How Learning to Tame Monkeys can Improve Your Leadership
Monkey Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated internationally on December 14. The holiday started in 2000 when artist Casey Sorrow—then an art student at Michigan State University—jokingly scribbled Monkey Day on a friend’s calendar. It gained notoriety when Sorrow and fellow MSU art student Eric Millikin began including Monkey Day in their artwork and comic strips. Since then, Monkey Day has been celebrated internationally, across countries like the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Of course, Hallmark Cards encourages its celebration, describing today as the “one day when monkey business is actually encouraged.” The holiday is primarily celebrated with costume parties intended to help draw attention to medical research issues. For Monkey Day 2012, USA Weekend published The 12 Stars of Monkey Day, a series of paintings by Eric Millikin that were “in part inspired by the many pioneering space monkeys who rode into the stars on rockets, leading the way for human space flight.”
Monkey Day reminds me of a leadership lesson I learned several years ago as part of a leadership development class. William Oncken, Jr.—Co-Author of The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey—spoke with our class about the themes of his book. Simply stated, “Don’t take on the problem if the problem isn’t yours. That monkey doesn’t belong to you!”