As a kid, I loved reading fables and folk stories. In the Romanian culture we have beautiful stories for kids, which I always enjoyed reading early on in my childhood. I was pleasantly surprised to find the story called The Wind and the Sun in one of my son’s books as well. You may know it too, yet since it teaches us an important life lesson, I decided to share it here.
In the story, the Wind and the Sun challenge one another to get a passerby’s coat off in order to see which one is the more powerful of the two. The Wind starts by creating a storm, trying to blow the man’s coat off him through his sheer force. However, the harder he tries, the man holds on to his coat tighter and tighter. Despite all the Wind’s efforts, he cannot succeed.
Then comes the Sun’s turn to try his hand at removing the man’s coat. He had been waiting patiently behind a cloud and, as he shows his warm and smiling face, the man looks up and decides to take off his coat. Whereas the Wind tried to control the man’s actions, making him in fact dig in his heels even more, the Sun succeeded without much difficulty, simply by sharing his warmth and kindness with the passerby. The moral of the story is that you can get more out of people with kindness and love than with anger and force.
In today’s world, many leaders choose to use force instead of kindness to be at the forefront in the rat-race, to get work done faster and to achieve short-term results. This has a devastating impact over individuals’ well-being and the organization’s culture. Rather, when using positive influence, by getting to know what drives a person, leaders become more powerful in increasing motivation and obtaining both short-term as well as long-term results.
It is important to remember these morals that we learned as children and that we still teach our kids today. We can embrace these values and better apply the wonderful lessons we give our youth in our own every-day professional lives. I personally believe the key to successful motivation is kindness.
What other children’s stories do you think we should remember in today’s world? What childhood lessons do you see as pertinent and valuable to our corporate life?
Note* The Wind and the Sun story is part of Aesop’s Fables, a collection credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. This story also reminds me of David Hawkins’ masterpiece, Power vs Force, a book I strongly recommend to anyone looking to explore the hidden determinants of human behavior.
