S03E13 The Story I'm Telling Myself Episode

Check-In:

• Which projects give you energy?

Big Ideas:

• 3 skills that lead to successful groups: building safety, sharing vulnerability, establishing purpose
• cohesive groups - telling stories and reminding one another what they stand for
• murmuration - how birds move together
• using small signals to link the present moment to the future ideal
• organizations that don't have a purpose, mission, vision, etc. 
• the challenge of extracting a purpose
• how to detect weak signals and act on them
• going through the motions of purpose - some people feel it's not worthwhile
• "What's the purpose of having a purpose?" 
• Purpose is a higher order construct - something you can build everything else around
• If there are no words, there's no knowledge
• Purpose seems too impractical - not actionable, practical enough
• Cultural differences in focusing on culture
• A tool without a purpose is just an object.
• Leadership without purpose doesn't serve anyone
• You can pivot around a purpose, and shift your business structure
• Don't sell change
• When companies focus their purpose around a story or stories, it can motivate employees in a new way
• Having a clear beacon of purpose
• What can organizations do to re-engage employees? Is story enough?
• Belief that narratives only apply to children and politicians 
• Stories are a way to make groups work together - story-telling goes back thousands of years
• Any good story has conflict and strong emotion -- some organizations still try to separate emotions from work
• How to help people identify the stories that they are telling themselves? 
• Once you identify the story, you can change the story
• How stories drive our emotional world.
• Our brains want to close the loop, so we make up the rest of the story so we can move on - a necessary evolutionary device
• Being in the matrix and not knowing you are in the matrix
• Leading for Proficiency (being the lighthouse) - establishing priorities and connected behaviors
• Leading for Creativity (being the ship's engineer, not the captain) - safe flat, high-candor environment, not about how to
• What's your leadership purpose?
• Transactional versus transformational leadership
• The leader's job isn't to motivate others, but to create conditions for people to be motivated

Resources:

• The Culture Code, by Daniel Coyle
• Start with Why Simon Sinek
• Find Your Why, Simon Sinek
• Adam Grant

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