Tag Archives: simon sinek

What Flavor Is Your Narrative?

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Simon Sinek describing narrative flavor

“Every day I get to ask people the most interesting questions I can think of, to help them know themselves better and live into their healthiest, most fulfilled selves.”

What if I answer this whenever someone asks me, “So, what do you do?”

How does this sound, feel, and taste different from if I just said, “I’m a doctor”? How interesting, to think of a narrative having a taste… What flavor do you assign my answer above, as you read it? Maybe I should add some toppings:

“I have the privilege and pleasure of doing work that stimulates both my thinking and feeling brains. I get to use all that I have learned throughout my life, both personally and professionally, in service of connecting with and serving other humans. I exercise deep expertise and knowledge, and am also humbled to learn something new every single day. I love what I do, I impact people’s lives, and it’s almost all ‘just’ by talking to people.”

Simon Sinek inspired this post when I watched the video clip of him describing why communicating through stories–narratives–is so important and effective. Thinking of narrative in terms of flavor–what a novel and elegant concept! It takes a totally different perspective on words, from thinking or feeling with emotions to putting it in our bodies. Smell and taste are a primitive sense, and highly associated with memory and emotion. It is literally visceral. So when we tell our stories about work, families, core values, realtionships, struggles–anything meaningful–what happens to that meaning when we correlate it all with a taste? Both for ourselves and those who hear/read our tales? How fascinating!

My first thought watching this video was ‘bitter.’ When I think of the deeply grooved, dysfunctional patterns in some of my relationships, I realize that my narratives—the biases and assumptions I make when interacting with (or even thinking about) certain people—set us up for conflict and discord from the outset in any given encounter. Yikes. For some reason, describing them as ‘bitter’, imagining the taste on my tongue, catches my attention, makes me stop and take notice, more than naming it all as resentment, anger, and grudges. It motivates me to change the narrative, to shift my perspective, make more generous assumptions, withhold judgment, and Give the A. Who wants to taste bitter all the time? I want to make these relationships sweet, savory, and refreshing.

How can we expand this metaphor beyond our own individual stories?

What is the story of your workplace culture? How do the mission/vision/values statements land on the workforce? How would you first describe it in the usual adjectives: restrictive, supportive, rigid, chaotic, backstabbing, upbeat? Then what emotions do you associate: happy, sullen, lighthearted, anxious, safe? What about bodily sensations: tense, relaxed, sleepy, wired, restless? And finally imagine a taste for it: bland, spicy, bittersweet, moldy, rancid, salty, aromatic? How does this exercise affect your perceptions/memories/thoughts/feelings about work? Does it move you to think, say, or do anything differently?

I have never before described my work in the exact words I used above. It feels liberating to find and articulate stronger language for my experience. And it did not take me long to land on ‘sweet’ (I often describe my job as ‘the sweetest gig’–funny how we use this phrasing for things that are just that good) and ‘umami‘ for its tastes. I love what I do. I crave it, savor it. I bask in not just the flavor, but the warmth (it’d definitely warm, not cold or hot) and the texture (rich, dense, smooth with bits of crunch and chew). OH this is fun! My work is the most satisfying meal: marbled, medium rare rib eye with a nice crust, roasted sweet potato, sauteed Brussels sprouts, tiramisu, and chai. Oh and there is some flower salt and pepper on the table.

I wonder how my patients would tell their stories of me and our relationships, and how they would translate those narratives into olfactory and gustatory experiences of us? Am I (are we) bran flakes, kale salad, mac ‘n’ cheese, burnt toast, chia pudding, meatloaf and spinach, blue cheese? The possibilities are endless! And it’s important to query and clarify our unique associations with the flavors we assign. I may think blue cheese is fragrant and lovely; my patient may mean it as putrid.

Now I’m thinking of employee engagement surveys. Wouldn’t it be fun, and actually engaging, to include novel questions like these? Surveyors could easily design questions to indicate whether responses are meant in positive or negative ways, and categorize different foods or meals to represent different aspects of work–breakfast as relationships, lunch as tasks, dinner as meaning, dessert as perks.

Okay that’s enough for now. What a fun diversion this was. Now I’m wondering about figures of speech that reference food and taste…what do we mean to evoke with this language? A post for another time, perhaps.

Onward in curiosity, novelty, learning, and connection, my friends!

We Get to Invent It! 

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You never know when creativity will strike or, more importantly, be called forth.

This weekend I’ve been feeling particularly melancholy, what with, you know, the world.

