What Barney & The Lion King Have to Do With Competency & Critical Leadership Thinking

August 24, 2010

For any of you reading this who have children, you know the pain of watching Barney for the tenth time in a row or The Lion King watched over and over and over until you want to scream. (Okay it is easier to sit through multiple viewings of the Lion King then it is Barney!)

Have you ever wondered why a child will want to watch the same thing over and over until you want to pull your hair out?

It all has to do with competency.

See the more a child watches a movie the more they can:

Predict what is coming up
Interact with the show
Become an expert on lines and sayings
Have control over their environment for a space of time

This makes them feel competent, confident, and like an expert in that area.

There are some lessons here for us as adults:

Never underestimate the impact change can have on your employees. It throws them out of the competent and expert loop in to the beginner.

Never forget that people like to have some control over their day, their environment and their life. If you don’t give it to them, along with parameters that will make them successful, they will try to “take” it any way they can. This means you can end up with hundreds of people all doing things differently in order to maintain their control and independence. In essence, you can end up with chaos.

Here is your Take Action:

What things (systems, processes, etc) are you constantly tweaking that may cause people to feel “out of control”? What can you do to streamline them?

What control do you have over things that you need to relinquish by setting appropriate parameters so others can take over doing those things and obtain success?

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