5 things you should know before taking a big leap in life
If you’re preparing to take a big leap in your life or career, here are a few mindful tips to help you get your head right for the adventure ahead.
If you’re preparing to take a big leap in your life or career, here are a few mindful tips to help you get your head right for the adventure ahead.
The trick for dealing with change?
Embracing what it can teach you. This, of course, is easier than it sounds. Fear and doubt always seem to show up whenever you’re thinking of making a major life change. An endless loop of worries and worst-case scenarios play in your mind. This ‘monkey mind’ loop can keep you chasing your own thoughts down a spiral of anxiety, and ultimately, inaction. more>
Telling your own story is an essential life skill.
When you define yourself for yourself and become the writer of your own story, life’s major changes, setbacks or shifts become one-of-a-kind opportunities for you to evolve from victim to hero. more>
Taking a big leap involves risk.
A risk of failure, of looking silly, of hurting yourself. Big leaps involve stepping out into the unknown. Going off the one-size-fits-all plan. They require you to trust yourself more than you ever have. They are an exercise in faith. more>
Personal mastery is the reward for overcoming fear…
…shifting your mindset from ‘one-size-fits-all’ and taking worthwhile risks.
It all starts with the small, everyday habits and behaviors you practice BEFORE you take a big leap, make a major life change or face an unexpected life challenge. Until you ‘get your mind right’, your potential for growth and self-mastery will be limited. more>
Your work and relationships are a reflection of what you think of yourself.
As you evolve, the way you relate to your job and to the people in your life - family, friends, significant other - will evolve too. At some point, you may feel the need to graduate. This can be a literal leaving behind or a ‘leveling up’ of the way you engage and the effort and energy you give to these experiences.
IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE YOUR FUTURE
CHANGE YOUR STORY.
Write your next chapter with a story-based strategic framework that evolves as you do.
the sacred bundle: unwrap your team’s backstory
Learn an indigenous storytelling technique to help you and your team reconnect and remember the moments that mattered most in your journey to ‘happily ever after’
While I was doing research for my paper on storytelling & school discipline, I came across a concept called ‘the sacred bundle’.
The sacred bundle is a reference to an indigenous American storytelling practice, where a tribe would place objects that represented key moments in the their history into a bundle.
from, ‘The Sacred Bundle: Unwrap Your Team’s Backstory’ www.kishasolomon.com
The sacred bundle is a reference to an indigenous American storytelling practice, where a tribe would place objects that represented key moments in the their history into a bundle. This bundle was kept safe by 1 or 2 ‘keepers of the bundle’ - usually 1 male and 1 female from the tribe. The keepers of the sacred bundle had the responsibility of remembering a specific song or story that related to each object in the bundle. At certain tribal celebrations or gatherings, the keepers of the bundle would remove the objects and recount the stories to the rest of the tribe. This was done as a way to preserve and pass on the moments that defined the tribe’s culture and their shared histories and futures.
Organizational consultant Peg Neuhauser extended the concept of the sacred bundle into teams and organizations, and posed the idea that, much like a tribe, teams and organizations have key moments that define their history. She posited that there are 6 organizational sacred bundle stories that every organization has:
How We Started
Our People
Why We Do What We Do
What We Learned in Failure
How We Succeeded
How We Will Change the World
I was so inspired by this idea of sacred bundle stories, that I decided to use them for a year-end retrospective with my product team at Ford. I asked each member of the team to share an object or image that represented each sacred bundle story. Later, we gathered as a team and took turns letting each team member share their object or image and explain what it meant to them.
The exercise was so well received, that I also decided to use it for my own year end review for 2022. I shared my own sacred bundle objects and stories on Instagram.
The 6 Sacred Bundle Stories of a Team
1. How We Started
2. Our People
3. Why We Do What We Do
4. What We Learned in Failure
5. How We Succeeded
6. How We Will Change the World
Why Use Sacred Bundle Stories?
The sacred bundle exercise made for a much-needed alternative to the typical year-end review or retrospective. Instead of only focusing on what tasks we completed or what I personally achieved, the sacred bundle stories allowed me and my team to look back at the moments that had the most meaning for us over the past year.
By sharing them with each other, we were all able to get deeper insight and understanding to what those moments meant to the the people we work with every day. We went deeper in our conversations than we had in our other team-building sessions or our quarterly OKR reviews - we shifted the focus to our journey together, how far we’d come and most importantly… how much we had all changed and grown. It was also a great way to honor and say farewell to a couple of members who were transitioning out of the team onto new projects.
