Get Your Story Straight - Part 2

In yesterday's article I explained how the stories or narratives we develop about ourselves can shape our lives. In this article I want to focus on how stories also shape our career success. .

What Story Are You Writing About Yourself in Your Role as a Leader?

Your story as a leader has a lot of components to it. Buried in your head is your view about what makes a leader exceptional, how you believe you measure up to that definition, how you hope your leadership journey evolves, and how you feel about the organizational challenges you are tackling. If you want to better understand the story that you have been writing about yourself as a leader, take a few minutes to reflect on these 4 questions:

1. If someone wanted to make a movie about you as a leader would it be a comedy of errors, a tragedy, or a dramatic heroic adventure?
2. Do you see yourself as the main character in your life story, or do you play a minor role? Are you Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, or one of the security guards that gets knocked off during the first few minutes of an old Star Trek episode? In other words, do you feel that you have the power to shape your own storyline, or do you see yourself as a victim of circumstances beyond your control?
3. What is the motivation that is driving your actions? I once saw a bumper sticker that read, “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”  It sounds silly, but when you see headlines about billionaires who judge their own success by how the relative size of their megayachts, you begin to understand that for some people this isn’t too far from the truth. Early in my career it was all about money and status. Now it’s all about creative autonomy and giving back. In your own case, how do you define “success”? At the end of the day, what is it that you really want to take away from your job and your career?
4. What does your voice and body language say about whether your story is working for you? I can easily tell when someone’s story isn’t working for them because regardless of how much they earn, or how far they have advanced in management, they still wear same strained expression of an actor in a hemorrhoid commercial. People whose stories are working for them may looked focused and intense, but beneath that you can also see and hear that they are happy. Take out a recent photo of yourself and zoom into your face, then ask yourself, “Does this like someone who has a positive outlook on life? Do they seem like someone who is happy and satisfied with who they’ve become?”

What Story Are You Creating for Yourself as an Organizational Leader?

None of us live in a vacuum. We spend a lot of our lives embedded in different organizations, and our interactions with others forge a story for others about who we are as organizational members and leaders. I caution my coaching clients that a leader’s brand is like a bucket of quick drying cement. Stick a paddle into the bucket immediately after you’ve mixed the cement and you can easily move it around. However if you walk away from your bucket for a while, you are likely come back to find that the cement has hardened, leaving the paddle frozen in place. In the same way, during your first few weeks in a new workplace the people around you are just getting to know you, so their perceptions of you are fluid. At this point your “organizational cement” is a pliable liquid. However, once you develop a certain reputation others’ perceptions about you begin to solidify and become more difficult to change. When this happens executive coaching becomes very challenging, because it is no longer just about helping a client reflect on their own storylines. In addition, a coach must sometimes help their clients overcome the way those leaders has been storied by their organization.

Over time the stories that others form about you coalesce to shape the leadership brand that defines you in your organization. When I use the term “leadership brand” I’m talking about the collection of images, thoughts and feelings that others come to associate with you, based on both their own interactions with you and the reputation you’ve gained that follows you wherever you go in your company.  At some point, I am sure that you heard these types of comments:

•  “Oh, you have a meeting with Kim next week? Well good luck, I’ve heard that she is difficult to deal with.”  
•  “I’m not sure that I feel comfortable having Raymond head up that change management project. Word is that he tends to be very change resistant and continually grips about anything new that we are trying to introduce here.”
•  “Tina? Yes, I don’t know her personally, but everyone says that she really collaborates well her team. I’m looking forward to working with her next week.”

How to Deconstruct Your Organizational Story

Each of these comments reflect the predominant story that has been formed around an organization leader, and which forms the core of that manager’s leadership brand. If you want to decipher your leadership brand, ask yourself the following:

• What does your language convey to those around you? When you talk about work, how much time do you spend whining and complaining about things that are broken, rather than focus on what can be fixed?
• When you hear about an impending change in your organization do you tend to round down, or do you wait to hear all of the facts before you weigh in with your opinion?
• When you give your team members feedback what percentage of your time do you spend talking about where they have fallen short, vs. where they have succeeded?
• What is it that you want to be known for in your company? If you take a look at your last performance review, what comments give you a sense of accomplishment? What different comments would you like to see in next year’s review?
• If your role as a leader were made into a movie, how would the story end? If nothing changes and things continue along their current trajectory, does the story have a good ending, does it drift off into a boring plateau, or does the main character suffer a sad ending?
• If I walked up to a few people who know you at work and asked each of them to give me three words to describe you, what would they say? Are you happy with that, or are there other words that you would like others to associate with you?

It is very useful to share your answers to the above with someone who knows you well in your organization, and who is in a good position to give you honest feedback about your organizational brand. With this information in hand, try a little experiment. Take out a piece of paper and write down a description of two things: 1) what you want to change about your current organizational story, with emphasis on how you would like others to regard you as a leader, and 2) how you want your career story to unfold for you over the next few years.

If you want to learn more about how you can build a stronger leadership brand, I invite you to read my new book, Bootstrap: How to Succeed as a Leader Through Self-Coaching. If you happen to purchase my book through Amazon or Apple I would appreciate it if you take a few minutes to leave a review.

Till next time!

Robert Barner, PhD (aka "Dr. Bob")