The Easter Bunny Conundrum: What Changing Perspective Teaches Us About Leadership

Hi everyone, thanks for stopping by for Coffee & Culture #10. ☕️☕️☕️

Today, we’ll be talking about bunnies, chocolate, & the power of getting out of your comfort zone & changing up your perspective.

In the pre-COVID days, I was in an airport lounge with my husband, sipping bubbly, snacking and trying to relax prior to what was sure to be a stressful trip.

Part of the stress would come from managing our overly tired 3-yr-old, who at that moment was laying full out on the ground under the table, with her feet up in the air, singing loudly in Portuguese (one of her three languages), & generally being a little out of control.

Prior to a long flight, we were trying to balance letting her let off a little steam, but also keeping the environment quiet and calm for others. It was challenging.

Out of nowhere, my daughter says to us “I see a bunny with chocolate”. Naturally, my husband and I both looked at each other with that quintessential look parents give one another when a small child says something fanciful and imaginative.

Not one to be blown off, she tried a different tactic. Switching back to Portuguese, the language she speaks only to me, she said, “Mom, there’s an Easter Bunny here.” I looked around, under the table, behind me & out the window, but still had no idea what she was talking about.

Finally, I had the idea to look where she was looking. Sure enough, when I got down on the floor & looked up at the underside of the table, what did I see but a faded and torn sticker of an Easter Bunny, surrounded by chocolate eggs? Turns out other children like to embarrass their parents by lying on airport floors too.

It also turns out that people see completely different things when they are looking at them from different perspectives.

I immediately smiled at my husband & said, “sure enough, there is a bunny with chocolate under there.” I followed with “this right here, this is culture.” What do I mean by that? How many of us parents would have just stuck with the idea that the child was being fanciful, never really looking any further to see if her idea had merit? Without ever making a point of actively listening & switching to her perspective to see if it might be a different reality.

Often, in the business (or military) world, we leaders are put into the same situation, aren’t we? When discussing one idea, project or new product, we take care to include many different people in the discussion.

We even take care to make sure that everyone has eyes on the issue at hand. But, like with that table, we sometimes forget that each person has a slightly, or completely, different perspective than the others.

In these situations, we often tend to overlook the perspectives of others, which is human nature. We see things from our perspective, & we assume that our perspective is correct. Often it is. But it’s only one perspective, one of many. Different angles, different heights, & different world views all color what we perceive when we approach a problem.

It’s tempting to think that the person with the completely different perspective (often someone young or new to our organizations) is being fanciful, naïve or is just plain wrong. Oftentimes we smile inwardly and then write them off completely.

What we need to do is take the time to listen fully, & to try as much as possible to consider things from the perspective of the team member who is introducing the idea.

As leaders, we need to create the space for our team to speak freely, introduce ideas that may sound crazy in a given setting, but may end up changing the way that we do things, or even the very things that we believe.

We need to challenge ourselves to operate from the assumption that all ideas have a reason for existing, just might have value, and they deserve to be considered before being simply discarded.

At the end of the day, I know my daughter felt listened to & understood. I got on the ground with her and we had a conversation about the Easter Bunny, about stickers, & about chocolate.

Then we got some stickers to play with later, at her request, something that neither of us would likely have thought to do, making the travelling experience loads easier for everyone involved.

What could a perspective shift today do for your business, for your team spirit, & for your bottom line? Can you afford not to find out?

Thanks for hanging with me today, & happy Easter — however you celebrate.

Daniella Mestyanek Young is an American author and TEDx Speaker. Daniella has been breaking through barriers and challenging authority figures since her earliest childhood memories growing up in the horrifying Children of God Cult and on through her service and deployment to war twice. Daniella served as part of the first group of women who integrated into deliberate combat arms missions back in 2011 and has since spent the majority of her time leading in veteran service organizations to try and help folks heal and find their own definition of success after their service.

Daniella is married to the world’s best special operations helicopter pilot (retired) and speaks primarily in Brazilian Portuguese with her daughter, who sasses her back in three languages. Daniella is currently at work on her memoir, Uncultured. She can be found speaking speaking truth to power, irritating vetbros and stamping out the kyriarchy on Twitter @daniellamyoung. She can be contacted at daniella.m.young@gmail.com