Introduction
“We
are narrators of our self-stories, constructing plots or story lines that
integrate and give meaning to all the critical events that have been part of
our existence” (Polkinghorne, 1991, p. 146). Each of us has a unique story. No
two stories are the same. Yet, there may be many common elements to our
collective stories. In this paper, I want to explore the development of
self-concept and the shaping of a personal story and narrative arc. Self-concept need not be solely about
ourselves, but can be extended to include others such as family members,
teammates, colleagues, and communities (Polkinghorne, 1991). In a shared self-concept setting such as this,
our personal stories or narrative arcs link to the stories and narrative arcs
of others in important groups. Such is
the case for organizations and companies with brands that have strong narrative
arcs and that share common social representations. These representations are
connected to symbols, rituals, objects and language, perpetuated by communication
and stories within groups or cultures (Moscovici, 1988). Linkage of a personal
narrative arc to a larger brand arc occurs through the use of social
representations as transferred through meta-narratives. These meta-narratives are the stories of
groups (organizations and companies, in this case) confronting problems and
obstacles, appointing heroes, and eventually overcoming to achieve
extraordinary goals.
Anthropologists
have long been interested in the stories in cultures and groups, and what they
reveal about the similarities and differences among people groups (McAdams,
2001). In this vein, I will investigate the establishment of stories inherent
in strong brands and the meta- narrative arc to which customers and employees identify
and attach their own personal story or narrative arc. I will also highlight the role of leadership
in finding or establishing those points of intersection between the narrative
arcs of employees in a geographically-distributed workforce, and the meta-narrative
arc of the brand for which they work. I’d like to conclude by addressing
Polkinghorne’s (1991) assertion that we are not authors of our self-stories but
rather narrators, in the context of how I use story in a professional setting.
In light of the choices of group membership, the acceptance of its social
representations, and the connection of personal story arc to the larger brand
or team narrative arc, I believe that we have opportunities every day to become
the authors of our own narrative.
The
Development of Self-Concept
Polkinghorne
(1991) maintains that the story of a person’s own self is key to providing
meaning and identity. Their story is constructed, mostly in retrospect, by
editing, organizing, and arranging the events of their life into an integrated
and meaningful whole. This integrated
whole is Gestalt-like in its assembly, unable to be separated into parts. These events and experiences are arranged on
plot lines. Polkinghorne (1991) asserts that these plot lines are not dreamed
up or made from scratch. There are many sources of these plot lines, but
whether they come to us from the Classics, from mythology, from canonical
documents of faith systems, from the Master works of European origin, or from
modern movies, shows and literature, they come to us through our mediated
existence.
The
plot lines running through these works become our book of “stock plots” from
which we choose to craft our own plot line.
The events and experiences are used by us to discern a plot line from
stock plots which can unify and integrate the parts. One’s identity is derived from the plot line
with the events and experiences attached to it to form the narrative arc of
one’s life story. Bruner (2004) maintains that what is ommitted from the
narrative of one’s self is just as important as what is included. As such the process of story-making is a
continuous and iterative process as one encounters new experiences and
events. “Life happens”, however,
and as the plot line begins to disintegrate, people can reach a crisis of
identity (Polkinghorne, 1991) if they don’t recognize that story-making is
life-long pursuit, and take the initiative to re-imagine their future, and
refashion a plot line that integrates their lives and their view of self
(McAdams, 2001).
Self-Concept
That Include Others
From
childhood, an understanding of one’s own identity comes from identifying with,
acting like, and being accepted by a group – family, classmates, social group,
colleagues, teammates and co-workers, for instance (Grusec et al, 2013) . These
groups are formed around social representations; commonly-held standards,
symbols, beliefs, aspirations, language, rituals, and the like. Co-workers
constitute a group of people who build relationships and bond together around
the social representations of the companies they work for and the brands they
represent. Polkinghorne (1991) asserts that life stories need not be
self-centered, but the role of the protagonist can be more inclusive, adopting
a “we” in place of an “I”. This is
especially true of people groups in close connection with each other. Family members, teammates, co-workers (in a
close working environment), and social organizations can each serve to be
integral partners in the defining role of protagonist in a person’s narrative
arc.
