Leadership Storytelling
To Fire Up Employees and Please Your "Customers"-- Tell Your Stories!
One of the top leadership challenges in this world of information overload is to cut through the clutter. More than 3,000 messages bombard each of us every day, and these constant distractions blur employees' vision and distort their focus. Managers need to constantly remind employees of the company's core values to keep them centered on the corporate mission. The message needs to be so clear that everyone in your organization understands your values and behaves accordingly.
Storytelling is a powerful tool for meeting this challenge. By continually telling stories that illustrate the organization's values, everyone will be clear about where the organization is going and how each can contribute to, and benefit by, achieving the goals. The power of stories is that they captivate both the minds and the hearts of the people listening. Just as we all fondly remember family stories that we heard years ago, employees remember stories that their leaders tell them, and those stories become guides for carrying out their responsibilities.
I'm thinking we could start building our portfolios of stories through this blog. Here's my first story for you...
I had the priviledge of serving on an extremely well-managed team for a short term project. The objective was to close a facility and an assistant vice president was given responsibility for leading this effort. She was allowed the freedom to hand select the team members (or assign individuals to tasks since this was not going to be a popular decision) and she chose people who were strategic thinkers. The team met weekly for about three months gathering data, developing messages, and planning the execution. The result was that every possible constiuency was considered and and every possible concern addressed. The facility was closed, customers were given other options for service and there were no complaints. In fact, a couple of emails were sent thanking us for telling them about the facility closing. People don't like surprises, and teamwork enabled the organization to anticipate every objection. Key to the success of this team were:
- A clearly defined purpose
- A leader was already decided
- Team members were hand picked
I've been a part of way too many dysfunctional teams that failed for any one of these things not being in place. Please let me know how you like my story, and share your own team story! That's my story -- Jan
8 comments:
An orator can be very convincing in an interview sometimes it is more important to walk the walk then talk the talk.
http://www.cvtips.com/story_telling_for_career_building.html
I once worked on a team that was in charge of developing a physician orientation handbook for physicians new to the staff at Detroit Riverview Hospital. I had reprsentation from each department. Everyone knew their role, we started on time, ended on time, and all met the required deadlines. We produced a quality product and the team members were proud of the results.
Mariann
I enjoyed your story...my experience has been that you do not always see a true "team" effort, but rather a compilation of individual efforts by a few "team members" later categorized as a "team" effort (Doritos commercial anyone).
I have a similar success story which involved closing and relocating 4 medical surgical units at a hospital where I previously worked.
Over the course of months a team compiled of members from several cross-functional areas met to map out the plan...while each member contributed their respective input around their functional area, the plan itself was truly the teams effort.
On each moving day, all staff knew their roles, all team-members were present, and every patient was swiftly and efficiently moved from the old unit to the new unitl with no lapse in care, including administering meds, providing therapies, etc. For all intents and purposes, it was seamless.
The team had a clearly defined objective. There was a team facilitator who managed agendas, scheduling meetings, ensuring appropriate attendance, etc. Each member understood what they were to contribute and why they were there. Additionally, the team knew once the ojective was met, the team would have accomplished it's goal and would therefore no longer be needed.
While the timeline was part of a larger initiative (major construction project), one can't help but wonder if most teams would be sufficiently productive if they too had a clear purpose with a stated objective, defined roles, and a timeline in which they were expected to accomplish the objective....leading to one less team meeting upon completion of the objective.
Works for me...:)
Melissa
My story took two years and many thousand miles to complete. But the experience, team work, bonds, and perseverance shown by everyone helped become one of the most successful projects I have ever had the pleasure of leading.
We started a major infrastructure upgrade at a previous company that would include upgrades to critical servers including email servers, file sharing servers, and web servers. About 25% of the way through the project, the project manager was let go for various reasons and I was given the opportunity to run the project to completion. No project plan, timelines, or documentation was created so in some regard we had to start from scratch. My team pulled together and decided that with this size upgrade and the challenges we faced it would be difficult but something we could accomplish. We also decided to refresh all laptops and desktops throughout the company during this project. But, after two years, a lot of learning, and some very, very late nights, bad food, and 3am boxing matches, we got the job done.
Its such an amazing thing to look back on; coordinating, managing, scheduling – that’s all the project management stuff. But the other pieces that you don’t learn in books or classrooms are the bonds and trust that you make and build spending time and relying on others. Some of the people have moved on from that company (including me) and we still keep in touch. I've written letters of recommendation for a few of those team members and I am proud of the people they have become, professionally and personally.
This story will be with me forever and has helped me become part of who I am today. Mostly the 3am boxing matches...
-Joe Pelle
That is a good success story Jan, which focuses on a team functioning as just that a team. I think that having a clearly defined purpose, a team leader assigned to the group, and handpicked team members were vital in the success of that team, especially when this group’s primary task was to close a facility. Closing a facility, where it is seamless to the customer, is no easy job.
The story that I can think of took place while I worked for UPS as a part time supervisor for the sort aisle. The Monday after Thanksgiving was teasingly dubbed “Black” Monday because the package volume would increase from 40,000 packages unloaded, sorted, and loaded per night to 80,000 packages handled. A busy evening to say the least. This particular evening the manager of the hub implemented a change to the sort, meaning we had to memorize where packages would be sorted and loaded by zip code, for the entire nation. This is no easy task, especially done over the Thanksgiving holiday. On top of that it was estimated that we’d be handling about 100,000 packages for the evening.
