Lead Like a Unicorn (Even if You Feel Like a Donkey Sometimes)
Did you know that Scotland’s national animal is the unicorn?
Not the lion. Not the stag. Not even the famously shaggy Highland cow.
The unicorn.
At first glance, it sounds absurd. But the more you dig into the history, the more brilliant it becomes. In Scottish heraldry, the unicorn represented purity, strength, and fierce independence. It was untamable, the ultimate symbol of rare power.
Yet, if you look closely at the royal crests, you’ll notice the unicorn is always shown in chains.
Why? Because something that powerful, if left entirely unchecked, could cause chaos. Even the most inspiring symbol needs balance, grounding, and discipline.
And here’s where I think this ties perfectly into leadership.
The Unicorn Ideal
In organizations, we often talk about leaders as visionaries. The ones who “think big,” “see around corners,” “transform industries.” We celebrate the mythical leaders who change the game, set bold visions, and inspire us to do more than we thought possible.
That’s the unicorn. Rare, inspiring, untamed.
And it’s worth striving for. Every team deserves to feel they’re working toward something extraordinary. Leaders should absolutely be painting pictures of a future that’s bigger, bolder, and better than today.
But here’s the catch: the unicorn, left without chains, doesn’t serve anyone. It runs off into the mist, leaving the rest of the team chasing shadows.
The Chains of Reality
In heraldry, the unicorn is chained not because it’s weak, but because even the strongest vision needs to be tethered to reality.
The same applies to leadership. The day-to-day grind—metrics, payroll, compliance, timelines, stakeholder updates—can feel like chains. And yes, sometimes they do feel like they’re weighing down. But they’re the discipline that keeps ambition from floating away.
I’ve seen what happens when organizations forget this. For example, freelancing for a start-up, I poured weeks into preparing an investor deck. Nights, weekends, even over a holiday. I was motivated. Their vision was compelling, their potential real.
But the framework to ground it?
Missing.
Systems for handling assets and approvals weren’t in place, and documentation kept slipping through cracks.
Sadly, the result was predictable: my effort—and the team’s—was scattered across disconnected priorities. Promising opportunities fizzled, and long-term value drained away in favor of putting out the day’s hottest fire.
The team carried the unicorn on their backs; leadership left the chains behind.
Straddling the Myth and the Mundane
So what does good leadership look like? It’s not one or the other. It’s both.
Vision without discipline is fantasy.
Discipline without vision is drudgery.
The best leaders are those who can inspire with one hand and structure with the other. They don’t just talk about the unicorn; they build the paddock, the feed schedule, and the stable so the vision can actually survive.
Unicorn Enablement: Practical Steps
Here are a few ways leaders can honor the unicorn without losing the chains:
Carve out Unicorn Time
Schedule protected space for long-term, visionary work. Not “when there’s time” (there never is), but as a deliberate part of the calendar.
Translate Vision into Daily Scorecards
Big goals should connect to small actions. If you’re talking about “industry transformation,” show how today’s process improvement or record-keeping links directly to that ambition.
Guard the Unicorn Pipeline
Don’t dismiss novel ideas because they won’t pay off this quarter. Some of the best breakthroughs start as side projects. Build a lightweight system to track and revisit them.
Build Transparency Around Tradeoffs
Be honest about the chains. If resources are limited, explain why. If metrics are pulling in a different direction, share that tension with your team instead of hiding it.
Allow for Iteration and Failure
Ideas don’t show up fully formed. Encourage experiments. Celebrate lessons from what didn’t work. Show that disciplined documentation of “failure” is just as valuable as success.
Humor, Truth, and the Reader’s Comment
One of my readers recently described “long-term leadership” as being like a unicorn — everyone talks about it, but it rarely shows up in practice. I think that’s brilliant. Because it captures the tension perfectly: rare, elusive, inspiring.
But here’s the twist: just because it’s rare doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for it. In fact, precisely because it’s rare, it’s worth chasing.
And the lesson from Scotland reminds us: the unicorn is at its most powerful not when it’s galloping free, but when it’s chained just enough to bring that myth into reality.
Closing Thought
Leadership isn’t about choosing between unicorns and chains. It’s about holding both, at once. Inspiring teams to dream big, while also building the systems that make those dreams defensible, measurable, and real.
So here’s my question:
Where in your organization is the unicorn being neglected? And what’s one thing you can do this week to tend to it?
Leave a post in the comments… speak soon!
There’s a study I read years ago that I’ve never been able to forget.
In a prison setting, people were gaining significant amounts of weight, not because of diet, but because of their pants.