Tell me your stories, and I'll show you your culture

My past few posts have explored how personal narratives shape and influence our life and leadership. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves play a significant role in forming our identity and, ultimately, our effectiveness as leaders.

The same is also true for teams and whole systems. Beyond lists of values, ways of working, and team charters, the forces that animate (or hold back) change are embedded in the stories we tell - or don't.

My work with leadership teams often focuses on helping them uncover, structure, and tell their change narratives - stories that engage the head, heart, and hands toward a bold ambition.

One of the formats I often use to explore a team's stories is the concept of "Public Narrative," developed by Marshall Ganz. A former farm workers organizer and now Harvard professor, Ganz was an architect of Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign messaging.

"Public narrative is composed of three elements: a story of self, a story of us, and a story of now.  
A story of self communicates who I am – my values, my experience, and why I do what I do. A story of us communicates who we are – our shared values, our shared experience, and why we do what we do. And a story of now transforms the present into a moment of challenge, hope, and choice." (Marshal Ganz)

These are real stories about real people at a specific moment in time. They have a beginning, middle, and end and capture the listener's attention - no bullet list of values can do that!

Do the leaders on your team (or the teams you support) know their story of self, us, and now?

Tomorrow, I'll share some specific ways I help teams explore these stories to better leverage their narrative assets.

Photo source: Marshall Ganz, Harvard University