This
concept of an extended view of protagonist is especially important for people
groups where the group’s image, brand, ranking, record or even survival are
dependent on meeting goals and objectives.
The most obvious example of this is what professional sports teams
experience in getting to the playoffs and eventually to the title game. Teams who have a player or two who insist on
establishing a personal brand that is counter to or incongruous with the brand
or values of the team, generally cannot get past the regular season. Teams that
win together are careful to note that the players on the team pulled together
and won together. It is never about an
individual, but about the team. In
essence, team members are all willing to subjugate their own (narcissistic)
desires to those of the team, choosing to let their personal stories be part of
the larger, team meta-narrative. This
kind of team is the ultimate example of how a personal story can be connected
to a larger narrative arc that includes others.
Brand
Narratives and Shared Social Representations
While
personal narrative arcs are personal arrangements and construction of events
and experiences, some of which we have no control over, like literary narrative
arcs, brand arcs have a simple, single plot, incorporating only those elements
that reinforce the narrative arc. (The fundamental difference between literary
arcs and brand arcs is that literary narrative arcs are fixed, where brand arcs
can shift and change over time. The mark of a strong brand is one that does not
need to shift often in order to compensate for some deficit in the marketplace.) Strong
brand narratives are built on transcendental values, symbols, and disciplined
processes (rituals). Moscovici (1988) articulates these as social
representations, and their power to align actions and behaviors in an
organization is proportional to the stories which pass them along among
employees and from generation to generation. Brands which lack clear values,
symbols and rituals struggle to find their identity in the marketplace. Brand identity, like one’s self-identity is
tied to a plot line and narrative that constitutes and integrates a story.
For
strong brands, this identity defines the brand in its uniqueness; it is something
that is directional and aspirational, but does not acknowledge the competition.
Weaker brands, however, often try to strengthen their market identity by
comparing themselves to the competition, a move that ends up being a fool’s
errand. Consumers want to buy uniqueness
(the heuristic cue of exclusivity); they don’t want to buy from companies and
brands they perceive as weak in a competitive market.
The
Role of the Leader in Connecting Narrative Arcs
Social
representations are both performative and constructive (Moscovici, 1988) .
They are performative in the sense that by being shared, they create an
expectation for behavior or an obligation to present one’s self in certain ways
that comport with the representation. This
is true of leaders who display charisma and act in ways consistent with the
values and symbols of the organization they represent. Social representations are constructive in
the sense that they relate or link people and symbols to the shared concepts of
the group. These shared concepts are used
to create a world of reality for the group which provides the context for the organization
and assembly of events and experiences in constructing a narrative arc.
The question becomes: How does a leader get all these
disparate narrative arcs to connect? Transformational leaders motivate us to
transcend our own self-interests (Bass, 1985) . These types of leaders get us to extend
belief in the organization and its goals, symbols, and rituals, or ceremonies,
as a result of the belief and confidence we have in the leader. Polkinghorne (1991) recognizes this as moving
from a narcissistic narrative to an extended narrative that includes
others. This makes the leader’s role in
the organization to be the one who connects the members of the group to the
brand, and the brand’s narrative arc. In
a geographically-distributed workforce, the leader must transfer these values,
beliefs, and actions to other managers across the organization, ensuring there
is consistency of leader action and resulting leader confidence.
Spatial and psychological distance in a geographically-distributed
workforce has the potential to challenge feelings of trust and confidence in the
group and its leaders. It even challenges group membership and employees’ sense
of attachment to the team’s goals or even the company’s goals. (Morgan & Symon, 2002) . In this environment, managers’ engagement and
communications skills are vital to maintaining employee attachment to corporate
values, goals, symbols, and rituals (processes and ceremonies).
