Sharpening the saw: Why people management is still every CEOs priority

When Stephen R. Covey released his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, he may not have imagined that 35 years on CEOs would still be wrestling with managing a successful talent strategy. And while Covey’s views may have been amplified by many other recommendations around personal development in the intervening years, there’s still strong evidence to suggest that talents and skills are keeping CEOs up at night.

It’s not just cultural fit that’s at stake. According to the Boston Consulting Group, executives in Asia report greater success in achieving enduring cost management by competing rigorously for high-skill talent. Even so, 56% of global executives surveyed said accessing talent was the challenge most top-of-mind in 2024.1 Does this reflect the vagaries of human nature or could companies do more to plug their skills gaps?

Employment surveys are not always the best bellwether of a successful company culture; neither can they fully weed out corporate dissonance. And although many organisations are skilled at expounding the virtues of their company values, it only needs one disgruntled employee and social media to tarnish their brand or reputation.

As psychology and behavioural economics professor Dan Ariely discovered in a series of experiments2, money is not always the best incentive for employee motivation, either; indeed, it can be a distraction to performance for tasks that require cognitive ability.

Which is why Covey’s suggested habit of “sharpening the saw”—that is, taking time for four self-renewal dimensions, physical, spiritual, mental, and social or emotional to become more effective—is still highly relevant today. For those of you wondering if the scope of these dimensions is outside of the workplace’s remit, the saw could be easier to sharpen than you think.

Tell the right story 

Along with the dramatic post-Covid changes in working practices, our growing reliance on digital devices is prompting an unprecedented blending of personal and professional lives. So, it’s not a wild leap to consider how some of the techniques used to tackle personal challenges could be adopted (and effective) in the workplace.

One suggestion is the concept of Narrative Practice which is used today in the fields of psychotherapy and counselling and originates from the intellectual partnership of therapists Michael White and David Epston.

Narrative Practice involves inviting people to express deep seated concerns or challenges and then use powerful storytelling techniques to liberate those who feel stuck with thoughts or behaviours that are questionable, inaccurate or simply unhelpful. Based on the idea that we are all experts in our own lives, Narrative Practice is a respectful, non-blaming approach that focuses on empowering the individual.

Here’s how applying Narrative Practice techniques might benefit leaders and innovate the retention and engagement of your workforce:

1. Externalise problems to diffuse challenging situations
   Narrative Practice expounds the principle that “The person is not the problem. The problem is the problem.” The thinking is that when individuals view their problems as external influences rather than being wrapped up with who they are, it’s easier to address and manage them.

   Employees can often experience periods of catastrophizing—destructive thinking such as: “My contribution isn’t being recognised” or “I’m never going to be promoted”. By stepping back from those descriptions and removing judgment or blame, leaders can work with employees to help them view workplace difficulties more objectively and enable them to reframe the situation and their career decision making.

   For example, storytelling techniques might include introducing a daily “Wordres” game—using words to tell a story to gain resilience—where employees can examine more closely what they want out of their working life. Wordres helps them to articulate their situation in 12 words, reflect on previous statements, chart progress and build toward their ideal working future.

2. Reframe personal narratives to encourage authenticity
   Narrative Practice breaks down the key or recurring stories that tend to dominate people’s lives so that people can uncover the assumptions and values that lie underneath. Certain beliefs are shaped by societal norms, cultural expectations, or personal history, and these may limit potential.

   By helping employees to deconstruct their career story, leaders can encourage them to “re-author” their narrative—not to fabricate or play “make pretend” with their experience, but to view and articulate those challenging aspects in a different light. Creating new, more empowering stories that better align with what people value, hope to achieve and how they see themselves leads to greater authenticity—which is good for the individual and good for business.

   One of the Narrative Practice techniques that can be applied in a working context3 is the dot exercise. In a picture of a series of dots, a person is asked to imagine that each of the dots represents an experience. People often have a single line that connects their life path so far, but it’s only one possible thread—there are other dots with multiple events outside of that story which are also representative. In the workplace, connecting those dots differently speaks of multiple possibilities for employees’ careers.

   Problematic stories and situations can take on a whole new meaning when they are seen as just one strand of a multi-storied landscape. Connecting the dots between performance and progress can help employees to discover how negative aspects of their career (and life) can also connect to positive outcomes and new directions. Even a role that doesn’t seem to be taking their career in the right direction could be a “red thread” that leads to a role that fulfils their “North Star” role.

3. Reinvent the narrative across the business to spur collaboration
   Countering negative views can lead to greater employee resilience and renewal—important attributes for any company wanting to introduce transformational change. Once people are confident in authoring their own story, they can feel more comfortable collaborating with others, co-creating a new story that takes account of vulnerabilities and offering reassurance that they are not alone in finding answers to their difficulties.

   Leaders can apply storytelling techniques in group settings through a series of exercises or support education, training or learning journeys, especially in organisations that want to innovate their approach to fostering a culture of collaboration and understanding.

   Additionally, leaders can address the important role of psychological safety by helping employees through collective awareness to understand more about their responses to change. Dr Stephen Porges is a distinguished American psychologist and neuroscientist whose research on the Polyvagal Theory4 emphasises the role the autonomic nervous system plays—especially the vagus nerve, a superhighway that connects the heart, lungs, upper digestive tract, and other organs of the chest and abdomen—in regulating our health and behaviour.

   In a new business board game known as NeuroQuest, guided by coach and neuroscientist Delphine Dépy Carron and the Institute of Neuroscience for the Transformation of Organisations (INTO)5, employees can learn the language of the nervous system, reveal team dynamics and recognise automatic responses within themselves as individuals and others.

The cutting edge of storytelling 

Without doubt, as CEOs juggle the strategic and operational demands of the business, people leadership is a crucial element in their success. Global management consultant firm McKinsey has found that thoughtful approaches, such as storytelling, could improve company cultures beyond employee engagement. Its study shows that CEOs who insist on rigorously measuring and managing all cultural elements that drive performance more than double the odds that their strategies will be executed and triple the total return to shareholders that other companies deliver. 6

Perhaps there is value in the often misattributed quote7 that it’s insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. In an era where versatile technologies such as artificial intelligence are increasing automation, we need to find new ways to celebrate and exploit what it is to be more human.

With the potential for expanding talent availability by tapping into diverse talent pools highlighted by four times more employers (47%) than two years ago (10%),8 the time is ripe to look at different techniques to get the best from our workforces. Storytelling could be a new approach to not only reinvent people’s careers but also drive the self-renewal necessary to sharpen everyone’s saw for the long term.

Written by Sarah Bird.
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