Pete Docter, the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, puts his storytelling skills to work when mentoring emerging leaders and filmmakers. He once candidly recounted the crisis of confidence he experienced while directing the film Inside Out to a group of 22 mentees in Pixar’s Leadership Mentor Program. The film revolves around a girl, and the main characters are the emotions inside her head, with Joy serving as the central character. Struggling to crack the story, Docter found himself in a three-years-long “tunnel of darkness,” as he put it: feeling like a failure, and convinced he’d be fired. In the depths of sadness and despair, he had a breakthrough realization: the Sadness character needed a more prominent role.