1: It’s a three-dimensional world. However, many leaders lead in a single dimension.
Imagine an organization as a three-dimensional space. We call the three dimensions “It,” “We,” and “I,” Fred Kofman writes in The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership.
The “It” dimension refers to the tasks, systems, and processes that make up the company.
“It” is about increasing sales, reducing costs, gaining market share, and growing shareholder value. In this dimension, the leader’s chief concern is efficiency, effectiveness, and efficacy.
Leaders who lead in the “It” dimension tend to tell a specific story to motivate their team members.
The management consulting firm McKinsey has studied the different types of stories leaders tell. “To try to engage their employees, leaders living in the one-dimensional world of rational management tend to tell only ‘It’ stories,” Fred writes.
According to McKinsey, the two stories that are most told are the good-to-great story and the turnaround story.
The good-to-great story says: “We are capable of far more, given our assets, market position, skills, and loyal staff,” he writes. With the right effort, we “can become the undisputed leader in our industry for the foreseeable future.”
The turnaround story begins: “We’re performing below industry standard,” Fred writes. To survive, we must make dramatic changes. Because “incremental change is not sufficient to attract investors to our underperforming company.”
What’s the payoff for both types of “It” stories?
“If we accomplish this,” Fred suggests, “we will have more career opportunities, a higher paycheck, work security, and more benefits.”
2: So, are “It” stories bad?
Not at all, Fred explains. However, by themselves, they won’t create a high engagement workplace.
As leaders, we need to complement “It” stories with those from the other two organizational dimensions: “We” and “I.”
The “We” dimension is all about relationships—”the relationships between the individuals, their interactions, the quality of their connections, and the kind of community they create,” Fred observes.
When leaders tell “We” stories, they emphasize that we are part of “an extraordinary group of people, and we are all in this together.”
Exhibit one: The U.S. Special Forces. “Their esprit de corps is out of this world,” Fred writes. “They have endless stories about each member’s heroic commitment to his comrades and the force.”
“We” stories create a sense of belonging where “we” feel “proud to have one another as colleagues, working together for a noble purpose,” he notes.
3: The third and final dimension is “I,” which speaks to the individual people who make up the organization.
The “I” dimension focuses on each person’s “values, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, well-being, sense of meaning, and happiness,” Fred writes.
“I” stories describe how “each one of us is improving the lives of our customers, benefiting society, and making a significant contribution to human progress,” Fred surmises.
The leadership lesson? As leaders, we should be intentional about telling stories that speak to all three organizational dimensions: “It,” “We,” and “I.”
Because doing so helps our colleagues understand that when we succeed, we not only earn more money and have career opportunities, but we also are part of a special team and make a positive difference in the world.
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What types of stories do I tell? Am I leading in a way that promotes all three dimensions of leadership: the It, the We, and the I?
Action: Discuss with my team or with a colleague.
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