WonderTour

Whether its a stagnant job or a repetitive personal life, we can find ourselves lacking joy and hope, trapped in a closed loop without meaningful disruptions.  Like Jack Skellington in A Nightmare Before Christmas, we could be the Pumpkin King of Halloween but without hope for the future, it all feels empty.  We want to take the reigns and run out of our own closed loop Halloweentown, looking for something bright and shiny that brings us joy again, but that proposition can be scary.  Will others follow?  Will I end up leading them astray?

Taking the initiative to bring Christmas to Halloweentown can feel overwhelming with a high risk of failure, but if we follow the lessons from Jack and Sally we too can facilitate transformation in our lives and workplaces that brings joy to those around us.

In part 1 of Casablanca we worked out how to identify a Casablanca, aka a closed loop insulated environment where hope goes to die.  In part 2 we look to the examples of magnanimous leaders to see how they engineer an escape from Casablanca and in doing so break the closed loop for the good of those around them. 

When we find ourselves in a Casablanca-esque downward spiral of hope in our lives, it can seem impossible to reverse, yet through the examples of Victor, Ilsa, and even Rick, we can come to understand that sacrifice is the key to breaking free and resurrecting hope.  Sacrifice, if done magnanimously, like Victor offering up his own life for Ilsa's, creates a selfless chain reaction of hope, igniting the hope in each individual and compounding in scale to bring even the most evil system to its knees.

You don't have to look much further than your immediate group of friends or acquaintances each day to find people who are lacking in hope, without a cause to believe in.  

In Casablanca, we find a microcosm of humanity, a battle for hope.  Just because we aren't in WWII, like the characters in Casablanca, doesn't mean that there isn't a palpable lack of hope in the air.  It could be your department at work, your extended family, or even you yourself that are perpetuating a proverbial Casablanca environment where hope is throttled through something like an exit visa process that most are unable or unwilling to break out of.  But how do we break out of that space where hope is teetering on the edge of a knife?  

In part 1 we will look no further than Rick Blaine as an example of how we can identify when we are trapped in Casablanca and how to break out of the Casablanca mindset.

As we transition into a new series called "Hope and Belief" we return to a beloved franchise and character to guide our learning.  When we first find Rey she is capable and intelligent, but she is trapped in the past.   She's holding onto a feint hope that her parents will one day return to Jakku with little to believe in.  

And don't we all find ourselves stuck in the past at points in our lives.  If we are to be magnanimous we must, like Rey, rise up, turning our heads and our hearts to the present and the future.  Opening our small worlds up into a wide universe where we can make a lasting impact for the good of others.  But that's a lot easier said than done.  To break out of our past and to bring hope to the world means we need a special kind of map, which we are calling an "invisible map" (in Rey's case, the force).  Each of us has access to this invisible map to guide us when our eyes reach the end of what they can see, we just have to know how to read it.

Do you ever get tired of trying, tired of not achieving expectations, and tempted to give up and away from your problems?  People and expectations can be tough to deal with and even Jedi Master Luke Skywalker gives into those feelings, running away to a hidden island to escape his past and the pain it brings.  And yet, he hides a map so that others might find him.  

In our finale to the Map Making series, we pull apart Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens and seek to understand why we as humans might recede away from our problems, but tend to leave a map to the island we are hiding on. Spoilers: deep down we want to be found.  

Whether we find ourselves just starting out in a new role, as new parents, or on another journey, the scope of the world that we understand is never enough for our liking.  Like Belle reading her books, we are always dreaming of understanding the world better and making an impact on it.  But what if we aren't just like Belle, we are also like Beast and Gaston?

Beast comes from influence and control, but he's trapped in a small world, searching for a way to break out through his own abilities.  Through Belle's magnanimous character, she teaches Beast that the way to break out of a small world isn't just ravenously consuming information, but by doing something unexpected, by shocking the system.  What techniques can we use so that we, like Belle, might set off a chain reaction of transformation in the world around us?

One of the reasons we love Beauty and the Beast is because we can relate to Belle.  We all want to be a part of something bigger than "this provincial life".  Like most of us, Belle yearns for an adventure that makes her life meaningful.  

While Belle wouldn't call herself a leader when we find her early in the story, she practices magnanimous character within the small world she lives in.  By curating her character when the stakes are small, she is able to pass the test and break the curse when the stakes scale up, unlocking life to the full for those she leads and cares for. 

How might we be fully satisfied when our influence is smaller than we would like, patiently waiting for our chance to leave a legacy?

Salute mi Familia - the most recognizable line in the Fast and Furious franchise.  We all want to be part of the familia that Dom Toretto is building when we watch these movies, but how do we create those types of teams and moments in real life?

Despite his calloused exterior and checkered past, Dom Toretto is one of the most magnanimous leaders we've seen on WonderTour, a true Gandalf-type.  Dom's leadership superpower that boosts his teams to greater heights is his emotional integration.  Dom isn't afraid to show his own emotions and he's always studying the hearts of his team members to make sure they are ready for the challenges they're about to face.  Dom leads with mercy over sacrifice, enfranchising even his antagonists, like Hobbs, through his empathy and compassion. 

Just like in Fast Five when Dom, Brian, and the team are trapped in Rio and on the run from both Hobbs and Reyes, it can sometimes feel like our lives are out of our control.  Someone else makes the map and we just have to stay within their lines.  But as magnanimous leaders, we believe that the current map of reality isn't all there is to the story.  

When our known maps seem incompatible with our objectives, it's time to flip the map upside-down.  Flipping the Map allows us to 1) gain information about the other parties in the story and 2) re-write the map for all the players in the game.  The Fast Five team shows in a number of examples, like when they burn Reyes' money rather than stealing it, that flipping the map provides the disadvantaged team a chance to overcome unbeatable odds.

When we enter a new ecosystem, like Pandora, with new rules, players, functions, etc. It can be a rude awakening that our maps of reality are utterly insufficient to navigate this new terrain.  Un-writing maps of reality can be a painful and energy-intensive process, just ask Jake or Trudy.  Both come to Pandora with a hunan-centric view of the universe and struggle to accept what they see and what the Na'vi are trying to tell them about the world around them, because their maps are already too fixed, their cups are already full. 

Over the course of our leadership journeys we must get from a mindset of "look what I can teach you" to "I see you".  How might we learn from Jake, Trudy, and the Na'vi how to re-align our mental maps to reality so that we can love other well?