Welcome back to the Sunday Story where we’re doing an intellectual deep dive into a show made for 3 year olds - and it’s sufficiently deep as a show that at nearly 40 we’re not smart enough to get to the bottom of it - but we’ve managed to divine out some leadership lessons anyway. This week, we’re talking about the Episode where Bluey dreams that she’s a fruit bat - because, you see, fruit bats don’t have to go to bed at night like kids do. They get to stay awake and eat fruit, and that’s clearly better than going to bed for a child.
Perhaps it’s because this was my son’s favourite bedtime story for months, but there’s something about this episode that resonates with one of the the most common leadership experiences I’ve seen over my career. I’ll explain the episode to you first and then dive into the moral of the story as I see it. If you want to check it out, it’s Episode 8 of Season 1.
As mentioned, it’s time for Bluey to go to bed, and she runs out to her porch to avoid it. The Fruit Bats are flying overhead, which prompts the conversation between her and her dad about them not having a bed time and Bluey seems to think that’s an OK situation. But, eventually, Bandit and Chili get the kids to bed and turn off the light.
Bluey tosses and turns but sleep evades her. So she sneaks out of bed and heads downstairs, where she finds her mom, Chili, hanging out in the living room while her dad Bandit has what appears to be an exciting puppy dream on the ground.
Bluey asks her mom what Dad is doing, and Chili explains that Bandit is dreaming about playing touch football with his friends. “Why doesn’t he do that when he’s awake?” She asks, and Chili explains that he can’t - he’s too busy being a dad.
Bluey is inspired by her dad dreaming what he really wants to do, and decides she’s going to dream about being a fruit bat. What follows is Bluey enjoying the Australian night, flying off to a 60’s inspired rock version of one of the main songs that harkens back to the Beatles Yellow Submarine era. She eats some fruit, and eats some more fruit, and then eats some more fruit, and then goes to see her dad playing touch footy in dreamland with his pals.
The next morning she awakes, rested and happy (it’s fictional TV show so we’ll allow them to portray the kid who stayed up way too late as cheery the next day for the sake of the narrative), and comes down to the living room to see her Dad trying to keep in shape for that “someday” where he’ll be able to play touch footy with his mates once again.
“Dad” she says as he’s busy doing press-ups.
“Yeah mate” her dad replies (it’s ‘Straya)
“Thanks for looking after us”.
“You’re welcome”
So, what’s the secret leadership lesson in this psychedelic dreamscape of an episode?
Before he was a dad, Bandit was a “human being” (okay a dog) who loved playing touch footy with his mates, but he set that aside because of a more important obligation - raising his kids.
Before you are a leader, you are a human being with needs, desires, and wants. But we often put those aside for what we think is more important - leading our people.
The thing is, Bluey didn’t realize that her leader - Bandit - had a whole important life outside of being her dad. She mussed and fussed about bedtime, making Bandit’s job just that much harder, and when Bandit’s job is that much harder, he’s that much further away from doing the things he loves that fill his heart and soul. Bluey is fundamentally a decent kid - she’s kind, cooperative, and empathetic. But without knowing about this aspect of her dad’s life that he was missing out on, she wasn’t able to be empathetic to his needs and instead was hyper focused on her own.
Now, before I continue I will say there’s absolutely a leadership imperative to “Stand Tall on the Quarterdeck” - an expression meaning that Leaders are expected to be the calm in chaos and, particularly if you are a servant-style leader, they do tend to put the needs of others before their own. But like all things in life, there’s balance.
In Bandit’s case, he’s got good balance — sure, he might not be playing much footy right now, but he’s making sure he’s keeping in shape for when the time comes again, and he’s pretty thrilled to be a dad and anyone who watches the show would regard him as a healthy and competent parent that overall does a great job.
But if he were to sacrifice too much - say, he decided that parenting was too busy, and he was never going to play footy again, so there’s no need to keep in shape - well, that wouldn’t be very balanced, would it?
There’s two key takeaways here that we all need to keep in mind, because all of us get caught up in our leadership obligations from time to time:
The first is this: Don’t be a duck. Ducks are notoriously calm looking creatures, gliding along the surface of the pond as if it were an effortless act of grace and stability. But under the water their little feet are going absolutely bonkers with effort to control their position against the current and wind; they present a calm, collected image but deep down their burning energy at an unsustainable rate - which is why they don’t swim all the time and occasionally have to rest on the shore (ideally in a place where people are throwing them chunks of bread or some other duck-appropriate food).
The second is don’t be afraid to show your people the human you are. Like Bluey, your people can’t empathize with your role as a leader if they don’t see your humanity, and if they can’t empathize with you as a human, they might be inclined to do whatever the adult, professional version of “muss and fuss” is when they hit a conflict.
(The adult version is also just mussing and fussing, isn't it?)
There is always a need to hold space between you and the people you lead, because the nature of leadership is that you have to sometimes make decisions that folks don’t like and without that space it becomes incredibly hard to do that. But decent leadership requires you to lead the whole human, not just their specific work performance (that’s management, not leadership), and to do that they need to be able to see you - the real you - and see themselves in a similar spot.
This is also where you role model your values - in Bandits case, he role modelled the importance of being a good dad over the importance of a footy game, but he still communicated that Footy was something important to him by keeping in shape. As a leader, it’s OK to sacrifice for your people - indeed, it’s required. But it’s also OK to be OK with that, and to have real human feelings about that. And it’s often OK to show those feelings to those you lead.
Here’s an example - I believe firmly in leaders not bothering their people in their off time. Sure, emergencies happen - in my world that’s defined as “someone will die”, not “but I really want to finish this memo for two weeks from now” - but as a general rule, I don’t bother my folks on evenings and weekends. I also believe that time away from work is essential and I encourage folks to totally disengage from work during family time, and I try to model that behaviour myself. But, I did choose to give up my Saturday yesterday and power through my inbox which was a couple of hundred messages deep. I scheduled my replies to arrive Monday at 8 AM to honour my values of not bothering my people, but I fully recognize that by working on a Saturday I’ve failed to role model that second value of “leave work at work and be present during family time”.
My people are going to know I worked Saturday - some of them are going to get 2-3 emails from me all at 8 AM on a Monday, and I’m a fast typer but I’m not that fast. And if I was doing that every weekend, I think that would be a problem - as a leader, I would not be consistently modelling balance, which I’ve articulated it to my team as an expectation that I have of them. But doing it once in a while sends a different message - it says “I value our communication and I know you’ve been waiting on this stuff, and I’m happy to spend this time on a weekend that I normally wouldn’t to honour that”. On the flip side, if it happens a lot, the folks I work with will notice because they’ll empathize with my situation, and they’ll hold me accountable to lead by example and make the changes I need to in my role or systems so that I can reclaim Saturdays with my family. This is what values-based cultures do in a workplace - they support the whole human, both in leadership roles and elsewhere. People "lead up" all the time - by showing them you're a human, you show them that you sometimes need leadership from them, too.
Like Bandit giving up footy, leaders occasionally going the extra mile is a great way of telling your people that you care and are willing to sacrifice for their success, but don’t feel you have to hide it like the duck hides it’s feet. You are a human - don’t be afraid to show your team your humanity, and your leadership will flourish.
Now, it’s time for some fruit. See you next Sunday.
P.S. some of those great leaders who showed me their humanity are likely reading this, and so I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to say: Thank you. I would not be me, if you were not you, and you are people I am forever grateful for.
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