Now anybody that knows UPS knows that shipping their packages on time is a huge deal to them as a company. That meant on a normal night we’d handle 40,000 packages on average from 5pm until 9pm. All packages had to be loaded by 9pm, and anything that was loaded past that was being driven to Metro Airport to be hand delivered to the UPS plane so it would make it out for delivery.
This particular Monday I got to witness both a team that didn’t function well together and a team that functioned well in disaster recovery mode to get all packages out for delivery. Usually a sort could be shut down maybe 2-3 times per night to clear damaged packages from unload belts, or to clear package jams on the belts. That day we had 20 shut downs which resulted in our entire sort aisle being covered in packages as tall as me. I remember instructing employees on what to do from the top of a sort belt so they could see me. The reason we got to that point was because we didn’t prepare for the task at hand, and we didn’t work as a cohesive unit. We underestimated the impact of the sort change, and the amount of volumes being processed for delivery.
After the damage was done I got to witness teamwork at its finest. Supervisors assisting hourly workers, all parts of the building assisting one another to clean up the huge amounts of packages on the ground, and total effort to get all packages out for delivery. Even though the sort ended at 3:30 am, and multiple employees drove delivery trucks out to Metro Airport nobody left until the job was complete. After that evening was over we also had meetings discussing the events of what went wrong, and what could’ve been done differently. From those meetings, and the experience of that evening future “Black” Mondays weren’t as bad. The team learned from past failures to improve and we became a closer team because of that evening.
Chris
Story telling is a powerful communication tool that has been utilized through the ages to convey important messages and to pass down knowledge from one generation to the next. Like using analogies to convey meaning and better understanding, stories assist in conceptualizing through utilization of commonly understood experiences that sharpen one's focus on the subject at hand. A good story will better hold a person's attention and assist in remembering the important aspects that are intended to be conveyed.
I can't think of any good story at the moment, but when I do I'll post it.
Gary
Hmmm...I can think of so many...I think the most poignant/lesson learning experience I had was in my first administrator role. I took on a "team" that had been managed by 4 previous administrators in a one year period, experienced a bankruptcy/sale and take over by a new company; and the building was facing closure from a dismal state inspection. I had little management experience, yet was given the opportunity to lead this group.
After a week of very painful dysfunctional meetings that had many tears and fighting; we faced our first crisis. As we sat in our morning meeting, the fire alarm sounded and smoke was billowing into our main dining room. Despite their total dysfunction with the day to day stuff; the entire team flew into action and responded just as they had practiced. The alarm/fire turned out to be a boiler overheating, and not an actual "fire". However, it was my first glimpse into team function and it gave me the opportunity to use "crisis" leadership as a tactic to get the team on track and focused.
My ahha moment came from observing their behavior together as a group and sharing that observation with them.
They were unaware of the difference in their demeanor and behavior during crisis and "regular" day to day dealings.
I would like to say that our ahha moment was a catalyst for change for this team. Apparently, they were numb from the amount of change that had occurred, and many of the team members had virtually "shut down" as a response to the overwhelming feeling that so much change had brought to them. We sat down immediately following the "fire" and used the adrenaline energy to look at and prioritize our issues. We agreed to tackle one at a time and immediately started on our first that day. The energy was amazing, thrilling and a little frightening for me.
For me personally, it was my first true experience in team leadership and the responsibility of the leadership task really hit home that day.
Unfortunately for the team and myself; I did not stay with them. After 5 months, I received a phone call from my now boss; asking me to come back to my company in the capacity of administrator of the building I had left as a social worker. Recognizing a "safe zone" I jumped on the opportunity.
Looking back, I feel professional regret at leaving this as an unfinished project. Yet, the decision to leave was based on my own personal needs at the time. I run into some of my team members from time to time; and we talk about the "what could have been".
I think when a team has a moment of synergy, or enhanced awareness it brings a bond that passes some level of description.
Jana
There was a need. The organization I worked for had need of a program that could be used by any division within the global organization to estimate the cost of a project. This program was to take into account all the differences in cost in each of the geographic locations the company had locations.
I was given the task to pull together a multi-functional/multi-geographical team to complete the assignment and develop the program. It was to be a large undertaking.
I was given access to each department within the global organization to choose the team. The team was developed from Project Management, IT resources, Estimating resources, Executive Management, Engineering, and Manufacturing. After developing a picture of what the program was to look like, each member was assigned to gather information from their respective organizations.
Once the information was gathered, it was fed into a database created by the IT staff.
Without going into a great many details, it suffices to say that the program was written to draw information from the database, and thus establish the most cost-effective way to complete a project.
The assignment took 9 long months to complete, and when it was done, the team, along with Executive Management, was happy with the results. The program is still in usse today, with some modifications.
This assignment, was long, tedious, exhausting, and tested the limits of patience, but in the end, brought the desired result. it showed what the right people, with a common goal could accomplish, and I was proud of the accomplishment, as well as the people involved.
It was a great experience.
John
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