Change the Narrative: Leading Your Own Revolution
“We humans are natural storytellers, and our stories shape our lives, families, communities, and work. We use stories to pass along lessons, wisdom, entertainment, and warnings.
Stories live in us and among us.
Sometimes, however, we get caught up in a bad version of a kid’s camp song: same song, second verse, a little bit louder, and a whole lot worse!”
What does it mean to Change the Narrative?
Over many years, I have helped people change or create their narratives. Sometimes, this was literally about writing or creating stories when I was a professor and educator, and sometimes, this was about facilitating individuals and groups of leaders to shift their thinking, language, and behaviors. In a broader sense, you can see people working to change the narratives in business, social justice, mental health awareness, and organizational branding. Changing a narrative means telling a different story: to ourselves, each other, and the wider world.
How do we know when we might need or want to change a narrative?
Neuroscience suggests that we are hard-wired for negativity bias, meaning we can find the thing that’s wrong or negative, and then we can fixate on it. Our brains have more activity when we are focused on the negative aspect of something, and this is evolutionary. Why not use this tendency to identify something that isn’t working, but instead of reinforcing this, we change the narrative to bring about positive change? Sometimes, a simple gap analysis, i.e., what’s the space between what’s currently happening and what we would like to happen, can create some hints for the path to change the narrative. It’s simple to do this: what’s currently not working, frustrating, or hard, and most importantly, what do you want instead?
There are usually indicators that help point the way to a need to change the narrative. What might those be?
To put it simply: something isn’t working. Are you personally frustrated or stressed? Something’s not working. Is your team stuck or falling short of its potential? Something’s not working. Is your organization struggling to be innovative or creative, or you feel like you are having the same frustrating conversations over and over? Something is not working. Are there systemic issues in your community that are causing suffering or pain? Something’s not working!
After almost two decades of helping people prepare to influence in conversations that matter, one thing we know is that when we want to bring about change in behavior, focusing on the undesirable behavior often creates more of the same. We need to change our own narrative in how we approach the change we desire.
Some Change the Narrative examples for consideration:
You: Your workload seems oppressive. You don’t have time to be creative or innovative. You never feel caught up or spacious.
Change the Narrative: Having a better relationship with your work life may be supported by creating new systems or processes for better productivity; however, changing this narrative may also be about changing your internal dialogue about your work, your work relationships, your ability to delegate and develop others, and your boundaries for saying ‘yes’ or ‘no.’
Your Team: Things seem okay on your team: status quo. But there seems to be a lack of motivation, inspiration, or ownership for innovation with work projects or goals. You’ve tried all sorts of carrot-and-stick approaches to motivation, but nothing seems to work long-term.
Change the Narrative: Reframe your understanding and responsibility for motivating anyone—they motivate themselves! Ask the team to participate in and/or lead an innovation effort. Tap into their innate creativity. Identify potential obstacles to success, and your focus shifts to removing those obstacles to clear the path.
Your community group or committee: you believe in the mission or cause and generally like those with whom you are working, but no progress seems to be made. The conversations appear to be the same, over and over. Instead of feeling energized and inspired, you can see exhausted faces and depleted energy.
Change the Narrative: how are you measuring progress? How might you reframe the notion of “wins” to build momentum, increased commitment, and a sense of empowerment? How do you treat setbacks or disappointments? How can the group develop deeper relationships to support the work ahead?
What are your opportunities in your circle of influence to change the narrative?
Where are places and spaces to grow, evolve, and transform where you are the leader of that change?
This is just the beginning…
INTRODUCING:
Change the Narrative with Libby Wagner
An exploration into making changes that make a difference.
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