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Articles + Musings

The Transformational Power of Listening

8/2/2019

3 Comments

 
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Any time I lead an organizational or leadership storytelling workshop, I split folks into pairs and ask them to share a story with each other. Person ‘A’ goes first and Person ‘B’ is asked to simply listen without interjection. After the exercise, I ask everyone what they noticed about sharing and listening to the stories.

Based on what I’ve heard after facilitating this exercise hundreds of times, one of the most challenging parts is not telling the story, but listening without speaking. This makes a fair bit of sense: most of us have been culturally training to treat conversation like a tennis match. We listen primarily for an opening, a chance to return the volley, to share our own point of view.

What happens when we’re challenged to simply listen, to take in another person’s story without any agenda of our own other than being present?
Based on what I’ve heard and seen, what happens is empathy, compassion, and a bond that forms quickly and with unexpected depth. 

According to Otto Scharmer, the author of Theory U, listening happens at four different levels:

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Lessons From the Heart of A Horse

10/31/2018

1 Comment

 
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A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of traveling to Utah with The Nomadic School of Wonder to learn from a herd of wild horses. They live at Windhorse Relations, an organization dedicated to providing care and stewardship of the horses, learning from them, and giving others the chance to experience the power of connecting with the herd.

On the first morning of the experience, the organization’s founder, Mary Lee Brighton, strode into the center of a round pen with a jittery horse named First Star. Mary Lee held a frame drum encased in a deerskin pouch. As she entered the pen, First Star’s eyes widened and his nostrils dilated.

Mary Lee explained that horses are prey animals. Anything unfamiliar represents a potential threat. Since the drum case, with its dangling tassles and odd jangly sounds, was new to First Star, he was understandably anxious.

She moved around the pen and First Star did everything he could to put maximum distance between himself and the drum case.

Over the next hour, Mary Lee worked with First Star, helping him conquer his fear of the threatening drum. In the process, she offered a master class not just in working with horses, but also in leadership.

Here are five lessons gleaned from the heart of the horse:

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Want to have better meetings? Structure them like a performance.

10/17/2018

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I recently attended a meeting that went something like this:

Everyone came in, many of them rushing, a few looking at cell phones. They sat at the conference table, laptops popped open. The person who’d called the meeting looked around, said ‘I think we’re all here,’ immediately threw a spreadsheet up on the screen, and started going through a bunch of numbers.

The attendees (I was there as an observer) scrambled to keep up. . .then they started asking a ton of questions about the spreadsheet. They questioned assumptions, tried to solve for problems that hadn’t been directly mentioned, and asked for additional details. The meeting-caller became increasingly flustered as the gathering spiraled out of control.

After 45 minutes, time was up. Laptops collapsed and everyone left. No action items, no real resolution. I wasn’t even clear what the intention of the meeting had been.

It didn’t feel so great. The meeting-caller, who happened to be my client, looked at me: ‘Please tell me there’s a better way to do that.’ 

There is.

Master storyteller and teacher Doug Lipman breaks a storytelling performance into four sections:

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The 'Innovation' Trap: Unintended Consequences of Solving the Wrong Problem

7/9/2018

6 Comments

 
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The problems of poverty, disease, and environmental decay cannot be solved merely by the use of more and more scientific technology. Technological fixes usually turn out to be a jumble of procedures that have unpredictable consequences and are often in conflict with natural forces. Indeed, technological magic is not much better than primitive magic in dealing with the fundamental issues of human existence, and in addition, it is much more destructive.
–Rene Dubos, 1967


At a recent conference billed as an exploration of the intersection of Social Impact and Exponential Technologies, a prominent tech luminary spoke on the increasing incidence of depression and how technology will be essential to dealing with it.

She walked us through data showing that depression is projected to increase several-fold in the next decade. Other data laid out the developed world’s current capacity to treat depression. There was a clear and growing gap. We simply will not have the resources to handle the epidemic.

We must, the speaker said, find a way to increase our capacity to serve those grappling with depression. It’s not possible to train enough therapists in time to offer support. Fortunately, exponential technology, specifically adaptive intelligence, can help.

Currently, those working with depression have limited options for getting support. Almost all of them involve having to find and vet a therapist, go to therapy consistently, and/or get a prescription medication. With adaptive intelligence, help could be as close as an app on your phone.

The speaker walked us through a use case. Someone feels unmotivated, disconnected, and depressed. They log on to a secure (much emphasis was placed on ‘secure’) app and are greeted by an adaptive Artificial Intelligence that approximates warmth and curiosity. With a few questions customized to inspire reflection and sharing, the AI triages users.

Some people may only need a bit of space for reflection. For them, the AI provides the necessary level of support.

Others may require more intensive support. The AI detects this and links them to a trained therapist for a consultation.

This technology driven solution solves for the problem of capacity. Exponential technology saves the day.

I listened to the talk with a growing sense of dread and frustration in my gut.

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Four Ways Storytelling Helps Build Effective Teams

5/7/2018

1 Comment

 
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Over the past few years, Storytelling has emerged as a critical communication skill. Stories help us establish emotional connections with our audience, community, customers, and contributors. These connections can build over time and create brand loyalty that goes beyond purely ‘business’ transactions.

Story, however, is much more than a tool for communication. It also is one of the most effective, efficient, and powerful tools we have to build effective teams.

