Connecting Through Stories: A Leadership Trust Builder
Last week, I was facilitating a program for a leadership team last week and we begin the day using an exercise intended to strengthen trust within this 10 person team and to help them get to know each other better.
The exercise involves having each person come prepared to share the answers to the following 3 questions:
What are 5 key events in my life ?
Who are 5 key people who influenced me in my life ?
What are 5 key choices I made in my life ?
No one is forced to share anything they don’t want to share and in case you’re interested, this exercise always has a very high impact.
After everyone is finished, I ask the group, “What stands out to you from this exercise ?” Here’s a sampling of what they say,
“I’ve been working with some people here for more than 10 years and I was surprised to learn things about them I never knew.”
“It was very inspiring.”
“Everyone has a story.”
“It’s going to help me in working with this group.”
“It’s very helpful to know more about your background.”
“It’s amazing how strong you are.”
Then one person looks at the head of HR and says, “I’m glad you’re here and I thought this was great. Here’s the thing though—I feel like we’ve just broke every HR policy we have because there’s no way we could ask the type of questions that would produce the very personal answers we just heard.”
I’ve facilitated this exercise quite a few times and this is the first time someone shared this perspective. A lively and productive discussion ensued around implicit bias, micro-aggressions, being welcoming, being genuine and caring. Ultimately, the group concluded it was a worthy and worthwhile exercise and they didn’t cross the line. The impact was so meaningful, they’re considering using the exercise with the rest of the team but they are just thinking about it because they are wondering whether if by doing this exercise, they would cross the line.
Instead of sharing the logical next step in this paragraph, I’d like to know what you would do next. Would you do the exercise with the rest of the company or not, or perhaps something in between ?
What would you do and why - please share in the comments ?
I look forward to reading your ideas.
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