1: Marion spent 25 years working for the same organization.
“I was one move away from a cabinet-level position,” he recalls.
“However, no matter how many times I applied and interviewed for such positions, I was never selected.”
Being passed over made him mad.
So, what did he do next? He started telling himself what the authors of Crucial Conversations call “clever stories.”
“Clever stories justify our actions. They conveniently excuse us from any responsibility,” Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory note.
“If you can make others out as wrong and yourself out as right, you’re off the hook. Better yet, once you’ve demonized others, you can even insult and abuse them if you want.”
2: The Crucial Conversations authors write that clever stories typically come in three flavors: Victim stories, Villain stories, and Helpless stories.
Turns out Marion was telling himself all three. He blamed leadership and saw himself as a victim. He also felt helpless, thinking others were better at “buttering up the right people. I had lost out because I had ‘integrity,'” he shares.
These stories made Marion feel resentful.
Then, he was assigned to be a trainer for a Crucial Conversations workshop.
Learning how to “master your story” forced Marion to reconsider the story he had been telling himself. “I realized there was a conversation I was not having. I had not asked the leaders in my organization what was preventing me from moving forward.”
3: “After many hours of reflection,” he recalls, “I got to a new story. Part of being passed over was because I had not asked for feedback. I was no longer a victim; I was an actor. And I decided to take action.”
He set up a meeting with leadership.
“The conversation was tough,” he remembers. “I was told that in order to move to a cabinet-level position, I would have to first take a cabinet-level position in a smaller organization.”
What they told him made sense, but he didn’t like hearing it.
“However, I was now in a position to make a decision,” he says. “So I did. I left my organization and got a job leading a department four times larger than the one where I previously worked.”
His takeaway? “Had I not finally faced my story, I would not have gotten the results I wanted most.”
This week, we’ll look at the stories we tell ourselves when things don’t go our way.
And how changing our story can change our actions, our outcomes, and sometimes the entire trajectory of our lives.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Think about a situation where you feel frustrated, disappointed, or treated unfairly. What story are you telling yourself about why it happened?
Action: Ask yourself Marion’s question: What conversation am I not having? Then identify one person whose feedback might help you see the situation differently.
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