We can now see that the ability of employees – especially
in a geographically-distributed workforce – to attach to the brand values and
symbols of the group or company is directly related to leadership’s ability to
be engaged, to model the correct actions and behaviors, to communicate clearly
and simply, and to extend confidence and trust. In exercising the
responsibility to communicate clearly and simply, I would argue that a leader
is most effective in getting people to act through the use of story which
connects the collective individual narrative arcs to the plot line and
narrative arc of the brand.
Connecting
to a Brand
Professionally,
I use story to help align some element of individual personal stories to the brand
meta-narrative of the company that I and my fellow employees work for. In a
large telecommunications company with a geographically-distributed work force, like
the one I work for, it’s highly important that all employees somehow connect to
the brand. Our brains don’t like dissonance (Tedeschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma, 1957) and so when there’s
nothing in the brand narrative that we can connect to and include in our own
identity we become employees that negatively affect the entire team. I teach my
management team how to use story to engage with their respective teams –
whether they are dealing with a team of managers or a team of technicians. It’s important to get everyone to tell their
story. Then we look for or listen for opportunities to make associations
between an employee’s story (past, present or future) and what our brand means
to customers. In this way, the employee gets to see that they (and their
respective stories) matter to customers and their teammates. (It’s also
important to stress how important customers are to our jobs, and since everyone
likes having a job, having satisfied customers is an appropriate outcome for
any story.)
McAdams
(2001) asserts, our stories are carefully arranged and edited events of our
lives to be a self that has acceptance by a group, or that is headed in a
particular direction (from a career and life perspective). In this vein, getting technicians to be a protagonist
or a “hero” of sorts in the brand narrative, they also adopt and organize the
same protagonist or hero qualities into their respective personal narratives. This makes a successful future for the
company comport with a successful future for each technician, as well. Narrative connections of this quality takes a
management team that is highly-engaged and getting their respective teams to
talk about their events and encounters – their stories – within their daily
jobs. We provide and encourage
opportunities for technicians to stand in front of their peers and relate an
experience or an event. Whether a customer
encounter, a quality installation, or a near-miss potential accident that was
avoided, key behaviors from the week articulated in story form are helpful in allowing
team members to connect their behaviors to the narrative arc of the group, or choose
to change their behaviors to connect with the narrative arc of the group.
The
process is modeled layer after layer in the management team, and practiced
every week. Recognizing that some are
better at this than others, I spend a lot of personal time wandering around the
service area (the entire Midwest) listening for how well we’re doing, modeling
the behavior and helping people practice in getting better. The process I model
goes something like this:
When
I start a meeting with first-line managers, I have everyone introduce
themselves to me as if for the first time.
This is done in a group setting, with their peers listening. The groups are generally no larger than 10-15
people (at the field level, teams consist of no more than fifteen technicians).
In the process of introducing themselves, I ask everyone to tell me their
“story”. I don’t make a distinction between their professional story and their personal
story. Some ask for a clarification, but my response is always that it doesn’t
matter. Invariably, I get a mixture of
personal and professional in the story, as they get 2 minutes to tell it. Additionally, they have to give one factoid
about themselves that none else knows. For some it’s a bit uncomfortable, but
once someone is brave enough to give a fact that blows the rest of the team
away, all of a sudden, it becomes okay to be “real”. After
everyone in the group has introduced themselves, told their quick story, and
given one factoid about themselves, I ask if anyone wants to know something
about me that none of them know (my personal profile and a brief bio are posted
on our company website, so it’s difficult to find things that no one else
knows, but I generally give them something from my personal life).
Once the process is
completed, we have a conversation about how each person on the team articulated
some point of connection with the company we work for. Many times, if not most
times, people came to work for the company as a result of dilemma or at least
decision point where they found themselves at a “Y” in the road.
