Peak Operational Performance Through Storytelling

Angus Fletcher recently had the opportunity to present on the science of peak operational performance -- and the role that story plays -- at the 2022 COE Summit. In this blog, Dr. Fletcher will address some of the unanswered questions from the session. 

I find it hard to capture my own narrative. How can I get better and what people are best positioned to help me?

Half your brain is composed of storythinking neurons, so you possess, inside yourself right now, all the onboard power required to capture your own narrative. You don’t need outside advice, and in my experience, when you hire story consultants, they usually fit your narrative to their stock formulas, making it generic—and eliminating its charm.

If you find it hard to articulate your narrative, start by identifying a moment when you changed in a positive way. Ask yourself: What outside force entered my life to motivate that change? Then ask: What inner action did I take in response, initiating a fresh life-chapter?

If you tell people that sequence of (1) outside force, (2) inner reaction, and (3) positive change, you’ll communicate your core narrative, simply and effectively. And the more comfortable you get expressing this narrative, the more you can focus your mind on observing people’s response. That way, you can listen deeply even as you’re speaking, allowing your nonconscious brain to shape your story to better connect with your audience—and improving your communication organically and authentically.

Can you give an example of what a Team's story would be?

I worked recently with a sales team that had once been a top performer but had slumped to the bottom of their company’s rankings, despite retaining all their core personnel. They wanted to know: What had gone wrong? How had they lost their sales magic?

We found the answer by returning to the team’s breakthrough year—the year they first became the company’s leading seller. That year, the company had debuted a brand new product, so the team was learning about the product at the same time as they were selling it. This meant that the team didn’t have prepackaged reasons for why or how customers would use the product. They had to watch closely as customers interacted with the product. And they had to ask those customers lots of user-experience questions.

The team’s high-performance story was thus: Ask questions to learn what customers want.

As the team’s sales figures rose, however, their story began to change. They’d figured out why most customers liked the product, so instead of asking and learning, they began telling and teaching. At first, this worked. But because the team had switched their narrative from listening to informing, they began to associate success not with fulfilling customer needs but with making faster sales.

Their story had become: Work harder to drive up our numbers.

This new story made the team more pushy. Which led to less sales, causing the team to push harder, losing further performance. Until they went back and rediscovered their original, high-performance story. And by recommitting to that story, the team restored the brain behaviors—including curiosity and empathy—that made them top sellers.

Do you have a tip to align your story with the overall company story?

Here’s a tip used by Green Berets: if you want to align your story with the story of a bigger group, don’t tell people where you want to go; tell them where you’re coming from.

When you tell people where you want to go, you’re giving them the end of your story. Which means the story is finished. There’s no room for anyone else to add their voice.

When you tell people where you’re coming from, you’re handing them the beginning of your story. Which means the story is just getting started. There’s plenty of space for them to join, aligning their journey with yours.

The same holds true for any organization. If you want individuals to align their stories with the team’s overall story, don’t start by announcing the team’s plans for the future. Instead, explain how the team got where it is now. Ditto if you’re onboarding into a team: share your story of how you got there, activating neural processes that link together the storythinking brains of you and the team’s members, powering a narrative co-creation of tomorrow.

Can you speak to using this method in a work-from-home (WFH) environment?

WFH is popular is because it increases individual autonomy. But that autonomy is lost when we’re forced to stare at screens for hour-long meetings. The forced staring makes our brain feel physically trapped, ramping up burnout and work-disaffection.

The key is therefore to avoid the mistake of old-fashioned companies that try to preserve a traditional in-person structure—e.g. regular team meetings—in a WFH format. Instead, adapt to the future by taking advantage of WFH’s core feature: flexibility. Allow team members to post their stories asynchronously. Imbue the sharing with a positive energy that communicates, implicitly, that finding their team narrative is an opportunity not an obligation.

People love to swap stories. So, once they realize that they can do it in their own way, at their own pace, they will take ownership, driving the process instead of being forced along by it.

How would you set this up to deliver to a team to make sure to get buy in and engagement to creating your personal story and also your team story?

People want to grow—and to discover their hidden inner potential. To buy in, all they need is to see the method work for someone else.

Be that someone. Be like US Special Operations and Harvard Business Review and get ahead of the crowd, being the first to jump into finding your high-performance story. When it succeeds for you, the rest of your team will follow.

What advice do you have for finding others who can hold you accountable to always perform at your best?

Our brain evolved to care what other people think. That’s why we feel peer pressure. That’s why we get sucked into social media.

This fact about our brain can easily interfere with performance. It can divert us from long-term personal growth into seeking short-term social affirmation. It can cause us to want so badly to succeed that we psych ourselves out, like an Olympic athlete who stumbles with a stadium watching. It’s why we can feel our brains going blank when we step to the mic in front of a crowd.

But it can also boost performance if we have the courage to be publicly honest about our high-performance story. By announcing our true potential to others, we motivate our social brain to live up to its inner narrative. Our brain knows now that the world is paying notice. So, it will draw upon its full psychological resources to live up to its broadcast script.

That’s how you find others who can hold you accountable to always perform at your best. Confidently advertise your high-performance story—motivating your brain to act the part.

Is high performance always ultimately measured monetarily? Could your best self be a time when you were very happy?

Your story is your story, which means that you get to author the treasure at the end of the rainbow. It can be money, or happiness, or love, or community, or peace, or anything.

The important thing from your brain’s perspective is that you feel naturally energized by what you’re pursuing. If you’re questing after something because other people want it, you’ll never maximize your performance. But if your heart wants what you’re chasing, then even if no one in the world understands, your brain will achieve what psychologists call “flow.”

Flow is the deep reward of living your story. Because flow gives your brain inner peace—while maximizing your outward performance.

If you missed Dr. Fletcher's keynote address, it is available in COE's Members Only Digital Content Archive. Don't have an account? Create an account.