The Keys to Step 10

The Keys to Step #10

Offer Extra Recognition for Successfully Uniting Around Your Shared Hopes

Overcoming a culture built on fear-based messages and incentives demands commitment and a plan. It requires a shift from scoring points off of each other to earning points together. But this transition won't just happen on its own nor will it happen based solely on your own will and actions. The larger story calls for you to let go of your personal agenda to allow something bigger and better to happen.

To some degree, this is a leap of faith. As you've read in the examples throughout this book, however, there is a proven path that you can follow. When the members of a group embark on this path together, they are able to create their own new story. And when that happens, a celebration is in order. The reward not only recognizes their thoughtful and effective work, but also encourages everyone to continue it.

Share Your Story with Others

If you have successfully completed the first nine steps in the process, you have rewritten your group's story. Congratulations! You've made the transition from addressing tough issues by means of a battle of fears to doing so through a dialogue of shared hopes, from fomenting a clash of egos to coming together as a team, from fueling divisiveness to establishing a healthy decision-making process that yields enduring results.

When you do something so important, you need to share your story with others and retell it for yourselves. Describe the process by which you included all concerned parties and found constructive ways to discover your shared hopes and uncover the real issue you needed to address. Note how you got many options on the table and identified their strengths and weaknesses without divisive debate. Highlight the new options you developed that no one had offered before. Acknowledge that all participants provided their candid assessments of the best solution option as well as acceptable alternatives. Affirm your satisfaction that this process yielded widespread agreement and that even the diehards supported it.

The core values of an organization reside in the stories that its people tell about it. Be sure that your story reflects the hopes you share not only for the decision-making results you aim for but also for the way in which you work together to achieve them.

When you tell your new story to others, choose your phrasing carefully. As neurolinguistic research tells us, the words we use affect our patterns of thought. Consequently, it's important to speak of your "hopes" rather than your "hurdles," and "opportunities" rather than "obstacles." This isn't an attempt to sugarcoat reality. Rather, it's an intentional effort to reframe the way you and your team think about your work and relationships. It's a way to equip yourselves to overcome the pervasive forces of fear that block the achievement of creative and constructive results.

Just as you have a choice of whether to succumb to your fears or soar with your hopes, you have a choice about the story you tell and how you tell it. You can rely on the tabloid version about who did what to whom, or you can share the good news about your team working together at its best.

If you and your group are in the public eye, be sure that you share your story with the media. Otherwise, reporters are apt to follow their typical pattern of highlighting controversy and conflict. They need to know that you are pursuing an inclusive, collaborative path and acknowledge the hopes you share in this effort. They also need to be informed when you successfully reach your goal.

When the industrial plant shifted from its unilateral development plan to a collaborative plan with extensive community involvement (see the example in Step #1), the company spread the news through public officials. Media editorials endorsed both the process and the result. Similarly, when a city council with a history of rancorous debate and divisiveness used the ten-step process and reached agreement on budget goals, the mayor highlighted the council's ability to work together on behalf of residents in his remarks to the press. The local newspaper editorial bestowed bouquets instead of brickbats on the council.

When you share your new stories, you include everyone in the celebration and enable the successful learning process to continue.

Use Celebration to Fuel Sustained Results

Celebrations provide the ritual and remembrance that secure stories in our consciousness. Lavish events are not required. Even on a shoestring budget or with no budget at all, you can recognize your shared hopes with your team and reinforce the constructive results you've achieved through them. How does your ultimate decision honor the hopes you have shared? What new ideas arose from the discussions your group conducted throughout the ten-step process? What did you learn about the issues that are important to your group members that you want to keep in mind for the future? How did it feel to reach an agreement in this way? Reviewing your successes in this way can be a constructive activity that will help to sustain team members' motivation.

After the committee on school overcrowding, mentioned previously, reached its conclusions, every committee member supported the final report to the community that detailed the recommended course of action and possible alternatives. The committee members shared their amazement at this. An elected official mused, "This is the first time in decades that the diverse factions of our community have come to agreement on anything." Another committee member observed, "When we talked at the start about our hopes of both solving the school overcrowding issue and rebuilding the fabric of our community, I was skeptical. I thought that if we could just reach an agreement to solve the overcrowding, it would be a big success. But we accomplished much more. We really have set this community and its many diverse interests on a new track of working together."

By discussing and celebrating their work and the great results they achieved, committee members realized what they had accomplished and felt confident that they could continue to produce outstanding outcomes.