The Third Tip: Writing your success script - a management tool for intuitive decision making
"You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours". (White Queen to Alice from "Alice in Wonderland", 2010)
This morning, a team leader in financial company faced a difficulty in making a decision how to resolve a conflict created between the two veteran employees of his staff. Many managers face such situations on a daily basis. The manager has two ways to deal with this challenge:
One way is to ignore, deny, suppress, threaten...
Another way is to use own intuition: take the time to think, imagine, step into one's shoes, identify with, find associations from the past...
In my opinion intuition is a combination of many factors, two of them are using imagination and storytelling, based on Dr. Daniel Cappon approach described in his book "Intuition and Management".
Creating a story (from a narrative view and images' slideshow views) reminds me the work of a screenwriter. The fundamental difference between a screenwriter and novelist is the ability to describe only the situations that have a visual justification because the final product is something that has to be photographed. One will never find a sentence like "He was extremely moved at it" in a script. Instead he will find: "He was excited, tears were streaming down his face, and he was shaking all over, his daughter standing next to him supported him so he wouldn't collapse."
This method of writing in such a detailed way is in my eyes an excellent exercise technique for developing intuitive management.
The exercise addresses a situation of a conflict between two employees and is performed in two stages:
Background: you as a team leader should take a decision regarding a conflict that broke out between two employees in your team.
Step One: Try to imagine in great detail, as if you had to write a future scene, how you will handle this conflict: What things you will say, what tone and volume you will use, will you sit or stand at this moment, will you move your hands. On the other hand - each of the two employees are speaking to you in this situation - what will each of them say? What can you learn from their face expressions? How will they move their hands?
Step Two: Change roles and step into each of your employees' shoes. Write the script again from the point of view (POV - point of view) of each one of them.
What are the differences you have found between the two versions? And what can you learn from that? Do you "see" the right solution for you for this conflict? If so - write it as soon as you can!
If you try to analyze the exercise you will quickly get to the conclusion that what made you change the way you think is the second stage, the stage of the POV (Point of View).
"You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours". (White Queen to Alice from "Alice in Wonderland", 2010)
This morning, a team leader in financial company faced a difficulty in making a decision how to resolve a conflict created between the two veteran employees of his staff. Many managers face such situations on a daily basis. The manager has two ways to deal with this challenge:
One way is to ignore, deny, suppress, threaten...
Another way is to use own intuition: take the time to think, imagine, step into one's shoes, identify with, find associations from the past...
In my opinion intuition is a combination of many factors, two of them are using imagination and storytelling, based on Dr. Daniel Cappon approach described in his book "Intuition and Management".
Creating a story (from a narrative view and images' slideshow views) reminds me the work of a screenwriter. The fundamental difference between a screenwriter and novelist is the ability to describe only the situations that have a visual justification because the final product is something that has to be photographed. One will never find a sentence like "He was extremely moved at it" in a script. Instead he will find: "He was excited, tears were streaming down his face, and he was shaking all over, his daughter standing next to him supported him so he wouldn't collapse."
This method of writing in such a detailed way is in my eyes an excellent exercise technique for developing intuitive management.
The exercise addresses a situation of a conflict between two employees and is performed in two stages:
Background: you as a team leader should take a decision regarding a conflict that broke out between two employees in your team.
Step One: Try to imagine in great detail, as if you had to write a future scene, how you will handle this conflict: What things you will say, what tone and volume you will use, will you sit or stand at this moment, will you move your hands. On the other hand - each of the two employees are speaking to you in this situation - what will each of them say? What can you learn from their face expressions? How will they move their hands?
Step Two: Change roles and step into each of your employees' shoes. Write the script again from the point of view (POV - point of view) of each one of them.
What are the differences you have found between the two versions? And what can you learn from that? Do you "see" the right solution for you for this conflict? If so - write it as soon as you can!
If you try to analyze the exercise you will quickly get to the conclusion that what made you change the way you think is the second stage, the stage of the POV (Point of View).
The next case study will demonstrate you how it worked in practice.
Case Study
Recently I conducted an interesting conference for 60 executives of the national major call center. The purpose of the conference was to raise awareness and generate insights for the annual training process, based on patterns of change management and creating a new intuitive leadership approach.
The metaphorical theme of the conference was sports, the work was done by discussions in the plenum and six subjects were defined as success accelerators: Individual added value, breakthrough, corporate communication, effectiveness, management procedures and dealing with crisis.
The managers were divided into three groups according to three types of POV inspired from the sports world: coach, player and audience. Each group had to record three stages by each POV: Definition of the ideal leader by his functioning and characteristics, setting constraints that prevent him from performing these activities and finding solutions (tools and actions) in order to overcome these barriers.
Each phase during the teamwork was translated into a cinematic scene, was dramatized by the managers and presented the situation from these three POVs.
At the end of the conference, many insights were gathered into organized management code, and each of the managers was asked to choose single insight, and implement it in his group during the following month.
The conclusion:
The operative ability to find a solution and make a decision was achieved by creative thinking and looking at the situation from different perspectives. One of the managers told me: "The ability to leave my private circle, to look at the situation from a different perspective, telling myself the story from this perspective - this is a tool that will help me in many future challenging situations of decision-making".
Want to know more about this positive change? Read more about CastEffect Management training videos and CastEffect Leadership training videos.
I would love to hear your opinions, learn from your experience and share knowledge.
Question For You: In which cases do you recommend using POV techniques for training and learning processes?
Sincerely,
Yulia Reinshmidt
Co-CEO, Content & Production Manager
yulia@casteffect.com
CastEffect
Our next post will be tip #4 - writing a screenplay about subtext in sales and training situations - what do they REALLY mean
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