Almost
all the time, they were the hero in their own story. I then point out, very simply, what makes a
good story using the major elements of protagonist, dilemma or problem, hero, and
resolution (Ohler, 2013) .
We then talk about what makes up the brand of the company we all work for; what
makes the narrative to our brand story, and who the heroes are. Everyone in the meeting realizes that there
is connection to our company and its brand narrative within their own life
story. Secondly, there comes a
realization that they are connected to each, and the success of our company and
its brand is dependent on their success as a team. They now have a responsibility to each other
as they build a team narrative together. Team narratives are a bit trickier,
but I look at them this way. Every team
wants to win, and winning takes a team. We
measure and rank teams (at the manager level) all across the country, and every
team aspires to finish at or near the top. Once a team will admit and recognize
their current position, and their obstacles and their opportunities, they set
goals to overcome and succeed in key areas. They, as teammates, must become the
heroes in their team’s narrative, holding each other accountable and helping
each other get better and achieve a different outcome.
There
are two reasons for going through this process.
The first is that empirical evidence suggests that Kahneman (2011) was right when he asserted that
the brain is lazy and will answer the easiest question. With a difficult
question, unless one is given the time and the tools to do a complex operation,
the brain will answer a related, but easier-to-answer question. Having people
think through their edited life stories to tell a factoid about themselves, and
then their team narrative, makes the brain engage in this complex team-building
exercise. I can help them with which
steps to do and in which order, but only if their brains are fully-engaged, and
they are willing to become committed to helping each other win.
The
second reason we go through the exercise is so that I can model for them how to
get people to tell their stories and then listen for the intersections to the
team narrative or the brand narrative.
We don’t hire managers because they have PhDs in psychology: we hire
them because they are really good technicians and know what it takes to do to
quality work efficiently. This is a
process that gets repeated over and over again: we talk about it in kickoff
meetings; I wander around the service area listening and helping people get it
right; I ask others who are doing it well, to tell their stories and share
their own experience in getting better at team-building with stories; and I get
managers to talk about their own “a-ha!” moment, when they knew they got it
right.
Each
step along the way, people are making a decision to get more connected to the
brand narrative, or to depart from it, eventually to find a job elsewhere. It is this choice, even if not spoken, that
leads me to believe that contrary to Polkinghorne’s (1991) assertion, we are authors of our own narrative. We choose every day, to do things that
reinforce our personal brand and the linkage we have with the company brand, or
to erode our personal brand and the connection we have with our company
brand. Each decision ends up providing a
choice between two very different narratives.
The events that unfold on the heels of those choices, we can edit and
arrange to our liking, in order to create a narrative of our liking and put
ourselves in the best light possible (McAdams, 2001; Polkinghorne, 1991). However, many times in a given day, for a
brief moment, we have an opportunity to author our own narrative. My goal, as the leader is to get them to keep
their brains engaged and to think though the personal and professional
consequences of choosing their narrative.
Stories
are powerful motivators. “A credible
idea makes people believe. An emotional
idea makes people care. But the right
stories make people act” (Heath & Heath, 2007) . As motivators to action, stories also become
the change-agents in organizations. Action is a necessary element of behavior
change, and as Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield,
McMillan, & Switzler (2008) have shown, if we want to change
outcomes, we must first change behaviors. Many times we miss this simple fact
in trying to change behaviors in order to change outcomes in an
organization. People are in perpetual
story-construction mode, selecting, editing and arranging the events of our
lives into an integrated whole with meaning and direction (Polkinghorne, 1991). The role of leaders who are team-builders is
to uncover these personal narratives and find the connections with the team narrative
and the company brand narrative. Here, a
meta-narrative is woven where the collective concept of self includes the
well-being and success of not only one’s self, but the team and teammates, as
well. There is probably no greater task
in the arsenal of leadership behaviors, than to get the team, whether a group
of technicians or a team of senior managers, to effectively use stories to
communicate the need for change, the way of change, and the ultimate effects of
change.
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