By nature, I’m not a morning person.
I don’t care how life-changing waking up at 4 or 5 A.M. may be, I’ll find other ways to change my life thank you very much.
Since I’m not a morning person, I was infuriated when my dog woke me up before sunrise because he needed to go out. I’d silently curse while preparing to head out in the cold, eyes still blurry with sleep. I resented this helpless animal for his inability to hold it until after my alarm went off. And I would be fuming at my husband for remaining warm and undisturbed in our bed while I walked the dark streets, waiting for our ungrateful little animal to poop.
Typically, my anger only dissipated when the morning violets and yellows began to chase away the darkness. Watching the sunrise behind the Manhattan skyline is pretty spectacular. As the light silhouettes the buildings, flattening them into a backdrop, I would appreciate the quiet of the morning. The cold would shift from biting to invigorating. And in that moment, I would be thankful to experience the sunrise and overwhelmed with love for the little creature that demanded I leave my bed, bundle up, and go outside.
I was thinking about this recently, on another pre-sunrise walk, with our new dog, in our (still) new city. In the fourteen years I’ve had a dog, I’ve had lots of pre-sunrise walks. For too long, I hated them. But no more. And while living in a warmer climate certainly helps, it’s not the reason I no longer loathe them.
It’s because I’ve shifted the narrative.
Every pre-dawn wake-up prompted by a paw means I get to see another sunrise. And how many more sunrises have I seen because of my dogs? How lucky am I to have been awake to welcome a new day – even if I couldn’t recognize it at the time?
The sky in Texas doesn’t turn purple the way it did in when I lived in the Northeast. Instead, on the best mornings, it glows a vibrant pink. It was during one intensely pink morning – one where people stopped their cars to take pictures – that I was thinking about the power of narrative.
I still dislike getting out of bed earlier than I want to. I continue to find unexpected wake-ups disruptive and a rather unpleasant way to start the day. But I no longer silently curse while swishing with Listerine because I know it means I get to witness another sunrise. So while I wouldn’t say I am excited about starting my day earlier than expected, I appreciate when it happens.
That’s what is so crazy about the power of narrative. I can both dislike and be grateful for the experience. When I talk about it, when I think about it, when I decide how I want to respond to it, I get to choose which version of the narrative I tell myself: the one that features the jolted wake-up or the sunrise.
I know this is slippery territory, especially in today’s society were facts sometimes seems fluid and irrelevant. But I think it’s important to remember when we consider how we perceive the world and how we communicate.
Because my thoughts frequently drift back to work, I can’t help but think about how narrative applies to my clients in Human Resources. I regularly work with my clients to craft their narrative. I say “craft” because I don’t fabricate stories. Instead, I work with them to construct narratives that focus on the most powerful parts of the story, those that set up the best experience and connect with people emotionally. It’s kind of like focusing on the beauty and peacefulness of the sunrise instead of the shiver-inducing temperature. Elevating the beauty and stillness of the morning doesn’t make the cold less true. It’s just that one version of the narrative instills a sense of wonder and gratitude, whereas the other makes me bitter and unhappy.
I had a recent example of this when a client sent me some copy explaining their employee assistance program:
EAP is a benefit paid for by [company] to help you find the resources you need to solve personal problems such as issues with family, alcohol, drugs, emotions, stress and legal or financial questions, which, if not resolved, could adversely affect your job performance.
What!?
Look, no one is using the employee assistance program because everything is going swimmingly. They’re using it because they’re struggling with some aspect of their life. If they’re struggling, they don’t need their employer reminding them it could, “adversely affect [their] job performance.” They already know that. Focusing on that piece of the story is the same as focusing on the cold, it just makes the whole experience worse.
I reworked the copy to shift the narrative to be more inclusive and supportive. Rather than reminding employees their jobs could be in jeopardy if they didn’t get their act together, I emphasized the fact that free, confidential support was just a phone call away, 24/7, to help employees get back to living their best life.
In this example, reworking the narrative does two things:
- It removes the threat of getting fired, which is really not the message employees want from their HR department since odds are they already distrust and/or dislike HR.
- It shifts the focus from what’s most important to the business to what’s most important to the employee, which is a more empowering message.
In both examples above, the negative narrative is easier to write. After all, the cold and dark are physical, so giving them the lead is easy and obvious. Every company wants employees to be productive, so it’s easy to threaten them with consequences for underperformance.
What’s not easy is crafting the narrative. That’s because crafting a narrative means starting with the end in mind. It means taking different perspectives. And it requires looking at all aspects of the story and deciding which details to prioritize and emphasize, and which to simply acknowledge before moving on.
So ask yourself, what do you want the experience to be? Do you want to start the day bitter and angry? Or grateful and hopeful? Do you want your employees to feel insecure and paralyzed? Or empowered to take action? Once you have the answers to those questions you can then decide how to best build the narrative.