Let Me Tell ME A Story
Elliot Begoun
Tardigrades, Not Unicorns! CEO Coach, Board Member, Author, Founder of TIG Brands, TIG Venture Community, & TIG Collective
We are all great storytellers. Every day, we have Academy Award worthy scripts running through our heads. Our stories are complete with villains and victims, scandals and injustices and even a little bit of mystery and intrigue. We have an insatiable hunger for a good internal story. We grasp at even the tiniest of things to feed that desire. A simple email, a casual conversation or just a passing glance is sometimes all it takes to start a feeding frenzy and we are off and running, a new story churning away in our heads. Our stories are remarkable examples of our innate creative ability. Sadly, however, we don’t recognize them as fictionalized creations of our creative minds. Rather, we tend to view them as true, solid and real, and it is that belief that’s so damaging.
Our stories are complete with villains and victims, scandals and injustices and even a little bit of mystery and intrigue.
Sam’s boss, Connie stops by his office, peeks in and asks him how it’s going with the ACME account. Sam offers a succinct update and Connie moves on. As she continues down the hall heading to her office, she tells herself a story. In it, she is a great boss, one that cares about her team. She shows them so by checking in to see how they are doing, thereby opening the door for them to seek her advice as needed. Meanwhile, back in Sam’s office, he too is telling himself a story. His story features the villain Connie. A boss who obviously doesn’t trust her team enough to close a piece of business on their own. Someone who feels the need to insert herself into the process and micromanage. Two vastly different stories, both sprouting from the same seed. Perception is reality and our perception is filtered by our own stories.
When teams begin to fail and organizations struggle, more times than not, the cause of it is a breakdown in communication, not a flaw in product, service, or process.
When teams begin to fail and organizations struggle, more times than not, the cause of it is a breakdown in communication, not a flaw in product, service, or process. And, when you look under the hood of that communication breakdown, it is inevitably driven by the stories we are telling ourselves. Our stories erode trust, cause misalignment and diminish productivity. When allowed to fester and grow, they can topple an entire company.
We need to create mechanisms that allow us to see our own stories for what they are, fiction not fact, fantasy not reality.
The cure is simple, hang up a lot of mirrors. In other words, we need to create mechanisms that allow us to see our own stories for what they are, fiction not fact, fantasy not reality. In its most simple form, this mirror is a question. Using the example from above, Connie could have ended her conversation with Sam by asking “Hey, how’s what I just said, sitting with you?” Or, Sam could have responded by saying “Here’s what I am hearing, is that what you intended?”. Either of these would cause pause and provide the needed information to change the direction of the story about to be told.
The second form of the mirror is our own natural curiosity. When you start a good story, try to catch yourself and investigate. Do I have enough facts to make this story real or, am I creating my own reality? Do I know that this is true, or am I just making it so? If you bring enough awareness to catch yourself even one out of ten times, it is a good start and you will save yourself a lot of unnecessary angst.
When stories have been left to build too long and distrust and dysfunction have begun to creep into the team, it’s time to reach out for help. Help in the form of a mirror of facilitation. It is best to bring in a non-stakeholder, a neutral third-party in order to facilitate a conversation. I lead these discussions frequently and find that when I bring a team together and start asking reflective questions, we soon are whisked away into a grown-up version of story time. Commonly, these sessions include a bit of laughter and slight embarrassment as the participants begin to see the silliness of their stories and the implausibility of their plot lines. It may take a time to undo the damage done, but these sessions serve as an important reset button that allows the healing to begin.
When stories have been left to build too long and distrust and dysfunction have begun to creep into the team, it’s time to reach out for help.
Enjoy your stories and go hang out in your head. It can be far more entertaining than what’s on TV. But, recognize those stories for what they are; fictional creations of our own amazing brains. As a leader, it is your job to make sure those stories don’t get believed as truths, and if they do, you’d better start hanging some mirrors.
In the comment section below, please share one of your favorite stories that you tell yourself. I think we can have a lot of fun seeing those stories surface. If you are interested in how I facilitate a “grown-up story time” I am happy to share. Just click here and we can set a time to chat.
