Based on the fable by George Reavis
Once upon a time, the animals decided that they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world. So, they organized a school. They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer, all of the animals took all of the subjects.
The duck was excellent at swimming. In fact, he was better than his instructor. However, he just passed at flying and was very poor at running. Since he was so slow in running, he had to drop his swimming classes and do extra running. This caused his webbed feet to become badly worn, meaning that he dropped to an average mark in swimming. Fortunately, average was acceptable, therefore nobody worried about it except the duck.
The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because he had too much to make up for in swimming.
The squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher insisted that he start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down. He developed cramps from overexertion, so he ended up with a C in climbing and a D in running.
The eagle was a real problem student and was severely disciplined for being a non-conformist. In his climbing class he beat everybody to the top of the tree, but he had his own way of getting there which was against the rules!
The kangaroo started out at the top of the racing class, but became discouraged when told to move swiftly on all four legs the way his classmates did.
The bear flunked because they said he was lazy, especially in the winter. His best time was summer, but school wasn’t open then.
Do you recognize the bear? A person who thrives on activities and is excited about getting things started? But, does not really do well when told to focus on thinking and planning carefully? What about the kangaroo? A person who gets discouraged and de-motivated because he is asked to imitate the rest? We must have all come across the eagle, who is usually labeled the trouble-maker; the one who does not conform and has a personal style of doing things. A person like a squirrel would be somebody who tries hard to do as told, but also meets constant frustration because it is not his or her natural way of doing things. We also have the ducks, who manage to do their best in all aspects, and end up delivering good results, but never the best.
The principle here is that we each have our own strengths and we need to be working hard to maximize them, not handicap our potential by becoming good at something that isn’t natural to us. We meet people at work or in our life that are similar to the animals mentioned above. This story stands as a lesson to make us realize that using our uniqueness for better results is the smarter choice. Trying to “fit in” and be a jack of all trades may only get us an ‘Average’ or a ‘C’ but never an ‘A’.
As a future leader, think about who the ducks, rabbits, squirrels, kangaroos, bears and eagles who will be part of your organization and how you can best use their unique skills and abilities, rather than trying to get the same level of average performance out of all of them.
Author: Sneha Jha
Author Information:
Sneha is part of the OD team in JLT India and function as an HR Business Partner to the business consulting team. She is a graduate in Psychology with more than 5 years of varied experience in HR. She is passionate about human behavior and all art forms; recently published a collection of confessional poetry.
