What story will we tell?

When I was working as a Survival Instructor, one of the most effective ways to create uncertainty and duress was to give people incomplete information. Humans are natural story and meaning makers. If something is incomplete, or doesn’t make sense, we can't help it, we make a story to fill the gaps. Often the stories are not helpful.

Early on in my business, I was lousy at follow up. The story I told myself if I hadn’t heard back from a potential client was that they didn’t want my services and wouldn’t appreciate hearing back from me. With incomplete information from people, I was filling the gaps. On a rare occasion that I was following up someone told me they were very grateful for the follow up. They thought the work we were planning was really important, but it was getting buried in short term priorities. My follow up was keeping it active on the list. I was totally surprised by his reaction, because it was so different from the story I was telling myself. I’m much better about follow up now. The story I tell myself now is that it’s part of my job and most people appreciate it, if it’s done well.

As leaders we operate continuously on partial information. It’s also not possible to tell everybody everything you know, so they are operating on part information too.

Tuning in to the stories you and others are telling to fill the gaps is a useful leadership skill. Ask questions like:

• What information do we have?

• What assumptions are we making about it?

• What stories are we telling? Are they true? Are they effective? Are they leading to the action/results we are looking for?

Is there a better story to tell?