leadership development

Building Story Mojo – Leadership in a Pandemic Age

Building Story Mojo – Leadership in a Pandemic Age

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Never before in recent history have the communication skills of leaders been more important.

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit the world in early 2020, people from every walk of life and in every corner of the globe have struggled to understand what on earth was going on. We had no framework, no reference point, no practiced skills, knowledge or experience to navigate a pandemic that would rend the very fabric of our communities.

The shock and the fear was deep and wide. The shock waves and trauma are still around and going nowhere soon.

Households and workplaces scrambled hungrily for information from any source; what was really going on? Whose information could we trust? Social media, news media, our friends, our families, political or workplace leaders, our spiritual leaders, our fathers, our mothers, our sons or daughters? How could we tell what was true? Even now, what sources do we trust?
Can we trust science? Who has a hidden agenda?

Sharply contrasting communication styles have emerged. There was blame, attack, metaphors about battles, fights and war. There were also appeals to calm, unity and working together, metaphors such as ‘bubbles’. New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, whether you agree with her politics or not, was lauded by leaders from the right and the left for her excellent communication skills, and these centred around her powerful use of metaphor to tell a story.

Research shows on average we all use up to six metaphors every minute every day. Our lives and our communication is (to use yet another metaphor) riddled with metaphor.

They can have immense power and influence. Neuroscientists have found that substituting power verbs and metaphors can dramatically influence us in our experiences and decision making and how we see the truth. For example if we substitute the world ‘collision’ for ‘smash’ when witnessing a car ‘incident’ people’s estimates of how fast a vehicle is travelling can change dramatically. If the word ‘smash’ is used people estimate a higher speed, if the word collision is used they estimate a lower speed, unconsciously. As we are awash (another metaphor again for drama and emphasis!) with endless notifications across social news media, TV, radio,  audio, video, politicians, community leaders, neighbours and friends, navigating what is true and what is not is immensely challenging.

Sometimes even what might appear to be quite harmless metaphors can create fear and disempower. Talk of ‘waves’ of the pandemic can give a sense that it will be a never-ending force with no end. Contrast this with the use of a metaphor like ‘fire-fighting’ which can enable people to fell they have a sense of control over something that can be overcome.

There are pluses and minuses with the use of all metaphors. The most important thing is to be aware of their power and how you use them, and to change and adapt them for different circumstances.

Building story mojo with the use of metaphor is now a key tool in a 21st century leader’s tool kit.

There is an onus like never before on leaders to reflect deeply and clearly on the language they use, the stories they tell. What metaphors and stories are you using? Will they create fear, or calm? Will they call people to action, or disempower them?

In my upcoming workshop Story Mojo: Story Telling for Authentic Leadership we will explore metaphor and storytelling in depth. Join us to take your leadership communication to another level. http://www.andrewmelville.com/workshops/

Let’s Teach Side Hustle at School.

Let’s Teach Side Hustle at School.

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Like many people growing up in the late 20th century, I was told at school and home that success looked like achieving well in education and work, focused around core subjects and career paths into professions or trades. There were set steps to follow, and you were always being measured against others and ranked. The measurements, metrics as we talk about today, were numeric, linear and quantitative. There was a cut off point where those with enough marks headed in one direction in life, and those with not enough marks headed somewhere else, usually to lower paid employment or perhaps no employment at all.

However, turns out my greatest successes in life have been my side hustles. But no one ever taught me that. When I was very young, I experimented with friends about making things to sell. It was a game. We made art, cookies, or perhaps even mud pies, and played shop, selling them to family or friends for a few cents. It was a little glimmer of what it might mean to be entrepreneurial and receive reward for something you made from your efforts. Later in life, products and services I have designed and delivered myself have been the most satisfying and the most lucrative.

But my education for this was only ever a game. This approach to creating things, selling or exchanging them, was certainly not on any school curriculum. And once in the work force, creating new ideas, products and services in most of my early roles was not valued whatsoever. You followed a set line, a set of formulas with parameters around delivering work and outcomes. Step outside of the set rules too much and you were reprimanded.

Today, I still see this continue. I have witnessed children in school, students in university, hungry to turn their ideas into realities that will benefit their families, communities, and themselves shut down time and time again. Many is the time I have seen an inspired student or graduate deflated as their enthusiasm, their vision and their creativity is shut down. They get told to follow the script in their career, if they can in fact find a job.

In the Māori and Pasifika world I have seen this frequently occur too with another twist. These students want their study and their research to go straight back to their whanau and community, and yet they get told their study is an ‘academic exercise’ and they do not get to deliver their ideas and have to turn to compromised roles in mainstream workplaces.

An entrepreneurial or creative spirit happens on the sidelines.

In 2020 as traditional jobs disappear in the thousands and kids have spent half the year out of school, what new alternatives can we look at to fulfil on dreams, to source an income, and to ‘make a living’ in the true sense of the word? (Interesting how we default to thinking about cash when we talk about ‘making a living’ rather than giving this phrase a broader intent!) I’m pretty damn sure that professional roles for life are on the way out for good.

