Is this the time of year when you review your story? Perhaps you expected me to say appraise your performance, or review your goals ?Under traditional performance management systems , end-of-year can be full of interpreting metrics. How can you present your performance this year in the most favourable light?But I wasn’t talking about ‘ spin ‘, rather a different kind of review. Over recent years, my leadership coaching practice & CPD has taught me a great deal. Specialisms like Gestalt Coaching and Narrative Coaching have given me a fresh perspective. Many businesses (especially management consultancies) are changing their approach to performance management. Gone are the annual cycles of performance reviews, replaced (hopefully) with more timely feedback.In previous posts I have shared on the need to protect able employees from the biases in the old approach . So, I am pleased to see this change. However, there is a case for an even bigger change – from goals to stories .
Why might stories be more helpful than goals?
Although setting the most appropriate goals for you to achieve each year can be helpful, there are drawbacks.Here are just some of the limitations of reviewing only the achievement of goals:Review your story – two approaches that may help
Let me caveat first, I am not saying to give up on goals. I have written previously how helpful they can be in achieving focus. Month by month, week by week & day by day they can act as a compass. However, they are not enough by themselves.As the book “ Living Forward” argues, we need a larger Life Plan. A view of our intentions that helps guide our goal setting. But this should not just be a forward-looking, aspirational, exercise.Stepping back to see the unfolding story of our lives can help us both grow in self-awareness & make better informed choices.(1) The Lifeline exercise
One way to reflect on your life to date is through a tool called a lifeline exercise. There are different variants of this, but at the most basic this involves drawing a line chart of your life.Set the x-axis as your timeline. Start wherever you wish, but many people find it helpful to begin with the end of their schooldays. From that point consider the major events & especially choices that you have made in your life.The y-axis is used to express what has happened. It shows whether times were positive or negative experiences. So, one can call the vertical axis either ‘level of fulfilment/satisfaction‘ or simply ‘high/low points‘.Once you have drawn a line to chart your ups & downs from then until now, it can be helpful to annotate the peaks & troughs. What do you call that time? What did you learn as a result? What do you now do differently or what major decision did you make?Done carefully, it can be uncanny how often you spot repeated themes or analogous decisions . Have you consistently chosen status over money? Have you consistently avoided roles or responsibilities that would take you away from what you love? Do you have a pattern or risk taking or avoidance?Taking time to reflect on this and any other themes or insights from your lifeline chart can be time well spent. As I shared when describing insight generation workshops, asking “why” multiple times can uncover insights.The Open University usefully shares one simple guide on how to complete this exercise. They helpfully combine this with a research paper for those who want to understand the academic basis:
Stanford University have also published a useful and more detailed exercise booklet, that I recommend to my clients:
(2) Telling your own story
People have different preferred learning styles (e.g. visual, kinesthetic, auditory). So, it makes sense to offer an alternative means to achieve similar insights. For some people this works better by speaking out their ‘life story‘ or writing it down as a narrative.Rather than needing to draw any visualisation, this is a writing or speaking exercise. You should challenge yourself to think like an author or movie producer. What is both the big picture story of your life so far & the cameo details that will help others get a feel for it?A number of organisations have published exercises to help leaders complete such an exercise. All are framed as writing exercises. I have also experienced that it can be helpful for a leader to work with their coach or mentor for such an exercise. That gives that added opportunity for a leader to simply talk out their story (with the coach taking thorough notes).Related: Machine Learning Ethics: Can You Design Ethical Behaviours?Related: AI Ethics Machine Ethics and Artificial Moral AgentsLet’s enable you to have a try yourself. Here are a couple of resources that you might find helpful. The first is the Seven Stories exercise from Get Five HR consultancy:
If this method appears to work for you, then you may also find “Step out of your Story” by Kim Schneidermanhelpful. She shares exercises to work with your story and the choices you can now make in that context: