[Editors note: The following is a journal entry addressing specific questions provided by the CPM course instructors for module 2.3.]
What learning stands out for you as you reflect on the classroom experience? Consider what you learned from the activities, readings, videos, and discussions.
The key learning for me was the correlation between voice tone level and depth of personal engagement. Understanding the power that the deeper personal engagement has in connecting with others is amazing.
Realizing that my normal dialogue tone is
quite high with factual information but lacking in personal expressiveness,
gives me an area to work on improving.
For me, the primary takeaway for my leadership development is to focus on minimizing the quantity of information in favor of stories with larger meanings with more power and gravitas. Those stories then can lead to a lower tone as they weave in aspects that are more personal.
The book for this module, Lead with a Story, was a great complement to the course. The concept that stories have the power to define a culture is insightful. The book made the claim that a company’s value statement does not meaning anything, but the stories that have accumulated are the true expression of how those values are practiced and conveyed.
Assembling a generic values statement is an exercise in shuffling some trendy ethical terms into a roughly coherent sentence but the result is superficial, ambiguous, and cold. Building a culture with a series of stories is much more effective at fleshing out what the organizations collective values are.