Here are four ways that incorporating storytelling as a core practice can deepen engagement and increase effectiveness in teams:

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Case Study: Using Story to Bring Humanity Back to Organizational Communication

4/25/2018

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Client: Nonprofit Finance Fund Advisory Services
Founded in 1980, Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) unlocks the potential of mission-driven organizations through tailored investments, strategic advice and accessible insights. NFF functions both as a CDFI Lender and a provider of advisory and consulting services and helps organizations connect money to mission effectively, supporting innovations such as growth capital campaigns, cross-sector economic recovery initiatives and impact investing.

At a broad level, NFF works towards a world where capital and expertise come together to create a more just and vibrant society.

The Challenge
​As NFF’s consulting arm, the Advisory Services team has struggled to communicate its value effectively to nonprofits and funders alike. Over the past decade, Advisory Services’ offerings have evolved from relatively basic financial trainings and analyses to encompass complex, long-term engagements that touch every level of client organizations and, in many cases, their funders. While the offerings have evolved, the way the team communicates about their work has stayed narrow and highly technical, focusing on financial analytics and tools over the human impact the team’s work has had both on individual organizations and, more broadly, on the sector as a whole.

As more consulting firms turn their focus to helping nonprofits build their financial management capacity, NFF Advisory Services is searching for a way to capture its value that resonates deeply and distinguishes it from the competition.

The Need
To support the creation of a new, more compelling narrative, NFF sought help in: 

  • Collecting powerful stories from the 40 person Advisory Services team;
  • Examining these stories to surface shared narratives, themes and values;
  • Using the stories and shared narratives to form the core of a new way of communicating about Advisory Services;
  • Empowering team members to integrate storytelling into their presentations, pitches, and client engagements.

The Approach
Working with NFF’s Director of Knowledge and Communications, Managing Director of Advisory Services, and Vice President of Advisory Services, I designed an engagement that combined virtual strategies to involve Advisory Services team members located across the country and a 2 day in person workshop at NFF’s headquarters in New York. 

Part I: Engage the Full Team
The engagement kicked off with a 30 minute webinar for the Advisory Services and Knowledge and Communications teams. The webinar aimed to establish a shared understanding of what  exactly story is, how it functions in building communities and teams, and why telling powerful stories is so important. The webinar also laid the groundwork and framing for asking team members to complete a fairly extensive set of three questionnaires designed to solicit specific stories and reflections that delved beneath old ‘Financial Services’ to reveal the human core of the team’s work.

At the close of the webinar, the full Advisory Services team received links to the surveys along with a deadline of one week to complete them.

By the deadline, 60% of the team had completed the surveys. This response was, frankly, better than anticipated!

Part II: 2 Day Facilitated Workshop
The workshop, attended by 12 leaders from both Advisory Services and Knowledge and Communications, flowed through four sections:

Re-discovering the power of story gave participants the chance to connect with and experience the power of storytelling by developing, sharing, and reflecting on their own narratives. Starting with experiential work set a frame and foundation for the remainder of the workshop.

Reflecting on questionnaire responses allowed the group to delve into their colleagues’ experience, reflect on any surprises or common themes that emerged, and begin to piece together the core of a new way of communicating about Advisory Services;

Crafting the ‘Myth’ of NFF and Advisory Services combined the first two sections. Working in small groups, participants built and shared a new narrative for the organization from its origins to the present. 

Examining the NFF in relationship to the competitive landscape again gave participants the chance to explore the responses to the questionnaires, integrating findings from earlier sections, to identify NFF’s ‘secret sauce’ and begin to create strategies to highlight it in communication efforts.

The final hour of the workshop was dedicated to review and establishing concrete next steps.
​​

The Impact
The immediate impact of the engagement was to reveal the human side of the team’s work in concrete, easily accessible narrative ways. One participant shared that the workshop had changed her understanding of storytelling as a tool to convey complex ideas more efficiently than data and freed her from using ‘wonky, conceptual language’ to explain her work. Another said that a door had been opened and that it was now up to the team to walk through it.

At the close of the engagement, NFF had built a library of powerful stories, had a much stronger (and story-validated) sense of the value its work brings to its wide range of clients, and felt empowered to begin telling the story of Advisory Services differently.

In the longer term, the NFF team has committed to sharing the findings of the experience and working to build a culture that empowers team members at all levels to build and share their stories as a core practice and way of connecting both with each other and externally. 
​
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The Power of Generative Listening

4/21/2018

2 Comments

 
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Any time I lead an organizational or leadership storytelling workshop, I split folks into pairs and ask them to share a story with each other. Person ‘A’ goes first and Person ‘B’ is asked to simply listen without interjection. After the exercise, I ask everyone what they noticed about sharing and listening to the stories.

Based on what I’ve heard after facilitating this exercise hundreds of times, one of the most challenging parts is not telling the story, but listening without speaking. This makes a fair bit of sense: most of us have been culturally training to treat conversation like a tennis match. We listen primarily for an opening, a chance to return the volley, to share our own point of view.

What happens when we’re challenged to simply listen, to take in another person’s story without any agenda of our own other than being present?

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2 Comments

Case Study: Building Engagement Through Story

4/20/2018

1 Comment

 
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Recently, I had the chance to speak with two organizations who had both attended the same training as part of the Think Money First Accelerator program I co-presented with Social Sector Partners in October 2017. The storytelling part of the program was a half-day focused on storytelling for communicating with funders and, perhaps more importantly, transforming internal culture and core beliefs. 

Six months after the training, many of the organizations reported not only retaining much of the information from our time together, but also implementing new strategies and approaches.

Two organizations in particular stood out. Both had implemented story-based strategies with the aim of increasing team members’ connection with themselves, each other, and the organization’s mission.

One reported great success, the other reported challenges with the process. Examining each organization’s approach reveals a few key best practices when it comes to moving organizations towards a Storytelling Culture.

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