Find Your Why: a practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team pdfdrive com

FACILITATOR TIP
Participants often sit next to people they already know and are comfortable with. It is valuable to
mix up the room to have people engage in conversation with someone they don’t know as well.
Give the pairs four to six minutes to share their thoughts with each other. Tell them at the get-go
that each person in the pair gets two to three minutes of speaking time. To ensure that all voices
are heard during this time, gently remind the group, when the time is halfway up, that the idea is
for both partners to share.
This simple exercise generates good conversation, which is just what you want. The primary
purpose is for everyone to participate actively, rather than sit back and watch the workshop
happen around them. And because telling stories often prompts emotional responses, this
exercise is also a perfect opportunity to prepare the group for what will follow. While there’s no
need to have everyone present their story to the full group, you might invite one or two people to
share the inspiring story that their partner told them. Although the participants probably won’t
realize it yet, these stories are likely connected to the organization’s underlying WHY.
Now that the group is engaged, it’s time to lay the foundations for the rest of the session by
explaining the crucial concept of the Golden Circle.
We introduced the Golden Circle in chapter 1. If, as facilitator, you have only read the Tribe Why
Discovery chapters, you may find it helpful to read chapter 1 now.

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Limbic brain: See chapter 4 in
Start with Why for more on this
topic.
Once you’re ready to communicate the Golden Circle to your group, an easy way to begin is to
show them Simon’s TED talk video (http://bit.ly/GoldenCircleTalk). Alternatively, you can review
the concept with them yourself—free slides and notes are available at http://bit.ly/FYWresources.
Your aim is to make sure everyone understands these Golden Circle fundamentals:
WHATs are products, services and job functions we perform. HOWs are values, guiding
principles and actions that make us stand out. The WHY defines what the organization stands
for—it is the collective purpose, cause or belief.
It’s human nature to go from what’s easiest to understand to what’s hardest to understand. In
terms of the Golden Circle, most of us think, act and communicate from the outside in (WHAT–
HOW–WHY). Those with the capacity to inspire do it differently. They think, act and
communicate from the inside out (WHY–HOW–WHAT).
The WHAT corresponds to the neo-cortex, the “newest” part of our brain, which is responsible
for rational, analytical thought and language.
The WHY corresponds to the limbic brain, which is responsible for our feelings, such as trust
and loyalty. This part of the brain drives all human behavior and decision making but has no
capacity for language. This is how we are hardwired; it’s biology, not psychology.
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
When a company has a strong WHY, it inspires trust and loyalty in its customers, clients,
employees and supporters, all of whom will cheer you on in your cause.
At some point early in the workshop—before, during or after you introduce the Golden Circle and
the concept of WHY—it’s entirely possible that you will be challenged by one or more members of
the group. We certainly have been. People may say, “This all sounds a little bit fluffy,” or “This is
not the reality of business.” Remember, you are trying to get people to think in a new way, so meet
them where they are. Respond as best you can—we’ve offered some guidance on how we
answer common questions in the “Frequently Asked Questions” appendix at the end of this book
(
here
). The most important thing is to ask these members of the group to trust the process and
keep an open mind. Again, the idea is not to convince someone of the value or validity of having a
WHY; the idea is to create an environment in which they may come to those conclusions
themselves and can contribute to finding their group’s WHY.
Next, offer participants a broad overview of what they should expect from the rest of the day,
starting with a general time frame, including breaks. Explain that the remainder of the session will
have two main parts, each with its own goal:
Story Sharing: The goal is to collect specific stories that reveal both the contribution the
organization makes to the lives of others and the impact of that contribution over time.
Drafting the Why Statement: The goal is to take the themes
that emerge from the participants’ stories and use them to
write the first draft of the tribe’s Why Statement: its purpose,
cause or belief.

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Emphasize the word “draft” in the final goal. Let the group
know that the aim is to write a Why Statement that is 75–80
percent complete. This is due to the WHY coming from our
limbic brain
. Explain that they don’t need it to be perfect; they
need it to be actionable. You’ll come back to the reason for
this later.