Thankfully Dan Rather et al over at Steady send a weekly email entitled “Smile for a Saturday”.  I needed a smile this morning, so I opened it and watched a video of Brazilian pianist Elaine Rodriguez conducting an impromptu performance in flexibility and good humor, when one of her piano pedals malfunctions.  I learned a bit about the literal mechanics of moving pianos; but more importantly, I saw how expertise, humility, and connection can save us in adversity.

While crew rushed to change pianos on stage, Ms. Rodriguez spoke to the audience.  She explained what was happening, got help, and continued to play music that did not require the pedal while she and the audience waited.  She chose pieces that sounded appropriate for the circumstances.  She looked into the audience and made eye contact, engaging them throughout.  She gave everybody, including me, the sense that we were all in it together.  Nobody knew what would happen next, how long it would take, and how the evening would turn out.  But I’d bet money that every person was glued to their seat, happily in it for the duration.

“We get to invent it!”  This may be one of my favorite sentences, and I have exclaimed it more often in the past two years than possibly in my whole life.  We thought we could not include telehealth in regular medical schedules.  We thought teams always had to meet in person, in the office, all the time to function.  We thought executives’ work necessarily required them to travel internationally over 50% of the time to lead effectively.  Maybe so, and maybe not.  COVID forced us all to reassess our default assumptions and practices.  Some served us well and proved their value through lockdown and beyond.  Some not so much, and now we get to invent how to be and do differently. Faced with adversity, we can play different songs.

My nascent idea and title for this post had just formed when YouTube autoplay began the next video, of Ben Folds composing a new song, on stage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2017.  Friends, you’ gotta watch this!!  He literally invents a song and leads the National Symphony Orchestra through its impromptu performance, beginning to end, in ten minutes.  Stop reading now and watch, and let’s debrief below, shall we?  I’ll wait. 😉 

See if you agree that this improvisation parallels our pandemic experience:

A Minor Key

First, the MC accepts an audience suggestion of A minor as the key for the piece.  Minor keys have a somber and ominous feel compared to major keys.  They grab my attention, make me slow down, listen more slowly and mindfully.  This makes sense because most music we hear is composed in major keys; it’s the default.  Okay, now I’m prepared for the Darth Vader theme (in case you’re wondering about the difference between major and minor keys, hear the Imperial March in a major key, and Chariots of Fire in minor).  This is the first constraint placed on Folds’s new composition:  Invent a song that everybody expects to sound solemn, foreboding, and sad.  Stay home.  Wear a mask.  Curtail your travel.  No more team lunches, boondoggles, water cooler chit chat.  Stress, stress, stress.  A minor sounds like the right key for inventing a song in the Age of COVID.

Upbeat!

Next, the MC asks the audience what tempo they want to hear, ballad or upbeat?  Immediate and loud spontaneous consensus: “Upbeat!”  What a fantastic challenge, how will this work?  As leaders, culture and morale start with us.  We get to choose how we show up, no matter the circumstances.  Maybe this correlates with taking a minor key and making an upbeat song—knowing to start slowly, from a serious, thoughtful place, AND choosing to uplift.  Minor key does not necessarily make a song sad, plodding, or a slog.  Rather, it makes our upbeat-ness necessarily more intentional.  To see and amplify the positive in a negative situation does not mean ignoring, repressing, or dismissing the bad.  It means accepting and embracing it, naming it, navigating it, making the most of all that is, and then moving forward with it all, in concert.  This is what leaders are called to do.

“These New Spaces Are All Designed to Be Flexible.”

The MC asks for a ‘an interesting sentence’ from the program book, perhaps as the unifying theme for the upbeat song in A minor—the mission, purpose, direction—the cause.  I kid you not, this is the sentence that emerged.  How cosmically prescient, this video, I have goosebumps.

“We Get to Invent It!”  In the wake of Battleship COVID, we now get to design our spaces to be flexible—all spaces!  That includes physical work spaces, spaces in our own minds for how and what to be, and spaces between us in relationship, whether at home, in college dorms, at work, at the grocery store, at concerts, or in traffic—everywhere, all the time! 

Confident Thinkering

Folds sits at the piano and starts noodling.  He smiles.  You can imagine his integrated brain gears turning, changing position while staying in contact, engaged and rotating for optimal efficiency and torque.  He hits a little rut and resets, still smiling.  He knows exactly what he’s doing, understands and embraces the process of creation, the necessary messiness and disorganization of initiating something meaningful.  He also has no idea what he’s doing; the product is not yet formed.  He is inventing in real time.  Isn’t that what we are all doing now?  What expertise and skill sets can we ground ourselves in, as individuals and collaborative (or competitive!) teams, that give us the confidence to invent?  How do we orient ourselves for maximal power to accomplish our goals?

