Don, an associate director in enrollment management, is responsible for a team of five professionals and more than a dozen student workers. Don receives feedback from one of his direct reports that his heavy reliance on personal anecdotes about his childhood and extended family to illustrate concepts or communicate the organization’s mission and vision is at times confusing or disengaging – and not often relatable for people of color on the team.
When his supervisee suggests he diversify his repertoire and consider metaphors or other illustrative devices outside his personal experience, Don feels defensive and frustrated. At first, Don is unable to imagine how he can articulate the organization’s vision outside of his own frame of reference.
With reflection and deliberation with members of his team, Don arrives at the conclusion that the entire team should share in the responsibility of communicating their mission and vision. As a result, Don invites his team to help craft metaphors or elaborate on concepts during staff meetings. Subsequently, Don finds that he is taking less space and enabling opportunities for his team’s leadership during meetings.
- The Issue: Don’s ability to communicate the organization’s mission and inspire a shared vision is limited by his narrow scope of personal stories and anecdotes – to which his team struggles to relate with and understand.
- The Deliberation: Don moves through his feelings of defensiveness and inadequacy and commits to further reflection and deliberation with members of his team.
- The Growth: Don improves his ability to engage in perspective taking and integrates the insight of considering others’ points of view. Don’s new leadership approach not only accounts for the limits of personal reference points, but it also includes his team more actively in staff meetings and other spaces where the organization’s mission is articulated and refined.