Written by: Asha Ghosh, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Are you finding it difficult to inspire and motivate your team to take action? Focused instead on their productivity and progress?
As leaders, you have the opportunity to shape the direction and purpose of your team and to create the conditions for success. Yet often we get caught up reporting on results, progress meetings, and taking part in routine Team’s calls – which can leave us and our team uninspired and unmotivated. Stories are an extremely effective method that can bring about unity and sustain team connection. This article shares how stories can not only align team understanding of the organisational ambition but also build trust and openness within the team – the ingredients needed for high-performance teams.
Organisational stories
Organisations excel at narrating tales about their products and services. They are skilled at wooing potential clients with tailored stories that showcase their brilliance. We have all experienced moments when the entire organisation comes together and leaders take us on a journey of how we will achieve greatness together, how they do that is through stories and storytelling, it can inspire, connect us and foster a sense of purpose and meaning into our working lives. However, it is equally vital to use stories in a way that focuses our team inwards, keeps our teams engaged with each other whilst also fostering trust and loyalty stories are an investment in the future of our team, if we choose to use them strategically.
Importance of stories and storytelling
Narratives can stimulate feelings of value and connection, and it was this great insight that inspired me to use storytelling in a team meeting. Personal disclosure – Admittedly, I felt somewhat foolish, but I persevered in delivering an uplifting vision of what our team was capable of achieving. My goal was not to receive a round of applause but to cultivate a sense of unity and belonging among its members. However, this endeavour proved to be less successful than I had hoped. Instead of bonding together, I realised my team members were unable to connect with the story I had presented, as it was merely my perspective and not reflective of how they viewed themselves. This experience taught me a valuable leadership lesson in the importance of understanding the unique perspectives and perceptions of each team member to effectively inspire and motivate them.
Co-created stories relevance in teams
To form unity within teams, I have discovered the most effective way is to co-create a collaborative narrative. The process goes beyond an alignment of ideals, it creates a working environment for trust to build and open conversation to emerge.
As a team coach, now I start coaching relationships with teams by reconnecting them with the organisation's mission, vision and values. Essentially facilitating a conversation that enables individuals to personalise their understanding of their role or their part in the story of this project. It is an intentional process in creating a unique identity for the team. To kick-start the process we ask question that encourage the team to reflect and share their perspectives:
Questions to ask to co-create stories
How does this team connect with the purpose of the organisation?
How does your role support each team member in reaching the vision of the organisation?
How do our collective behaviours in our roles support the values of the organisation?
What values are not reflected in the team?
What is missing from within the team? What changes need to happen?
The ambition of the organisation, how is this ambition experienced in our team?
How important is this department to organisational success? How do we know?
How do we want to be known in the wider organisation?
How do we take action to make our ambition happen?
Importance of team stories
By asking the questions, the team are hearing the differences in voices, as well as the thematics and overlaps. This work is crucial in building trust. In essence, the team is expressing their interpretations of the strategy, identifying actionable behaviours that align with the organisational values, and establishing a collective understanding of success for both themselves and the organisation. They are building a shared understanding of themselves within the context of the organisation's values and vision. How the stories evolves from this is by refining what is shared into narratives, statements, behaviours and how these stories continue to live in the team is by referring back to them each time the team meet. As a leader, you are a custodian of the stories helping the team to connect in their work, in their interactions with each other and the wider stakeholders, and when they come together as a team to solve problems – coming back to what the team know about themselves.
Leadership resistance to team stories
As a leadership coach, I have listened to the resistance to this idea, reasons referenced;
Frivolous use of time
A non-essential activity
A given because everyone should already know the company stuff
In a recent article in Brainz, I highlight the importance of clarity in high-performance teams, that nothing is a given, we are all human and have different interpretations and so the process of clarifying is not frivolous, it is imperative. You as a leader play a crucial role in defining the direction and destination of the team's narrative helping the team keep the story alive. However, the success of the team depends on the collective sustained engagement and energy of every member living by the story. This collective effort turns the story into a shared experience of a team achieving through collaboration. Yet, this potential can only be realised when the team members feel a sense of togetherness and that is developed through shared stories and narratives that form their shared working experiences.
I’ve got a free teamwork work for leaders which you can download here, it works on clarity and through the process you are developed a collective working experience: Unleash Your Team Potential
Asha Ghosh, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
My coaching programmes have already enabled senior professional women globally to unlock new levels of potential in themselves and their teams. Resulting in these professionals being able to lead, inspire and make bold decisions that not only support business objectives, but also allow leaders to find satisfaction within their home life, all underpinned by promoting a proactive approach to personal well-being.