Think and tinker.  Use your knowledge, expound on theory, do the thought experiments.  Then take the experiments from thought to piano, to conversation, to teamwork.  Try stuff out.  Pilot–thoughtfully.  Exercise both humility and confidence at once:  Go all in, get all out quickly if it doesn’t work, repeat.

Collaborate

Over the next several minutes he tinkers with baseline, progression, melody.  He starts sounding out with the cellos, then winds, then violins, violas, and finally basses and drums.  At each stage, he invents something, tries it, integrates with the previous section, and assesses.  Does it work?  “…Just to make sure I don’t suck…sorry, this takes a second to create a whole song.”  The song evolves in front of our eyes and ears, passing through organic adjustments of timing, notes, combinations of sounds and participation.  “…Let’s hear it all together, make sure it’s not crazy…”  The orchestra conductor follows attentively, providing seamless ancillary direction and guidance to the group.

Is this not what any team in transition needs?  Leaders recognize material constraints and requirements:  A minor key, upbeat tempo, These New Spaces Are All Designed to Be Flexible.  They take the first steps, feeling things out, listening.  They check in with the team at all levels—how does it sound for this group?  What about when we add other groups?  How’s the harmony?  Is it working for the whole?  If not, what do we need to change?  

Revel in the Awesomeness

The performance climaxes after all parts have rehearsed, integrated, and repeated.  Folks are comfortable in their brand new learned nerve pathways.  Now they get to really play together, to have fun, improvise, and enjoy their accomplishment.  What would happen if we celebrated our successes, even the smallest ones, more often and loudly (“fivetissimo”)?

—

It occurs to me here that this performance works because of certain fundamental premises:  1) Everybody agrees to participate, and to follow Ben Folds’s lead.  2) Everybody speaks the same language.  Real time communication occurs cleanly and efficiently, with immediate feedback.  3) The leader trusts the team to do what they do best, giving appropriate instruction according to roles.  4) The task is brief, the goal is clear and simple, and the leader takes responsibility for the end product.

This video is neither a perfect nor a complete metaphor for creating optimal post-COVID environments and relationships.  Still, it inspires and activates me.  It provokes thought and creativity, and spurs me to enroll others in new ideas, experimentation, and shared accountability for our collective outcomes. 

Really, if you have not already watched, please take ten minutes.  You can even just listen.  I bet you won’t regret it, and it may even inspire you.

Cultural Perpetuity

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What kind culture do you wish to perpetuate?  What specific actions, policies, behaviors, and outcomes would it manifest?

I learned the term ‘cultural perpetuity’ this past week, from a thought-provoking article on how Maslow’s Hierarchy was influenced by and also misrepresented Blackfeet Nation teachings:

  1. Self-actualization. Where Maslow’s hierarchy ends with self-actualization, the Blackfoot model begins here. In their view, we are each born into the world as a spark of divinity, with a great purpose embedded in us. That means that we arrive on earth self-actualized.
  2. Belonging. After we’re born, imbued with a divine purpose, the tribe is there to love and care for us.
  3. Basic Needs & Safety. While in Maslow’s model, we find love and belonging only after attending to our basic needs and safety, the Blackfoot model describes that our tribe or community is the means through which we are fed, housed, clothed, and protected. The tribe knows how to survive on the land and uses that knowledge and skill to care for us.
  4. Community Actualization. In tending to our basic needs and safety, the tribe equips us to manifest our sacred purpose, designing a model of education that supports us in expressing our gifts. Community actualization describes the Blackfoot goal that each member of the tribe manifest their purpose and have their basic needs met.
  5. Cultural Perpetuity. Each member of the tribe will one day be gone. So passing on their knowledge of how to achieve community actualization and harmony with the land and other peoples gives rise to an endurance of the Blackfoot way of life, or cultural perpetuity.

I also listened this week to the Building an Anti-Racist Workplace episode of Adam Grant’s podcast WorkLife.  It’s an insightful, enlightening, and empowering interview with John Amaechi, whose work I will now explore further.  In their discussion on allyship, Amaechi points out that we upstand against racism and sexism not just to help our individual friends or coworkers, but because we uphold certain core values.  Thus, we speak and stand up to defend and disseminate a certain culture—to perpetuate it:

Adam Grant (21:43):
I wanna talk a little bit about sort of the- the ally perspective here. Just thinking about my own failures in anti-racism and other people who I know, recognize the problems and care about the problems, but haven’t done much about them, I keep coming back to this literature on psychological standing.That sense that, you know, it’s- it’s not my place, it’s not legitimate for me to speak up because I’m white. What are your thoughts on overcoming it and getting those people who are by-standing for those kinds of reasons on board?

