Meditations On Leadership
These are my thoughts on leadership related topics and ideas. It is meant to be a sort of journal for me and if you find it useful than I am happy to have helped.
I was in the middle of a meeting and I was in charge. There were a dozen or so people in the meeting and I had given the floor to someone else so they could introduce a two pronged plan with goals for the year. There were multiple stake holders in each plan and I could tell that not every stake holder had been asked for their input. It was obvious to me that these plans were well thought out but that they wouldn't stand a chance if every stake holder in the room didn't really put their all into them. I had to figure out what I was going to do to try and salvage not only the meeting but the plans as well and the clock was ticking. I decided that what I needed to do was use a story to make a point and encourage collaboration. Stories are powerful instruments of leadership because they are flexible and when told well they are easily relatable. You have to tell the story well and then you have to connect the story back to the point you were trying to make. So I told a story about when I was in a meeting and my superior introduced a new process that I disagreed with. I talked about how I had expressed my concerns and feelings but I had been disregarded and shot down. My reaction was to shut up and do what I was told but my heart was never in it so I wasn't as effective as I needed to be. I then related that to our current situation of having these new plans and in order for them to be effective we have to have are our whole hearts in them and we can't do that if we just shut up and do what we are told. We have to feel safe enough to talk about them and how we feel. We have to express our concerns and feel that we are heard. The result was people felt heard and the resistance that I had felt building against these two plans started to dissipate. It takes more effort than a single well told story to solve a problem like that but stories are a good way to get momentum in the right direction. In the book Stories that Stick by Kendra Hall the author talks about a simple formula for telling a good story. It goes like this. Normal -> Explosion -> New Normal. Here is a quick break down of that: NormalThe normal is life before the explosion. How things were before they changed. In the story above the Normal was the meeting I was sitting in with tensions rising and resistance building to these new plans. ExplosionThe Explosion is the moment of impact. The thing that happens. In the story above about the meeting it was me telling the story of my experience getting shot down. This is the moment when the direction of the story changes. New NormalThis is life after the Explosion. What has changed and what is different. In the story above it is me describing how people started to settle down and the palpable resistance started to subside. Here is that story broken down into a shorter story with those parts laid out: Normal: I was in a meeting where two plans were introduced and not everyone was happy about it but no one was saying anything. Explosion: I told a story about not having a safe place to discuss differing viewpoints about a plan and the negative consequences that resulted. New Normal: People began to lose resistance and a safer environment for discussion was created. Hopefully this formula is helpful for you and I encourage you to read Stories that Stick to gain even more insight and understanding of the power of stories. It is important to have the story telling skill as a leader because it is one of the best ways to create momentum in the direction you need to go.
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AuthorJ. LaVarr Roberts Archives
April 2021
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