What a Video Game Taught Me About Leadership

It's true. I’ve fallen in love with The Legend of Zelda™: Breath of the Wild. Why, you ask? Well, my initial motivation was to bond with my son. It didn’t take long before I was hooked.

Now, there's a lot to love about the game such as the open-air adventure, the challenge of finding helpful objects on the journey and the thrill of defeating enemies, but it wasn’t those things that hooked me.

It was the story. Breath of the Wild does an amazing job of taking all the elements of the game and weaving them into an ancient story of good vs. evil in the kingdom of Hyrule. As the larger story comes into focus, the individual parts of the game begin to make more sense and your mission becomes clearer. Even food becomes meaningful because it helps overcome a challenge later like protection from hypothermia.

Like Breath of the Wild, communicating a compelling story to your team is a game changer. When technical leaders are able to explain the vision and how it will benefit customers, the team sees how their individual parts have meaning in the bigger picture, their mission becomes clear, and engagement increases.

And before you know it, they are not just motivated by a job, but by a larger story in which they want to play a part