Their Story is not my Story

It is a very human, often subconscious, habit to assume we understand what others are thinking and why they do the things they do. In this episode J.Marie shares a true story that demonstrates how thoroughly wrong we can be ... and how quickly our own inner experience can shift simply by remembering that we are responsible for the stories we tell ourselves. She also notes how this technique works in reverse, giving you a tool to free yourself from the assumed perspectives and judgements of others and empowering you to take responsibility for your own truth.

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What is Your Friend in Leadership?

Hosted by veteran communications strategist and leadership trainer J.Marie, Your Friend in Leadership is an inspiring and approachable podcast created to empower today’s public leaders. Each episode delivers strategic insights, transformative ideas, and actionable communication tools to help you better connect with your communities and move your mission forward. With deep appreciation for the important work of public leaders and the knowledge that leadership and communication are skills that can be built and improved, this podcast is your guide to confident and effective leadership every step of the way.

[00:00:00:00 - 00:00:02:19]
(Music)

[00:00:05:02 - 00:00:40:02]
J. Marie
Greetings friends. I am delighted that you have found your way to this podcast about personal and organizational communications and leadership. How we show up in the world, how we influence the world around us. And I've mentioned this before, but I feel really strongly about the idea that we are each leaders regardless of what our title might say about our role in a particular organization. Every single one of us is influencing the world around us and each other every single day all the time.

[00:00:41:04 - 00:01:05:08]
J. Marie
And I have a real passion around helping people to be better about aligning how we actually act and behave and lead with what our values are. How do we true up or bring alignment between what we want, what we hope to see in the world and how we're actually behaving?

[00:01:06:09 - 00:01:20:13]
J. Marie
And in support of that today, I wanna share a story that a friend of mine shared with me once several years ago that I think has relevance personally and organizationally and the story goes like this.

[00:01:21:17 - 00:02:55:04]
J. Marie
So there was this man who was looking forward to seeing a movie. This was in a franchise that he was excited about. He'd seen all the other movies, he couldn't wait to see this one. He really wanted to appreciate the cinematography, the music, the dialogue. He was a real movie lover and he wanted to appreciate everything about it. So rather than go on opening night when the theaters would be crowded, he waited a couple weeks and he wanted his first experience of this movie to be kind of a peak experience and so he waited a few weeks and he bought tickets during an afternoon showing. And when he sat down in the theater, he was excited to see that he was the only person in the theater and for a few minutes he was feeling pretty chuffed like, I've got the theater all to myself. But before the opening credits started, these two older women kind of meander their way down an aisle but they sit several rows ahead of him and really, they're not in his field of vision and they're not too close to him. So he's still feeling pretty great about the whole experience and the lights go down, the movie starts and pretty soon he starts to notice that these women are whispering to each other. And it's a little annoying, but it stops and he gets back into the movie and they're whispering again and then pretty soon he actually, it happens again and he's annoyed by it and he's so annoyed. Now he's having a hard time actually enjoying the movie because now he's tuned into that annoyance.

[00:02:56:11 - 00:04:52:03]
J. Marie
He's actually listening to the whispers in some ways, right? And he notices every time their heads been together and they talk more and he considers leaving the theater and complaining to the manager and maybe asking for a refund or an opportunity to watch the movie another time. But he decides to suffer through and so he watches the rest of the movie and he thinks of them as these cotton haired women, these two little white haired ladies as they keep leaning their heads together. And the movie comes to an end and he's really, he's actually kind of missed some parts of the movie. He's been so annoyed by the fact that these people would come talk their way through a movie like why did they even pay to see it in the theater if they're gonna just talk their way through it anyway. And he thinks about saying something kind of snarky to them on the way out and they're gathering their things and they're getting ready to leave the theater. And then he notices as these women are starting to walk up the aisle to leave the theater and as they're leaning together, he can overhear some of what they're saying a little bit more clearly. And he now realizes that one of the women was sight impaired. Then he puts it together that the women were whispering periodically because the other woman was helping her friend to understand what was going on on the screen as she was enjoying the movie and primarily listening to it. And all of a sudden his inner angst and anger just melts away. And he feels very thankful that he did not let his inner toddler out and pitch a fit over how things had gone down. And it occurs to him as he then in a much more calm state gathers his things and kind of chuckles to himself about how he had actually caused himself to miss a bit of the movie more than anything they were doing. It was his own inner reaction to what they were doing. And it occurred to him, and this is the takeaway, my story about their story is not their story.