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Elliot Begoun is the Principal of The Intertwine Group. He works to grow businesses and business leaders. He helps organizations tell their story and build relationships with their customers. He helps leaders better connect and communicate with those whom they lead, and serves as a thinking partner to executives and their teams.
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Author of -- Zen Unleashed: Everyday Buddhist Wisdom from Man's Best Friend -- at Beaver's Pond Press
8 年I volunteer with a Buddhist meditation group at a state penitentiary. Occasionally this very topic comes up. There is one "story" the inmates seem to be uniformly obsessed with, if not now, then earlier when they first came to the prison. It is that they are constantly being disrespected. Examples: This person usually says hello to me in the morning but they didn't today, I am being disrespected. These people are deliberately standing in the path blocking my way, I am being disrespected. We work on dropping these stories, by developing a habit of returning to awareness of the present moment. Also, through meditation they can become more aware of the rut-habits that they are in, and so they can then see the actions of the other inmates not so much as being disrespectful, but as of being stuck in their own rut of bad habits. Sometimes. They have quite a challenge in the environment they are in, with the personalities they are surrounded by.
Educating and Helping People to Better Understand Biases, Their Impact, and How to Try and Keep Them in Check
8 年Excellent article, Elliot! It is very much consistent the following excerpt from a chapter I co-authored for a recently published book: "As you make decisions, beware of your unconscious biases. Research shows that people consistently have incomplete information from which to make decisions and that 99.99% of decision-making is unconscious. Google initiated an ambitious project called re:Work to study the unconscious mind and raise awareness of “unconscious bias,” which they define as “the automatic, mental shortcuts used to process information and make decisions quickly.” Their findings are intriguing and are as applicable in the context of the workplace as they are in divorce. They found that unconscious bias can be a “useful [shortcut] when making decisions with limited information, focus, or time.” However, it can also, “prevent individuals from making the most objective decisions,” and “sometimes lead individuals astray and have unintended consequences.” Fortunately, by understanding unconscious bias and overcoming it at critical moments, we can make better decisions. Google’s research finds that “awareness of unconscious bias can lead to reversals in biased outcomes, and understanding the unconscious biases that underlie beliefs may be necessary for changing attitudes.” (https://mogulymedia.clickfunnels.com/kids-first) It also aligns with the article I wrote for Valentine's Day: "You see, ideally, we're all taught how to read, write and speak in at least one language. We're also hopefully taught proper grammar. Unfortunately, we are not taught how to properly communicate. This is a huge problem, as is evidenced by the fact that most conflict results from miscommunication. We tend to jump to conclusions based upon incomplete information. We make a great many assumptions, the vast majority of which turn out to be incorrect. We hold people accountable for failing to meet our unspoken expectations, as if they were mind-readers. We don't even know if we attribute the same meaning to the words we use. And, we forget to separate the person from their behavior. Rather than expressing our disappointment as it pertains to people's behavior, we often shame them instead. As Brene' Brown, Ph.D. says, "separating self from behavior is the difference between shame and guilt. Shame is very correlated with addiction, depression, suicide, aggression, violence, bullying, and eating disorders. Guilt, on the other hand, is inversely correlated with those same outcomes." We also tend to take each other for granted, except possibly on holidays such as Valentine's Day. In his book, "What Predicts Divorce?: The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes," John Gottman found that "the single biggest determinant [as to whether or not wedded couples will divorce] is the ratio of positive to negative comments the partners make to one another.... He found that the optimal ratio was five positive comments to every negative one.... For those who ended up divorced, the ratio was something like three positive comments for every four negative ones." (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-baer/whats-communication-got-to-do-with-lasting-love_b_9199242.html) It bears mentioning that the same praise to criticism ratio has been found to apply in employment situations.
Member Services Assistant Costco Leeds ????
8 年Great read Elliot. Thanks very much (and that's not a story)
Housing Finance Specialist
8 年Very often we take the story for real, the article is thought provoking..