The Rise Of The Guardians – Leadership & Self-discovery
The plot involves five of our childhood make-believe characters that make up The Guardians: Santa, Easter Bunny, Sandman, Tooth Fairy and Jack Frost. While the evil side is represented by the Boogeyman.
Our guardians characterized in movie:
Santa as WONDER
Rabbit as HOPE
Sandy as DREAM
Tooth fairy as CHILD HOOD MEMORY
Jack Frost as FUN
and evil characterized in the movie
Pitch Black as FEAR
(Pitch Black, the Nightmare King, is the Rise of the Guardians’ re-imagining of the Boogeyman, the mythical creature that haunts the closets and dark corners of childhood nightmares).
- The movie is about self-discovery (impersonated by Jack Frost), Remember the scene where Santa asks him whats your center?
- Discovering one’s purpose (same character), Later in the movie Jack realized that his center is FUN.
As an adult, majority have forgotten about this.
Watch this movie, if you haven’t and ponder on following or allied thoughts…. you may have a different version, but you know you have your own version of it:
1. how you WONDER how it feels to have Superhuman abilities
2. how you HOPE to become like Bill Gates or someone else
3. how you DREAM to be an astronaut or anything else
4. how SILLY you were as a kid?
But as an adult you FEAR a lot of things, job, money, etc and in amidst of this you have forgotten your real version of FUN.
For example, Your way of fun earlier would be reading a book on a couch or a simple maggie party with closed friends in midnight or anything else. Versus, the new version of fun which is mainly to upload on social media, then you have curiosity of how many likes and comments you get? Is this your real fun or something else.
That’s for you to enquire for yourself 🙂
Well, along the wonderful message in the movie, I found several leadership principles to ponder.
1. Passion: Through the character of Jack Frost the movie taught the lesson of discovering what you are truly passionate about. It was not until Jack discovered more about who he was and what made himself tick that he then understand why he had been selected as the newest member of The Guardians. Once he discovered his own individual passion for helping others he became an effective member of the team and became a strong ally in defeating the Boogeyman and his evil forces.
- What are you passionate about?
- What causes you to be excited about getting up in the morning?
Once you discover the answer to these questions you will be on your way to being a more effective leader and team member for you organization.
2. Teamwork: The Boogeyman had successfully destroyed almost all the happiness and delight in the world by attacking the imaginations of the children of the world. With only one child left to reverse the evil curse brought about by the Boogeyman, the entire team had to unify and use their individual strengths collectively in order to be successful. This movie does a great job of showing the great truth effective teamwork: “Team members must put their individual pride and agendas aside in order to effectively serve the team’s greater objectives.”
- Are you a good team member?
- Are you willing to put your personal agenda and pride aside to accomplish the greater good of the team?
- Do your teams function at a high level by serving one another?
3. Overcoming Fear: The big weapon that the Boogeyman used was “fear”! He used that to wield his power over both the children and The Guardians as well. The fear was paralyzing everyone and The Guardians were not able to stand up to the Boogeyman and his evil forces until they collectively conquered their fears and took positive action to eliminate the obstacles they had been challenged with. Allowing fear to paralyze us cripples our leadership and limits the effectiveness of our organizations.
- What fears are holding you back today?
- Is fear inhibiting your team in any way?
- What positive steps do you need to take to eliminate the power that fear has over you and your organization?
4. Strength Zone: The last lesson we learned from The Guardians was how we are all most effective working within our strength zone. Each team member has his own unique strengths from which to pull from and support the team most effectively. At the climax of the movie we saw each team member excel by using the special gifts they each possess individually to help the team collectively. There is power in unifying behind a mission with each team member contributing their strongest talents to serve the team’s mission.
- Are you working within your strength zone in your current role?
- Are your team members working in their individual strength zones?
- How much more effective could your team be if you were to get all the team members working collectively from their strength zones?