[00:04:53:15 - 00:07:51:05]
J. Marie
And I think this is true for, I think we can all relate to that moment. It is very easy for us to tell ourselves a story about what other people's behavior means. Our brains are pattern making machines. We see a piece of information. We see a behavior. It looks like behavior we've seen before. We know a whole story about what that behavior meant when we saw it before. And we apply that previous story to the behavior we're seeing in front of us today. And we do it so quickly we can get to the point where we don't even leave room for the possibility that we're wrong. And we can be off to the races with a whole pile of assumptions that may not apply to the story in front of us. And as leaders, as people who care about others, it is really important to hold our assumptions lightly, to leave room for the possibility and not just the possibility but the likelihood that we aren't as right as we tend to think we are. That we probably don't know the whole story because our story about their story is not their story. Over the years, I've thought about that story a number of different times. And it's taken on almost like a parable status in my heart. But I had a boss once who used to lean over the desk and say, so what's the so what of that? As I think back on that story, there's a few things that I would hope you take away from it. Through the lens of communications, I would frame this as an example of holding your assumptions about your audience lightly. Remember that what you think is true about somebody else's, about your audience or your constituents, values and priorities. You might not actually be correct. And this is where it circles back to the importance of having listening skills, both personal listening skills and organizational listening strategies and tactics so that you are staying connected to your audience and you know what matters to them. Because without that kind of information, your story about their story isn't their story. You have to know them well enough to know what their story actually is. So it's an invitation to be gentle with assumptions and maintain a stance of curiosity and engagement with those folks that you are leading or working with. And from a standpoint of leadership, I think the idea that this story goes both ways, that not only is it true that my assumptions about somebody else is not necessarily an accurate representation of their story of themselves,

[00:07:52:07 - 00:08:00:07]
J. Marie
but it's true in the other direction as well. Sometimes you're the man in that theater and sometimes you are the women in the front.

[00:08:01:08 - 00:08:47:17]
J. Marie
And if you turn it to the perspective of the women from the front, you would say it the other way, to say his story about me is not my story about me. His story during the movie was that I was being rude and not attending to the story and that I was in fact interrupting other people's ability to attend to the story. My story during the movie was that I couldn't see and I was depending on my friend to give me important cues about what was happening visually that supplemented what I could hear of the experience. And so I was very much on task in those conversations and I was in no way intending to interrupt his experience. So other people's story about us is also not true, not necessarily our story about ourselves.

[00:08:48:20 - 00:10:08:19]
J. Marie
And as a leader, part of the whole function of being a leader is to have a clarity of vision, to have an end goal, to have hopes and dreams for the organization, aspirational intentions for where you as a leader, where your team is going, where the organization is going, what it's going to achieve over time. And that is in and of itself something of a vulnerable thing to do, to put your values and intentions out there. And it can sometimes be can be difficult to do that, to have the courage to put that vision out there if you spend too much time worrying about what other people's stories of you are. And so just like the so what of the story on one hand is to be careful of your assumptions of others, it's true in reverse. And that is don't worry so much about what other people's assumptions are of you. Let it be okay for your colleagues, for your employees, for the board to have their own understandings of who you are as a person and as a leader and hold more lightly your need to control that narrative. Keep your eye focused on what your intention is, worry a little less about what other people's stories of you or of the goals are.

[00:10:09:22 - 00:10:24:07]
J. Marie
So friends, I hope that story was interesting and useful to you. And I thank you for spending a little time with me here today thinking together about leadership and how we show up for each other and the stories we tell ourselves about each other and ourselves.

[00:10:25:07 - 00:10:37:11]
J. Marie
And I hope that you always remember that who you are and what you do matters. And because of that, I hope you take good care of yourself and I look forward to chatting with you again. Be well friends.