John Amaechi (22:13):
There’s a couple of things that I’m trying to do. One of them is to stop the alignment of allyship with black people as individuals and start the alignment of allyship with their own principles or with their organization’s values. So racism is an incivility. Sexism is an incivility. I do not require sisters nor a mother, nor a wife to be against sexism and misogyny because it is an incivility. If I’d intervene on something that’s racist, it’s not on my behalf or another one of my black colleagues. It’s because it’s an incivility against the values that people say they share. Today it’s not about an individual. It’s about standing up for your values and understand that you don’t need to have a black person in your team for that to be important because the presence of a black person has never been required for racism to occur. The presence of a woman has never been required for sexism to occur. As men, we know that the absence of woman reveals sexism and misogyny.

What culture do you lead?

In my role as interim clinical director of a small practice, I see myself as a steward.  My best contribution to most places I inhabit is to highlight and foster relationship and connection.  At work, this manifests as effective teamwork, high engagement, and positive morale.  Last year as we recruited for a new medical assistant (MA), I got to listen on the phone as our current MAs interviewed a candidate.  Through my own questioning, the candidate’s responses were short and sedate.  Then each MA on the team met with her, describing with energy and conviction how they live out our core values of collaboration and accountability, as well as our mission of providing compassionate, holistic patient care.  With each encounter, I heard the candidate’s responses lengthen and deepen.  I heard her own energy and engagement rise to match that of the team.  It was one of my proudest moments as director—I could see (hear) and feel how far our culture of connection has come, and how it could persist after I pass the baton to the next director.

What is the dominant (perpetual) culture in America?

Do not underestimate the complexity of this question, and its profound implications.  The first answer is, of course, it depends whom you ask.

For far too many, the dominant American culture is white male supremacy.  For the past year, I myself find it inescapable.  Increasingly, every time I consider what to post to this blog, or jeez, every day and in almost every domain, the primacy of white men pervades my consciousness like smog on a hot, humid day.  Let me be clear:  White men are not each and all bad; I do not assume every one is a racist sexist, even the actual assholes.  But whenever American systems are examined, we find that they are primarily designed, favored, empowered, and perpetuated by and for white males—it’s baked into our societal structures, hence the terms ‘systemic’ and ‘structural’ racism and sexism.  If you are a white male, it may be hard for you to see the barriers that have not impeded your life journey (Amaechi discusses this in the podcast as well).  You may have answered that dominant American culture is one of success with hard work, of equal opportunity, and of individual freedom.  Of course that is a culture we’d all love to perpetuate.  How could we achieve it for everybody?

What culture do you work to perpetuate?

I think it’s about the values and commitments we hold highest and manifest most in our daily activities.  What do our daily encounters say about our priorities?  What do we want more of, and thus work for every day, for ourselves, our friends, our colleagues, patients, parents, and children?  I want mutual respect and unqualified acceptance.  I want sincere valuation of diversity and real, wholehearted inclusion and integration of that diversity—of thought, experience, wisdom, and perspective—into a coherent, synergistic mosaic of strengths, engaged in service of elevating every individual to their highest potential.  I want to perpetuate a learning culture, one that operates with a growth mindset, founded on kindness, generosity, humility, curiosity, and resilience. 

None of this happens automatically; even well-established gardens of inclusive culture require regular tending.  I have to renew my commitment every day, in every encounter.  I fall down regularly.  And I give thanks every day for loving companions who help me up.  I try also to appreciate the challengers, to see them as allies rather than enemies or hindrances.  That is walking my talk, no?  To value those whose goals and values don’t align with my own, to find a place for them—for everybody—in my world?  I’m strengthening my practice of self-assessment.  How did I walk the talk today?  How can I do even better tomorrow?  The more concrete and specific, the better—words, actions, and attitudes.  It’s my own version of “trudging the road of happy destiny.”

On that note, I leave you with two more resources that hold me up this weekend:

First, Hank Azaria’s conversation with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman on the Armchair Expert podcast.  They discuss addiction, privilege, and racism, among other things.  What an inspiring example of vulnerability, courage, humility, connection, and lifelong learning and growth.

Second, a Forbes profile of Sharon Salzberg, 4 Ways Loving Kindness and Mindfulness Can Change Your Life.  You may read them and think, “Duh, I know that.”  But ask yourself, how does your knowing translate to doing? 

We have our whole lives to practice.  As Simon Sinek says, the goal is not to be perfect by the end; it is to be better today.