Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge & Selection

Storytelling is a great tool that I use all the time, and I consider it necessary to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close a negotiation or obtain resources. I work with international teams, supporting and coordinating projects that focus on enhancing the experience of being a member of the company I work across international teams, helping reduce cultural shock, helping them feel part of a big company, and giving recognition and improve cross-collaboration.  I use storytelling to obtain approval from senior managers to run a project, get a perk for the employees or set process that may enhance cross-cultural collaboration, some times it gets a lot of time and efforts to obtain approval from senior managers since in company terms, could not be a top priority, this could be challenging.   I use stories from the employees or my personal experiences. I creatively use the information, knowing that senior management spends a lot of time in meetings, so I try to use interactive tools while sharing the story.

Application I have one story that came to my mind. Almost a year ago, the company had to merge international departments into one single Global department; this incorporation was intended to equal opportunities, improve international user and employee experience, and make diversity a priority within the company. This goal sounds amazing and mindful; however it brought a lot of challenges and bottlenecks. After a few months that the merger started, cultural shock arrived within the international members, with that lack of collaboration and unsuccessful processes dropping almost 20% of the international employee satisfaction. I proposed launching an intercultural activity within all the teams, mapping all the cultures that integrated a team to help individuals and teams identify how cultures can impact their work, increase awareness, and be more effective at bringing differences and preventing invisible cultural barriers. To get an approval to launch this activity company-wide, I told a story about I migrated to united states, how I experience cultural shock.  My manager was from germany, we had different communication and leadership styles, at first I took everything personal (I ignored the cultural differences)  one day she decide to not use my work, something that I took weekes in wraithe and instead she wrote her self something elese, thise make me feel so devastated, discouraged and upset. Some days passed, and I run a college and share with her my feelings, and she told me ¨think outside the box, she is a human, our past experiences shape the way we behave in our present; one principal role working with international members is to help each other understand our cultural differences”.

Insight & Approach After that I satared to learn more about my own culture and that is how I came with the idea of map the different cultures from a book I read “The culture map” Its only when you start to identify what makes your culture different from others that you can begin to open a dialoge of

sharing, learning and ultimately understanding- Erin Mayers. After that, I had a deep, meaningful conversation with my manager bringing these differences, and after that, our communication and collaboration have to improve. I use my manager’s experience to use storytelling and get the approval to launch this project. It was an open eye for many teams that had used the tool after we launched the activity.

