To the Mentor: Why Some Chickens Cross the Road
She had to eat, just like everybody else. Even living in the highly trafficked city, where the kind of good food she was used to eating was in scarce supply, she was the epitome of determination. This was a mom. And this mom, apparently a single parent, head-of-household type, took care of her brood. Like most single moms, whatever it was going to take, she was going to take care of her own, even if no one helped.
On the day I met her, she was having kind of a rough day. In fact, she ran about like a chicken with her head on...umm...because she was.
She was a chicken.
A mom, with two juvenile chickadees, pecked at cobblestone, ferreting out scraps and bugs from pebbles and sand.
It was earlier this summer and I was on a Caribbean island called St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, getting some shore time amid a week of summer sailing when I saw it. It was in the city market, a well-traveled crowd of sunburned tourists, fare-grabbing taxis, and flow-with-it locals, a living and gyrating scene, made even more compelling by the menagerie of underfoot creeping critters like feral cats, loved-by-no-one dogs, exotic birds, and seemingly-steroid-pumped iguanas. It's not uncommon to even saunter by small donkeys whose furry ancestors have inhabited these islands since pirates nabbed others' silver and gold and slavers nabbed others' freedom and destinies. This barking, mewing, hissing, and braying animalian cocktail is like every island culture I've ever visited throughout the world. But today, it was chickens.
A mom with two chickadees had a problem unfolding right before me.
You see, this gal wasn't the kind to hover over or fence anyone in too tightly. In fact, you could say she had one of those "free range" child-rearing philosophies that is in vogue with the bohemian or intelligentsia in places like Portland or Boston. And also being the type not to make much of a public scene when the kids test the outer limits of the free range parenting style, it was bound to happen at some point. It happened twice on the evening I met her.
The kids wandered off, got ahead, got away. The free-ranger's worst nightmare had been realized—she got separated. The mother hen was deprived of her babies.
At first, when I noticed them, all three were together, efficiently scavenging their way through the pedestrian bustle. They meandered right in front of my feet, seemingly unaware and unafraid that my emerging vegetarian eating habits were not yet fully stabilized, and under the right circumstances they'd qualify as the most important ingredient in dishes with names that start or end with words like "_____" and dumplings, "_____" pot pie or baked, or grilled, or Kentucky Fried "_____."
I guess I began paying attention because I think a lot about how we influence one another concerning growth. I think of the sayings in my culture of "few things being so fierce as a mother hen deprived of her young," or as poignantly nurturing as "a mother hen broods over her young...."
But then it happened…
One chick ran across the road, quickly followed by the siblings. A car pulled to a stop to park between the hen and her young. Not only did it block my view of the chicks, it blocked the ground-level view for the hen.
Suddenly, a clucking and wing-fluttering scuffle could be heard from the mother hen as if she was saying something I might have expected my own mom to have said when I would run ahead into the crowd or absently-minded run into the street: "Get back over here where I can see you! I told you to watch out around all these cars!"
But, true to form, like every other toddler, these kids seemed to not hear (or not want to hear) their mom. They seemed to engage in a kind of adrenaline-infused chicken race to the chain-link fence on the opposite side of the road.
And then I saw what was about to happen next. I wondered: "What will mama do if those little raptors can take flight and scale that fence?" No sooner had the thought been thought that one did so, and then two birds took flight and perched themselves along the top of the barbed wire at the top of the fence which was as tall as my six-foot frame. They seemed to be real intent now to NOT look back in their cackling mom's general direction. She had now negotiated the obstacles of distance, the threats of being crushed by donkey carts or pick up truck wheels, and was clicking up a storm at her babies straddling razor wire and freedom on the other side.
Then I thought, "what if they...?" Yep, they did it. Like emaciated miniature eagles with an awkward weight-to-passenger-balance problem, these pollitos took flight, flapping tiny wings that drowned out their mom's beside-herself-rage and protest.
L
anded now, but separated by a see-through galvanized metal fence, mother and kids stared, stammered, and stewed as if commencing the first supervised prison visit where relatives can see and talk with their incarcerated loved ones but not reach out and touch though the fence or Plexiglas wall.
At this point, I had completely forgotten that I was vacationing in paradise. The plot of the highly maternal drama was being played out before me. I wondered how this maternal, nurturing, providing, protecting instinct would work its way out now. Would these little bird-brains be able to work through this separation-anxiety infused crisis?
Then it happened.
Faster than a locomotive, leaping in a single bound (or maybe two), Mom ripped off her mild-mannered mother hen glasses and gray flannel suit, ran into a phone booth, returning with a red cape and a gold medallion on her feathery chest, emblazoned with a red "S" (for "Super Mom!"). And did I hear "Cluck, Cluck, and Away"?
Mother hen took flight with little regard for
the barbed dangers that waited above her head. The mom flew in one sweeping movement to the top of the fence, sitting for just a moment as she spied her young brood, and then she made another downward motion on other side. For some, nothing will prevent them from ensuring the well-being of their little ones. Amid a flurry of dust and feathers, Super Mom landed within 72-inches of her babes. And as if this was "all in a days work" (mothers the world-over would see this as such), she began pecking about the grasses, the stones, the sand...this time, however, taking the a particular position.
No shaming.
No guilting.
No nagging.
No lectures about her fragile coronary condition.
No chastisement, nor depriving of them of cell phones or docking video game time, this mom (having averted calamity) got back to being about the business of getting her babies fed for that day. She led them forward to whatever life assigned next.
Impressive.
Mentors, learn from the chicken. Learn from the single mom.
Let deep concerns for the free-range development of emerging leaders allow risk, autonomy, even accidents to be the norm. Keep the developmental process moving forward despite setbacks (and even the self-inflicted ones brought about by immaturity's ever-occurring surprises). Lead the emerging leader...sometimes from behind, sometimes through the obstacles, sometimes out front (leaving no room for ambiguity about authority, direction, or boundaries).
If you ask a chicken why she crossed the road, she would treat it as a laughing matter. If it were that mama chicken, she would reply, "Of course, to get to the other side." But then she'd point to her young and ask you, "Wouldn't you do the same?"
Mentors: Cross the road. Scale the fence. Lead the process.
