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Leadership Charachterstic of Billy Beane

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St. Francis Xavier University | MONEYBALL | Leadership and Billy Beane | | Brandon Guenette/200905666 | 3/5/2012 |

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Introduction
Michael Lewis’s Moneyball is a fascinating story about a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. The underlying question to this story is where the real discussion should begin. That question is: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games? This question can lead into a series of discussions regarding strategy or luck, but the real answers can be found in the leadership of the organization. This leadership is found in the form of …show more content…

These traits can certainly be attributed to both the good and bad sides of leadership. It should be noted that these traits alone cannot be credited with why Billy Beane was an effective leader, but can be used as a starting point as to why he had the potential to be such a leader. Understanding the full leadership story being told will require a deeper look into the values and behaviors exhibited.
Leader-centered Perspective: Values
George et al.,(2007) provide the importance of an authentic leadership. A key focus of the article is that the leader should not only understand his values, but practice them as well. One of the most interesting values described by Billy Beane is his value of education. Major League Baseball would recognize him as one of the top high school talents in the country during his youth. He valued education so much, that he informed all Major League Baseball teams that he would not sign any professional contract so that he could attend Stanford. Even upon being convinced to sign with the New York Mets, he made his intentions of taking classes in the off season quite clear. This may have been his undoing as a player, as he did not value where his natural talents could take him in baseball. This would lead him to develop values regarding life decisions. He swore after that sequence of events he would never make a decision based on money ever again. This is a value he has stayed true to, as he turned down the opportunity to be the highest paid

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