miranda's task to Andy was securing the unpublished Harry Potter manuscript, and despite Andy's best efforts, as we know, she goes through a lot of struggles and challenges in trying to complete this crazy task. When Miranda discovers that Andy has not been successful, she asserts her authority and disappointment in a confrontational manner. Miranda's assertiveness is palpable as she communicates her displeasure with Andy's perceived failure. This situation really highlights Miranda's high pressure and uncompromising standards. In this instance, Miranda's use of retribution is implicit in her disappointment and the potential consequences for Andy's career. The fear of disappointing Miranda and the realization that failing to meet her expectations may have lasting repercussions on Andy's professional future contribute to the overall tension in the movie. This dynamic reflects the challenges present within Miranda's power and influence in demanding work environments, especially when dealing with influential and assertive boss ladies like Miranda. Oh my God. Okay, so I also really want to talk about the Harry Potter manuscript scene again because I found a totally different influence tactic, like reciprocity. I feel like Andy deals with a lot of the issues and hoops that she has to jump through, like getting this impossible manuscript, because she knows that in return, Miranda will give her that experience that she needs to get a high-paying job as a reporter outside of the fashion world. Miranda is able to influence Andy through reciprocity because of Andy's need for a recommendation. Andy is committed to the task and puts in her best effort to accomplish the task. However, it impacts her relationship with Miranda further and quite honestly makes her hate Miranda even more. In this case, I don't think that Miranda would have used the correct influence tactic. There was much better ways to get the manuscript without making Andy go crazy. But it seems to work in the end, however, because Miranda ends up writing that recommendation. But I just think it's funny that we saw those two sides of that influence just because they're so prevalent and it somehow doesn't always work out for her. But what do you guys, have you guys ever felt like you had to jump through hoops with your bosses and like you're trying to get a reward for something? I think I definitely have, but not to the extent that Andy does. You know, I never felt like isolated and stressed and like I was running all over the place. I do think that there are instances where I definitely wanted to please my boss and went out of the way to do so, but it wasn't anything that caused me like immense amount of stress outside of the workplace. Yeah, I also don't think that I've ever been in a job where it consumed my life completely where like Andy, she doesn't think about anything else other than her job and other than pleasing Miranda. And I don't think I've ever gotten to a point where that's the only thing that I focus on. And that just goes to show that even if we don't agree with Miranda's influence tactics, like sometimes they are effective even when it's not being seen in the best way. Okay, so moving on from conflict, we're going to jump into leading others. And I specifically looked into the task-oriented leader behaviors by Miranda, and she sets clear and high expectations for her team regarding their tasks and performance. For example, she expects Andy to anticipate her needs, manage her schedule, handle various tasks with precision, and Miranda's clear and specific derivatives leave little room for interpretation for Andy. She closely monitors the progress and quality of work, ensuring that the tasks align with her standards. For example, with this, she pays close attention to the details of her fashion articles, photo shoots, and overall content of her magazine. She ensures that the final product aligns with her standards. Miranda gives specific directives and guidance on how tasks should be executed in the fashion industry. An example of this is she dictates the specific fashion details she wants in a photo shoot or the tone and style of an article. We really see these task-oriented leader behaviors all throughout the movie, which sometimes can be connotated as just completely negative, but there are some ways that this type of leader behavior can enhance performance, and this is when these specific contingency factors exist. Specific to this movie, we see that the employee tasks are very specific and structured, and their boss, obviously Miranda, is an expert in all the necessary tasks. These two contingency factors exist and then fully support the idea of Miranda using task-oriented behavior in this movie. Okay, Lauren, would you consider the fact that all the employees are under an extreme amount of high stress? Do you think that would contribute to the task-oriented leadership? Oh my gosh, Maya, I didn't even think about that. That is a perfect example of a task-oriented leadership behavior contingency factor, and really does support the way that Miranda uses that behavior. So, talking about people-oriented leader behavior, something we do not get from Miranda in this movie, I do not think that she is people-oriented in any way. The only person that she's really oriented toward is herself. She's extremely selfish, and it's hard to be personal when you yourself are such a narcissist. Throughout the movie, Miranda