The power base of the tired old professions of accountancy, law, medicine and engineering are less and less relevant in today’s world. Many of the services offered by these professions you can now google, or manage yourself. I see more and more of the traditional firms resort to fear tactics as they desperately try to remain relevant, inculcating a risk averse business culture, telling the population that it is very dangerous to do without a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer or a doctor. It is tragic that many parents, teachers, academics, business and government leaders still push these professions as the pinnacle of achievement. And in so doing they’re selling their children and their children’s children a very dud deal.

Maybe it is a bad idea to try and quantify and systemise something as creative as a side hustle. But then again maybe we should honour, celebrate and encourage rangatahi today to have a few strings to their bow, to experiment with technology and creativity, with science and with art, and where all these often sidelined endeavours intersect. I once teased an old friend with a strict socialist ideology that the best thing I could ever teach my children growing up was how to write an invoice. And I wasn’t kidding. Writing an invoice can give you many things; an awareness of business, financial literacy, self sufficiency, self worth. I know for myself writing an invoice for my services is very satisfying and empowering.

Let’s pivot, no in fact lets pirouette, to put the entrepreneurship of the creative and tech sectors at the forefront alongside sustainable uses of the land and our beautiful resources, to grow food and shelter. Is it timely to change out what has been seen as the ultimate professions.  Let’s honour the collective, the diverse skills in our communities. It is time to move away from hierarchies that values certain human attributes above others.

Kia Manawanui, Kia Kaha, Kia Māia.

 

Embed Success People Care About

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Every single day that we wake up, breathe and go to work, success is on our mind.

It might be a small thing like cooking our eggs or coffee exactly the way we like. It might be a big thing like winning a six figure contract.

We are always thinking about success in the completion of a task, success in communication, success in goals, success in our wellbeing, success in being fulfilled.

At the end of each day, we all at some point for a moment look back and assess the day as a good one or a bad one, or maybe average.

We have all our own unique set of criteria and measurements of what a good day or a bad day looks like.

Was Christmas and New Year a good or a bad time? Was 2018 a good year or a bad year?

And let’s be honest, we can make up a whole bunch of measures that are far from objective and based on a whole series of connections and patterns we have decided to put together.

We can add up a number of incidents that did not go well and decide they had a momentum that added up to a bad year.

We can connect a number of activities that equate to success, either monetarily or the completion of work, life goals, milestones, and deem the year to be a good one.

The thing is, WE MAKE IT ALL UP!   NONE OF IT IS TRUE!

We allow ourselves an unconscious boom and bust mentality about success, about what good looks like and what bad looks like.

And with a constant onslaught of media stories telling us what good looks like, we compare and compete, and let other realities dictate to us what good success and happiness looks like.

All my life, I have been driven to find connections between people. It is my life’s work to connect. I have been blessed with an uncanny ability to see connections, commonalities, patterns and synergies for people that they often do not see themselves. It is my job to focus on that essence, the guts of what we have in common.

When people and groups are in conflict, and in opposition to one another, I see what they share in common, very often when they do not see it themselves.

In a business when there is a breakdown between management and staff, I see what they share in common and what they really care about and value.

When the IT department, the HR department, or the Sales Department or PR Department are at war with one another, I see what they share in common.

I am blessed to have some sort of radar or xray that penetrates these often superficial perceived differences.

In our vastly complex world, we often find ourselves focussing on differences, breakdowns and what is not working. Perhaps we develop or join a group of like-minded people who hold themselves together by being in opposition to another group. We might decide people who like country and western music are good people, and those who like hiphop are bad people.

We might decide that people who like Android phones are good people and people who like iPhones are dumb people.

And so it goes.

So what to do, what to do?

To find fulfilment, happiness and success is to find COMMON GROUND.

COMMON GROUND allows a sense of belonging, and plenty of research tells us that is very good of us, to have a sense of belonging.

If we work together to establish a common language, we can navigate and share common ground.

COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE must always be developed and agreed together, that is the point.

There can be differences in how we all see and navigate COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE for we are obviously all unique in our identities, preferences and ways of expressing our selves

We are talking more and more about EMPATHY, COMPASSION, and KINDNESS. We can find these in our COMMON GROUND and our COMMON LANGUAGE, when we sit down to focus on what we all have in common.

COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE come from our shared values and vision as human beings.

Where ever we are, what ever we do, what ever our circumstance, what we all have in common, without question, is that WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

Let’s have 2019 be the beginning of creating success that people care about, that is based on what we have in common as human beings, so that wellbeing, wealth and success are not the preserve of a few at the expense of others.

Let’s embed a greater humanity in all our actions, our interactions, and bring together everything we hold in common as human being to succeed, to be fulfilled, to belong, to be happy, and above all else, TO LOVE AND BE LOVED.