Today I had a great discussion with the Cheif People Officer of a startup here in Boston. She shared with me a culture change that she implemented at her former company which stemmed first from the company’s shift towards Agile Teams. As an HR business partner for the technology business, she worked with her team of HR business partners, to figure out who they could change their roles and job function to be more agile to keep up with the rest of the company and to meet the rest of the company where they were.
One of the first steps of the process was to build a place where people felt psychologically safe.
She told me of an exercise that she had her leadership team do where you toss a small ball around the room and the person who has the ball tells the rest of the room what lights them up.
She said when Dave caught the ball she had an internal groan since she’d never seen eye to eye with him in the past. But as she listened to him talk about how he loves to dig in their backyard at night with his daughter looking for nightcrawlers in preparation for their early morning fishing adventures. She said that the way his demeanor changed as he spoke about his daughter completely transformed her way of thinking. Suddenly he went from being that annoying person to a father, and then, she said she thought of her father, and how angry and hurt she would feel if someone thought of him the way that she thought of Dave.
She said that the story moved her to tears. That suddenly Dave was sharing a part of his life that bring so much joy that after all this time of being his colleague, she saw him in a different light. That she saw all of her colleagues as moms and dads, sisters, brothers, artists, writers, actors…
Just a shift of perspective and freedom to let down their guard. Dave shared his light with his colleagues, and they were forever changed after that moment.
I’ve written before about how we’ve been trained to keep our work self separate from our life self, but when you’re not bringing your whole self, when you’re not allowing yourself to shine in your light and be your full self, you’re not living your best. You’re not contributing your best self to the world. As Dewitt Jones says, each moment we have a choice to either be the “best in the world or the best for the world” (14:42). If we’re not true to ourselves there is no way for us to begin to be the best for the world.
Sara – what a great story. Thank you for sharing! Thinking back to my HRBP days, I too went through this exercise, but at a much much smaller scale. Moreso to level set and define how we’d operate at a smaller branch in Ann Arbor, MI, when the rest of the company was in Silicon Valley.
This brought up some fond/not so fond memories, but loved how you tied this into the final reflection and Dewitt’s style 🙂