shows no regard personally to her employees, and has seemingly no empathy whatsoever. To quote Miranda in the workplace, there's a time she said, Is there some reason that my coffee isn't here? Has she died or something? When asking where the person in charge of getting her coffee has gone, something as simple as a cup of coffee, and she acts like that? No thank you. Have any of you guys ever met anyone who is so the opposite of people-oriented? I mean, this is definitely not as drastic as Miranda, but I think this can relate, again, to dance, and I feel as though the professors are more worried about how the production looks, rather than the emotions and thoughts of their dancers, and how they're treated, and definitely not people-oriented. Okay, so I also found that Miranda uses transactional leader behaviors all the time throughout the movie, both implicitly and explicitly. She uses that transactional behavior to show that each employee will be treated the same, no matter if they make a mistake, no matter how good they are as a member of the organization. She sets clear expectations of what she wants from her employees, even as impossible as they are. When Andy begins to change her appearance and commitment, Miranda gives her more responsibility and harder tasks, and I just feel like she expects perfection and a constant attention to her needs, even above the employees' own needs, and have you guys ever had an experience with anybody, a boss or anything, where they, you know, kind of expected you to change your appearance or just that level of perfection, I guess? I mean, I worked in retail for a little bit, and, of course, there are expectations when it comes to your outfit and, like, what you wear to work. You do have to be presentable, but it was never to the extent that Andy feels with Miranda. We never felt like our job was on the line because of what we wore. I think there are a lot easier ways to expect a certain level of appearance without threatening someone's job. For sure. Absolutely. Yeah, I've had a similar experience, too. Definitely nothing as intense as Miranda, but I also feel like Miranda doesn't often give rewards as part of that transactional leadership, but when she does, they are huge for the employee. I just feel like she uses primarily contingent punishment behavior on every single employee, even when she is the only one that feels as if they have failed. She definitely punishes employees for even the smallest mistakes, like when she replaced Emily with Andy for New York Fashion Week, because Emily couldn't simply remember the names of important people at charity benefits. There was also the example when she replaced Nigel with Jacqueline Holt, and I just think that goes to show how transactional, but negatively transactional, her leadership behaviors are. I think in a boss, I would kind of like a little bit less transaction, a little bit more transformation, but we don't really see that much with Miranda, which I think literally goes into everything we've covered today. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, that was a lot of information. Let's recap. We've addressed time and time again that Miranda is not the best at managing teams. We see this through her putting immense amounts of pressure on her employees, creating this competitive environment in turn. She also has this crazy emphasis on perfection, which directly contributes to the stress of everyone working for her. We also have noted that there are very little rewards when it comes to pleasing Miranda, but when you get a reward, it is a huge feat. Even more so, if you don't fit in at runway, your job is on the line, which I just personally think is a crazy idea. Yeah. But we know that's super prevalent here. Also, in trying to improve the team cohesiveness, she's really just fostering this unhealthy competition between everyone, which in Andy's specific case, like as a newcomer, is not the most promising environment for your workplace. And then lastly, I think one of the biggest things when it comes to how Miranda manages teams is all she wants to do is achieve this impossible perfection, and if you don't fill that mold, you are just simply not good enough. And when it comes to conflict styles, we saw a competing nature between Andy and Emily, Andy and her personal life, Andy and Miranda, and Andy versus her own self-identity. All conflicts caused by Miranda through her forcing conflict management approach. I also want to talk about power because she has literally every power and exerts that power over everyone, and of course everyone knows that she has that power. But she does mostly use retribution style influencing tactics, and that goes in with intimidation with a little bit of reciprocity, but simply only for personal gain. She's just power-hungry. Okay, now we're going to recap Leading Others and talk about how Miranda is so perfectionist and careless about other people's emotions. She is extremely task-oriented with transactional behaviors such as she expects Andy to anticipate her needs, manage her schedule efficiently, and handle various tasks with precision. She expects so much with no care about its effects on her employees, which is a terrible way to run a business. With that being said, thank you all for listening, and we are officially signing off for the night. Again, it's Lauren, Sydney, Maya, and Bella, and we'll see you next week on The Critics' Corner Chronicles!