The leader was so clueless we almost felt sorry for him.

I was on the opening team for Disney's Animal Kingdom. Getting the park up and ready for guests posed a number of challenges. One of them was the flood of arriving cast members who all needed to be trained at the same time. We commandeered every location inside the not-yet-open park, including every room in the African-themed Tusker House restaurant. In one of the side rooms, we ran the Entertainment orientation program: Pride Guide.

During one class, I got a warning from the trainer that a senior leader had walked through the room during class and taken special notice of a blackboard (see insert in the above) in the room. That blackboard featured the English words for animals in Africa and their Swahili translation.

An email soon went out from that leader praising our trainer and training program for being so authentic and teaching the Swahili words. The only problem was that we weren’t. The writing on the blackboard was put there by Imagineering and was part of the design of the room. The leader, doing a 90 mile per hour walkthrough, did not know that or take the time to actually listen to what was being taught. Instead, he assumed. Our boss had to explain the situation to that leader. The email quickly got retracted.

Has this ever happened to you or to your organization’s leaders? We sometimes think we know more than we know and make assumptions without first discovering the facts. It’s good to move quickly, especially in these crazy times, but a little caution is a useful thing. Otherwise, your good intentions could get lost in translation.