That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It

Even in humming, high performing teams, conflict occurs. (In fact, little to no conflict is a giant flashing sign that what you’ve got is a polite team, and NOT a high performing one. Just watch Bohemian Rhapsody to see an example of a high performing team (Queen) that was fueled by intense conflict.)

But there’s generative conflict, where the parties involved are both looking with curiosity and passion at the impasse, and there’s destructive conflict, where the egos are battling it out for supremacy or survival.

Generative conflict is fueled by outcomes.

Destructive conflict is fueled by stories.

Stories Motivate Action

When you get triggered, it shows that you’re attaching an interpretation to what happened. And not just any interpretation — if your nervous system gets involved, it’s a story your mind has created to motivate you to fight-or-flight action.

That is, your nervous system has detected a potential lethal threat and alerted your mind, which told a story to make you feel a strong emotion like fear or anger or shame designed to get you to do something to protect yourself.

Stories like that come in three main flavors:

• stories about you and your worth

• stories about other people and their motivations

• stories about the world and the rules that apply

Stories Aren’t True

it can be hard to see that your story is an interpretation rather than the truth. After all, it feels so true to think, “She’s out to get me” when she asks a challenging question on a Slack project channel or “He’s so inconsiderate” when he shows up 7 minutes late to a meeting you’re chairing.

The problem with stories like those, that fire up your limbic brain circuits into a frenzy of fight-or-flight impulses, is that they severely limit your creative options and ability to respond appropriately and effectively.

Don’t Argue with Your Story

Traditional cognitive approaches focus on highlighting your “wrong” thinking, disputing it, and replacing it with something better.

If that worked, I’d be all for it — but it’s all but impossible to totally counteract a thought that is generated by a nervous system facing organismic destruction. No matter how many affirmations you repeat, your survival instinct will keep the story alive in order (in its estimation) to keep you alive.

What To Do Instead

There’s a quick and easy way to loosen your grip on the story — or more accurately, to get the story to loosen its grip on you — so you regain agency and can be effective in dealing with whatever is going on.

Just name the story.

For this, I recommend a simple 6-word prompt, borrowed from Chris Niebauer’s No Self, No Problem: “The story I’m telling myself is…”

And then just allow your mind to complete the sentence.

Examples

• “The story I’m telling myself is that when she asks a question about the compatibility of my code with the backend stack is that she’s out to get me.”

• “The story I’m telling myself is that when he shows up seven minutes late, he’s letting me and everyone else know that he doesn’t respect me and doesn’t care about me.”

Notice that you’re not arguing with the story. You’re not berating yourself for having an interpretation, even a negative one.

Instead, you’re creating, with your words, a space between you and the story.

This allows you to look at the story rather than look at the world through the story.

That’s the difference between wearing dark glasses that color everything you look at and taking the glasses off and seeing them as another object in your visual field.

Freedom to Act

When your story becomes an object, you can become more objective.

You start to see your story as one possible interpretation, rather than the only one.

Your mind might even come up with other, more charitable stories, even unbidden.

• “She’s just worried about what happens if this thing goes over budget.”

• “He might be dealing with a sick child.”

When you address her question, you’ll be much more effective if you assume positive intent — even if your original story of sabotage wasn’t fully off the mark.

When you deal with his tardiness, you’re much more likely to get a cooperative response if you assume positive intent — even if your original story of inconsideration wasn’t fully off the mark.

One of the most powerful findings in all of psychology is that other people tend to rise or fall to your expectations.

When you’re triggered, your words and behaviors communicate that you view them as a threat — and you can make it so.

When you allow for other stories, and intentionally act on the basis of a more charitable one, you can make that one true instead.

So — what’s your story?

Are you part of a team that’s stuck in conflict, battling egos, and high tension? Let’s chat about what’s going on, and whether my Mindset Mastery for High Performing Teams Master Class can start to turn things around.