How would you catch a leprechaun?

My daughter and her kindergarten friends have been talking for weeks about how they would go about catching a leprechaun.

The ideas have been wide-ranging. Some involved boxes with candy underneath and a stick tied to a string. Others leaned more aggressively; monsters or traps designed to scare the leprechaun into submission. It’s actually a pretty recap of the carrots vs. sticks theory of motivation.

That’s usually where the thinking starts -> Offer a reward, or apply pressure

Her idea went in a different direction.

She didn’t jump straight to the trap. Instead, she started with the setting. She wanted to build a small house, just the right size for a leprechaun. Something that looked nice. Somewhere he’d want to go. The plan was that once he went inside, there would be a string to pull it up, with little covers that would close over the windows and doors so he couldn’t get back out.

But as she was explaining it, I got stuck on one part.

What would actually make the leprechaun go in?

I started approaching it from an incentives lens. I asked her what we could put inside. Candy, maybe. Seeds. A small bowl of soup to warm him up. Something to draw him in.

She kept telling me none of that was needed.

I was stumped, but then I realized she had already answered the question. She wasn’t trying to add something to lure him in; she was trying to build something he would naturally want to walk into. Something cozy. Something that would make him curious enough to step inside on his own.

The house wasn’t separate from the incentive. It was the incentive.

What I realized after was that I was approaching it as an incentives conversation, a quick win. What can we offer? What will get him in the door?

She was approaching it from a different perspective.

She wasn’t thinking about what to layer on top. She was thinking about who she was trying to attract and what would actually matter to him. The whole idea was built around that.

It’s a small shift, but it changes the outcome.

Because it’s easy to focus on incentives as something you add -> discounts, rewards, pressure, urgency. But those only go so far if they’re not grounded in a real understanding of the person on the other side.

She skipped right past that step.

Instead of asking “what can I offer him?”, she asked, in her own way, “what would make him want to be here?”

The trap may or may not work… but that broader repositioning can be a powerful lens shifter.

*She was hoping that if she did catch him, he would clean up all the messes he had been making around the classroom.

Written By Kyle Paterson, Business Development and Capabilities Leader