Let the best of you transform the rest of you

At the heart of any team or organization striving to maximize its potential, is an opportunity.

What brings the opportunity alive are the teasing examples of it being maximized, usually by a few individuals or small groups. In other words, anything labeled as a problem for the system is also an example of excellence for a select few. These examples may shine through as innovation, creative adaptations to a changing context, resilient leadership in a crisis etc.

The challenge for leadership often lies in extending such pockets of excellence to pervade the entire organization. The usual response is to study the top performers and bottle what they do as best practices - the magic potion to solve the pressing problems of the day. This is all very well, but such efforts mostly end up in well intentioned PowerPoint presentations that wait with bated anticipation in dusty SharePoint folders.

Why?

These efforts capture ‘the doing’ in great detail while leaving out ‘the being.’

If we only observe what they do and try to replicate it, it’s like expecting Alphonso mangoes to grow in a desert by following the best practice to grow Alphonso mangoes. It is important to recognize that the best performers did outstanding things from their ‘way of being’ which enabled them to see opportunities where others saw problems. Trying what best performers ‘do’ from our current way of being will at best yield incremental results and can even be demotivating in the long run.

What is Our Way of Being?

It is the ground of our human experience - a composite of the stories we hold about ourselves and the world, the emotions and moods we embody and finally, our physiology and the way we hold ourselves in our body. This evolves throughout our life as we go through various experiences.

A more holistic alternative to best practice thinking is an Embodied Portrait.

The Embodied Portrait

An Embodied Portrait captures our underlying way of being in a creative output such as a video, poetry or art. Through art or artistic representations, the more subtle aspects of our experience are distilled to not just be recognized, but also conveyed. Such a ‘portrait’ is created through skillful interventions that combine approaches from Appreciative Inquiry, storytelling, coaching and somatic (body-based) practices.

The portrait itself is assembled bit by bit through conversations with the target group. These conversations serve as a container that allow the person/group to get in touch with parts of themselves that contribute to (or inhibit) their effectiveness. As a result, what is embodied (and not always accessible to our awareness) is externalized. Through an iterative process that engages the client at every level, the essential elements of the desired way of being are surfaced.

This includes what one might do as an effective leader and more importantly, ‘how they are’ when they do what they do.

Case in Action: Experiencing Arc of Inclusion

One of Somajna’s clients wanted to create content that could galvanize their journey towards an inclusive culture. They had already done the hard part of listening to their employees and understanding where and how they experienced the opposite – exclusion. Through subtle, but moving revelations, staff stories about how we can all unintentionally exclude someone for being different were compiled and they had to be cascaded to the rest of the organization. However, this had to be done efficiently and with methods that didn’t feel like ‘training’, but more microlearning based – short, animated videos.

Our team then engaged with employees of the client organization across different locations to understand the diversity and depth of the matter at hand. These conversations started with the examples of exclusion their colleagues had expressed and ended with how each of them had equal experience of the holy grail – a sense of belonging. As they narrated their stories of how they confronted biases – their own and those of others, they connected with the organization’s spirit of inclusion. These experiences were the essence of the best the organization was capable of, while acknowledging the pain of exclusion as an equally true assertion.

From this point, the Embodied Portrait started to take shape. A series of short videos were created that traced the span of the Arc of Inclusion – from the dark, lonely place of everyday exclusion to providing actionable guidance on how to respectfully confront and transform a behaviour. Each video spotlighted tangible behaviours that were clearly detrimental or supportive of a culture of inclusion. The video series was the Embodied Portrait of Inclusion for the organization.

The next challenge was presenting the portrait to the organization in a learning strategy that would be engaging and scalable.

Learning from an Embodied Portrait

The video series had to reach the target audience in an incremental approach that balanced different learning styles and maximized retention. In order to accomplish this, a number of design elements were curated thoughtfully to create a learning experience that ensured each viewer was engaged fully.

1. Authentic content: The scripts for all videos were co-designed with the organization’s active involvement. In fact, even the voiceovers on the characters were provided by employees. This was the core essence of the embodied portrait – no canned stuff.

2. Whole Brain Learning | Engaging the limbic system: Our experience of belonging is a ‘felt’ sense which is mainly registered by the emotional part of our brain and nervous system. Creative elements such as music, nature, and poetry engage the subconscious and limbic systems of the brain to create an experience that transcends just the cognitive dimension. Music and poetic language create the emotional climate required to embrace a new way of being wholeheartedly. This is critical to enable viewers to embody the essential characteristics of the desired way of being, and not just ‘know’ them as information.

3. Micronuggets | focused, catchy, memorable: Each video of the series was designed as a microlearning nugget of 5-8 minutes’ length, with clearly identifiable behaviors and takeaways. This ensured that what needed to be practiced was remembered.

4. Netflix Approach: Five videos were designed and strung together in a Netflix series-like format to help viewers experience the vivid emotions that make up the Arc of Inclusion. A central resonant theme, relatable characters and a captivating storyline ensured that the viewers engaged and moved forward with every video.

5. Strategic Alignment: Placing the initiative as part of the overall strategy for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion created the right context for the content.

At the time of writing this article, the organization is still in the middle of implementing the initiative across its various locations, with very encouraging feedback from those that have been exposed to it.

While the approach can work well in a self-guided learning environment (such as an LMS), coupling it with support systems such as team coaching or one-to-one coaching can enhance effectiveness by deepening awareness and building greater accountability.

So, by asking ‘what is already possible’ we initiate a journey that turns a problem into an opportunity. The embodied portrait then articulates how best the opportunity can be maximized and triggers curiosity to learn more. By engaging the natural curiosity of the group, the sterile experience of ‘best practice thinking’ turns into an inspiring and creative journey towards something that is greater than what was previously imagined.

And that’s how the ‘best’ can show how to transform the ‘rest’.