Blog Entry

Three years ago, I had a chance conversation with Terrell Russell, a researcher at the University of North Carolina. That conversation ended up having a profound impact on my thinking. Terrell is doing his dissertation work on something he calls Contextual Authority Tagging. It’s a fancy term for a simple idea: What others say about you matters… a lot.

Terrell’s premise is that reputation in context can be extremely valuable, often more valuable than what you say about yourself. For example, suppose you asked me for three words to describe myself. In a work context, I might say, “collaboration, transformation, do-gooder.” That is how I perceive myself, or at least how I want others to perceive me. Those three words have gone through a personal filter, which may be filtering useful information. Maybe I’m too modest to say certain words. Maybe I’m deluded. Or maybe I simply don’t know what others value most about me.

There are three interesting pieces of information here:

• What do others say about you?
• What’s the difference between what others say about you and what you say about yourself?
• If you and everyone else get to see what is said about you, how will what is said evolve over time?

I’m anxious to see what Terrell discovers about these and other questions. If his premise is correct, then there are all sorts of interesting applications of this. For example, many knowledge management tools include some sort of expert finder, which is generally reliant on what people say about themselves in their personal profiles. It may be more valuable to have an expert finder that’s oriented around what others say about you.

Storytelling

In the meantime, I’ve incorporated these ideas into my work in a variety of ways. Last year, I worked with an amazing group of leaders working on reproductive health in developing countries. I was helping them develop strategies for catalyzing collaboration within their network. As part of this initiative, we were looking at ways to more easily disseminate stories across the network, not an easy problem given that the leaders were spread out across Africa, the Middle East, and the Philippines.

It seemed like a technical problem, but in reality, the cultural barriers were much larger. For example, Ethiopia has a very reserved culture, and talking about yourself can be perceived as bragging. Even though people in the network understood rationally why storytelling was valuable, they were reluctant to tell stories about themselves in a group context.

At a regional meeting in Ambo, Ethiopia, I decided to try an experiment. The leaders there had originally scheduled a half hour for individual report-outs. Rather than have people stand up and go through a laundry list of what they accomplished, I suggested they have people stand up and tell inspiring stories about other people in the room. If people were shy about talking about themselves, perhaps they would be less shy talking about others.

I’ve included the video from that session. It’s about 30 minutes, and it’s in Amharic, so most of you may not find it that interesting. However, if you have the patience to watch, you’ll see the energy shift as people get going. The experiment worked really well.

Facilitation Exercise

Another way I’ve incorporated the ideas behind Contextual Authority Tagging in my work is through the following facilitation exercise. Give participants index cards for every participant in the room, including themselves. In other words, if there are 10 participants, everyone gets 10 index cards. On each card, write three words describing each participant, including yourself. When everyone is done, give everyone their cards, and discuss. You can also create visualizations of the results using the tool, Wordle.

I’ve done this exercise three times now, and the experience is always rich and wonderful. It’s a great demonstration of how a few words in aggregation can tell a very full story. It’s a great way of strengthening relationships. And from a facilitator’s point of view, it’s a great way to get a quick snapshot of the participants in a room.

Earlier this year, I facilitated a strategic workshop for Civil Liberties & Public Policy (CLPP), another reproductive health advocacy and leadership organization, and I kicked things off with this exercise. The visualizations from that exercise are particularly instructive. Here is a visualization of all the words that the participants used to describe each other:

You can immediately see that this is an organization full of compassionate, caring people. I particularly like how “funny” stood out. Indeed, the two days we met were filled with laughter.

Here are the words the participants used to describe Marlene Gerber Fried, CLPP’s executive director. Marlene’s words to describe herself are highlighted in red.

You can see by the number of words used to describe her how multi-faceted she is, which is indicative of good leadership.

Here are the words the participants used to describe Elizabeth Barajas-Roman, associate director of the Population and Development Program:

Notice the consensus around Elizabeth’s sense of humor (to which I can again attest), and contrast that to the words that she chose to describe herself. Compare this to the words participants used to describe Heather St. Germaine, a former CLPP staff member:

Her colleagues expressed strong consensus around her caring nature, and she identified with that aspect of her personality as well. I also love how a single word can tell a story. For example, the word, “cake,” is sure to give people pause and make people wonder the story behind that.

The exercise works best with a group of about 8-12 people, although there are variations you can use with larger groups. I would love to try it sometime as a regular exercise as part of an organizational development initiative, which I think is more in the spirit of Terrell’s thinking. For workshops, I use a corresponding closing exercise that was proposed by Cheryl Francisconi. At the end of the exercise, put everyone’s name in a hat, and have participants draw names. Tell them to observe the person whose name they drew throughout the workshop, and at the end of the day, report on their observations of that person. It’s a beautiful, touching way to close an event.

Categories: Stories