Ryan is a project team manager in the institutional risk and compliance office. Ryan has been working with his team for more than a year, and in recent weeks he has received indirect feedback on his leadership style. In particular, Ryan is made aware that his heavy reliance on sports analogies and metaphors during staff meetings and during individual supervision is often disengaging, ineffective or even confusing.
Ryan initiates direct conversation about his use of sports metaphors during individual supervision meetings and his reports assert that his heavy reliance on such metaphors is culturally misaligned with their frames of reference and values, as they do not share a similar passion for athletics.
Ryan is disappointed, as sports were a very significant aspect of his youth and young adult experiences, and he sees his use of sports metaphors as a sign of his care, connection and rapport with the team. Ryan continues to reflect on his team’s feedback and recognizes that the meaning and significance of such metaphors is lost if they do not effectively communicate the organization’s mission or inspire insight and motivation among his employees.
Ryan works to accrue additional frames of reference when elaborating on the team's missions and vision. Ryan also sees an opportunity to share the responsibility of translating ideas and concepts into more digestible frames of reference with his fellow team members. Ryan sees a marked improvement in the team’s engagement as he backgrounds his own interests and foregrounds his team members, culturally situated frames of reference.
- The Issue: Ryan finds that his reliance on sports metaphors as a leadership strategy is not resonating with his team, and comes to understand that athletics is not culturally relevant or useful to communicate the organization’s mission and vision.
- The Deliberation: Ryan works through his disappointment and considers how he can inspire a shared vision without relying on his standard repertoire of sports references.
- The Growth: Ryan finds that he is able to lead effectively without relying on reference points directly connected to his lived experience. Further, he finds that sharing the responsibility of translating the team's mission and vision improves engagement in team meetings. With his new practice, all the members of the team are able to discover personal connections to the organization’s mission and vision.