I learned a good leadership lesson this past week through two very different sources – an animated movie and a textbook. In the movie, a little girl has been desperate to discover a real-life unicorn. She waits and waits in the forest where she had been told a unicorn would appear if her heart was pure. After a very long time of waiting, out of the rustling bushes emerges a fluffy white, one-horned creature, which the girl is convinced is her dream come true. Unfortunately, it’s a goat with only one horn. The girl’s companion breaks the news to her and the girl cries out, “I’ve spent my whole life searching for a unicorn but all I’ve found is a one-horned goat!”
That statement hit me hard (as do many statements in animated films) and I instantly related to the little girl’s angst. I’m sure that I’m not the only one that feels that way sometimes. How many of us in leadership work and work to have things go as we dream them to, only to have the rug pulled out from under us. In an instant, we realize that our unicorn is merely a one-horned goat!
Here’s the lesson (and the connection to a textbook). Though the girl was disappointed, she quickly decided that the one-horned goat was pretty cool and they became best of buddies. She no longer viewed the goat as less than her dream, but rather focused on how friendly, fluffy, and fun it was. The girl practiced a concept which I’ve been studying for a course. It’s called “appreciative inquiry,” which basically means that when collecting data which one will analyze in an organizational context, instead of first identifying the problems which need to be fixed, such as the fact that the creature was a goat with only one horn, the focus is to look for what is going well and can be enhanced and enlarged to be even better. The focus changes from what isn’t desirable to what can be appreciated. It’s a complete shift in perspective.
As leaders, we often have to make assessments about our team and organization. We need to identify what is going well and on what we need to work. However, I encourage us to take an appreciative inquiry approach and look for the positive aspects first. We may find that a one-horned goat is just what we really need.
Lead well.