The Importance of Backstory
Understanding what brought the main character to this point is really a pre-requisite for writing stories that will engage your audience. Before we can emotionally invest in the main character and her journey, we need to understand where she’s been, why she makes the choices she does, what happened before that has shaped her into the person we see today.
The same is true when you’re preparing to write the next chapter of your personal story or your team’s story. You want to re-engage with and celebrate how far you’ve come, you also want to be sure that you won’t forget the lessons you learned so that you don’t run the risk of repeating them again. There’s also the need to re-center on your values and remind yourself what has the most meaning to you - this is how you will avoid getting distracted or caught up in trivialities as you continue to journey towards ‘happily ever after’.
storytelling is a core leadership skill (audio)
Why leaders who develop the skill of telling good, strategic stories have an advantage in career and business.
Audio transcript:
Storytelling is a key, but I think often overlooked domain of leadership. Managers give directives, leaders tell stories. And I think the difference in giving directives and telling stories is that giving directives is something that is not participative.
The people that you are giving a directive or instructions or objectives or whatever that you're giving that to are receivers. They receive their instructions and they carry them out and they report back to you and tell, tell you, what they did and you tell them how good they did or how good they are.
And it creates this hierarchy. It doesn't lead to a relationship of equity between the leader and the follower. And I think some people think, ‘Well, there's not supposed to be equity there. I'm the leader. I'm higher up. They're supposed to look up to me. I'm supposed to be better or higher or more powerful or on a different level than them,’ which is true organizationally, but I think all real leaders recognize that their leadership is not based on the title or the position they hold in the organization.
The organization's titles and positions are specific to that organization only. And a leader is a leader no matter where she is. So if you're a leader in an organization by title, this doesn't mean that as soon as you leave that building and that title is not there on you anymore, that you stop thinking, behaving, and performing like a leader. That's very unlikely for someone who is truly a leader versus someone who just holds a title. So leaders know that the primary way that they influence is through relationship. And there are a number of ways to exist in a relationship with others. I think a lot of us think of it purely as this idea of networking. Like I go into a room and I press the flesh. I amass a whole bunch of people, then I call them and I have coffees and I go on golf dates with them. This is what we think of when we're, when we usually think of like networking or relationship building in terms of career or work or business.
But relationships are built on all kinds of interactions, and storytelling I think is one of the first ways we learn to build relationship with others.
As children we hear stories. Maybe an elder in our family is telling us stories, or maybe we're getting read a bedtime story, or maybe in school we have story time, but what we start to understand as kids is these are one of the few times when adults, the people who are bigger than us, come down to our level and actually engage with us, and ask us where we want to go next. Or have us say, Well, what happened next? Or, Well, why'd they do that? We're in a conversation in a more equitable level than we've probably ever been with an adult in our lives.
And this is the relationship that stories allow us to build between and among each other. And as leaders, it's kind of that same idea of if you're living in the leadership stratosphere all the time. Storytelling is this activity that allows you to sit down and look eye to eye at everyone across your organization and engage in an act of co-creation with them.
So you may be telling a story, but if you've really learned how to be a strategic storyteller, you recognize that every story you tell is not a story about you per se, even if it is, it's a story that's about the person who's receiving it. The point of you telling the story is so that the person receiving it can identify themselves in this story and then see themselves as the hero by the time you're finished telling it. You're telling stories to your people so that they can see, 'Oh. This is an achievable idea, or this is a relatable experience. Or if this person has been through it and I can identify with them, then I can possibly identify with this story and see myself going through it as well.'
I think this is why, for me, storytelling is such a core discipline of leadership. It's also a wonderful way of knowledge transfer. And I think another part of leadership or what leaders are maybe not always consciously thinking of, but definitely unconsciously leaders are always concerned with legacy.
'What am I leaving behind that represents me even though I'm no longer here?' And stories are one of those things that are wonderful ways to transmit legacy. And I think those two benefits or those two outcomes of really good and really strategic leadership storytelling: the ability to build equitable relationships and the ability to transmit or transfer leadership legacy; I think storytelling really is so powerful, , in accomplishing those two objectives or delivering those two benefit. And it's highly accessible. It is accessible to anyone in an organization who sees themself as a leader and wants to build relationships and leave legacy.