I first met Edward Monkton’s Pig of Happiness when I was preparing to deliver a seminar on leadership theory to midwifery Masters students (my first ever teaching experience, as it happens!) I knew I needed to provide some interesting illustration of how theory can apply to real life in order to keep the midwives’ attention for the whole three hours of the seminar, and the Pig seemed a really fun way to introduce the narratives of the midwifery leaders I’d encountered during my doctoral research.
So how exactly can an unusually happy pig illustrate ideas about leadership in midwifery? The story of the Pig of Happiness, which you can access below, was written by Giles Andreae (otherwise known as Edward Monkton, and Purple Ronnie) in 2009, as part of a project to encourage positive thinking in society. The pig decides that no matter what, he wants to not fall into his friends’ negative ways of thinking, and instead offers positive alternatives to their comments, including some very funny comebacks to some harsh insults. His force of effort and unrelenting positivity eventually results in others following him, and ultimately changing the usual ways of doing things and reacting to situations.
This seems like a hugely relevant message for leadership: if we want to make a change (which is often an underpinning theme in all things leadership), we have to begin with ourselves. I use this principle a lot when exploring the idea of self-leadership, which is all about understanding self: knowing who you are, realising what you’re capable of achieving, and exploring where you might be going and how you might get there. Over at Thrive Global, Andrea Goodridge has some great tips about self-leadership. Why not head over there, and then come back to the Pig of Happiness and see whether you can see the links: