Leader of the Pack
Keeping people moving forward Requires you to trust your team to help stragglers along.
Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. Except when you’re leading a "team" of 19 people.
I’ve been home from a big family trip to California for about a week now. I’m a big Disney nerd, so the opportunity to visit the original Disneyland was exciting…but managing 19 strong personalities in a crowded theme park was a challenge even for an experienced senior organizational leader like me.
I had been appointed (really, appointed myself) the chief fun officer of the whole event. Just when I’d corral the group to start moving to the next attraction, one of the kids (or grown ups) would suddenly discover that they needed to go to the bathroom, or that they needed a drink or a snack, or that some other member of their family had disappeared into a souvenir shop because they NEEDED a set of Mickey ears, or a bubble wand or a hat, or….you get the idea.
Are we having fun yet?
Herding (some of the) kids in the courtyard between Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure.
But with effort, and some assistance from my wife and siblings, we’d get all three generations of the family back together, and I’d yell out a destination and start walking. As long as I could see at least one other person from the group somewhere behind or beside me, I’d keep walking.
At one point, my step-son caught up with me to complain – I was moving too fast, leaving people behind. I slowed down a little and told him the truth:
I wasn’t all that concerned about the stragglers.
Managing 19 stubborn personalities taught me two massive leadership lessons that apply far beyond the Magic Kingdom:
1. Momentum is harder to build than to maintain
In any large group, people won't move until someone takes the first step. Without a clear "pull," a group will argue endlessly about the next move. Once the first few people follow the leader, the rest follow the motion.
2. Trust is the ultimate force-multiplier
I could walk ahead because I trusted my "team." They are smart, capable, and they care about each other. I didn't need to micromanage the back of the line because I knew they’d look out for one another—and they all had phones if they got truly lost.
The takeaway? As a leader, your job isn't to hold everyone's hand; it's to provide the direction and the momentum so the team has something to follow.
I started to tell my step-son that he could apply these lessons to his own life one day...
But before I could finish, he’d wandered off to buy a hat.
