Everyone has their own narrative, everyone has their own story they tell themselves. Their hopes, their dreams, their purpose, their direction. It’s all wound up in your narrative. The goal of a leader is to get everyone’s narrative on the same page, everyone focused on the same narrative, everyone bought into it, and everyone working towards it. Directing the narrative is the first step to getting your team moving in the same direction.
You wouldn’t attend a bad movie (or you might start and then leave?) You wouldn’t go to a bad restaurant? You wouldn’t continue going to a bad store you’ve had a continually bad experience with? So why keep going to a bad meeting where you are getting nothing out of? Where nothing good happens? Where all you get is a another 5 minutes of your life back at the end?
The day before the product goes out the door is the last chance you have to fit that last UX bug in. The last chance you have to make a simple update to the documentation. The last time chance you have to get it “right”. All these last changes, generally end in disaster, you miss a space, you break the build, it makes it worse than you thought. And you’re left with it being worse…
Otherwise, they never go anywhere. They stay on the ground, hoping to become something else, but they never go anywhere. Someone needs to pick it up, run with it, and hold onto it when the going gets rough – because that’s when it needs to be held onto the most.
Answers should not include… “I do this…” “I’m the best at this…” “My job is X…” “Only I can do that…” “I run this…” “I monitor that…” “I’m backup for Y…” What do you bring, not what you are, what do you bring to the team?