The stories we tell ourselves matter.
As leaders, we have to remember that every person we lead has a story they want to tell with their life. Many of us can’t seem to tell the story that we want because there are too many other factors and influences affecting the story (remember the story about the Acali Raft Experiment?).
As leaders, we must be cognizant of this tension. And we need to ask ourselves: “What story does my leadership allow those I lead to tell with their lives?”
A person might be doing good work in the world — as a teacher, a paramedic, a police officer… they might be a construction worker doing great things.
Most of us do what we do (ideally) because we feel we’re contributing in a positive way to society. Isn’t that how we all want to spend our lives? Making the world a little better than we found it?
But in the midst of all that, you might have a boss who belittles you or embarrasses you, who never asks for your expertise, even though they don’t really know what they’re doing. They might diminish your contributions, never acknowledging the things you do right, and only pointing out the things you don’t do well.
All this wears on us. At the end of the day, when we go home, the story we tell ourselves is a messy one: Yes, I’m doing good work. We’re building a church… But man, I hate my job. Because I can’t seem to do anything right. My boss is always riding my ass, and he’s wrong. My expertise is never respected. As a result, I can’t tell the story of joy that I want to tell about my life and my work. Because I don’t have that.
As leaders, we have to ask ourselves, “What story does our leadership allow the people we lead to tell with their lives?”
Are you the guy who’s sitting in the corner of the boat, so to say, making people’s lives miserable?
Or… are you a leader that empowers people, engaging with them when they need you and not when they don’t? Do you support others and help them exercise their muscles of strength, intelligence, contribution, and ability, looking at mistakes as opportunities for growth rather than evidence of illness? How do you help people see themselves?
That’s our call for leadership. We, too, fall victim to that same power of the subconscious. We’re often not conscious or aware of the stories we tell ourselves about people we lead.
It’s too easy to overlook their competency and view your crew as a bunch of goof-offs you have to ride every minute to get anything done. They won’t do anything, we tell ourselves.
The hardest part is that, most of the time, those stories are subconscious. Those are the feelings that we have, the stories that we replay in our brains that educate the reticular activating system (RAS) on what to feed back to us. (Remember emotions and story are the language of the subconscious.)
So. Do you know what you’re looking for? What stories are you telling yourself? Is it time to start telling some new ones?
In my next post, I’ll share some tips for you on how to start doing that. Stay tuned.
