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

Step 2: Help Others Own the WHY
(
45–60 MINUTES)
Now for the big reveal: you’ll soon be sharing the Why Statement drafted at the discovery session.
The best way to begin is by introducing the composition of the statement:
Explain that the Why Statement the tribe members will soon see was discovered (not created) via
the themes that emerged from the stories their colleagues shared. Show the flip chart from the
Why Discovery where the Candidate words and phrases were recorded. Talk about the process
by which you helped whittle these down to a single Why Statement. Retell participants’ specific
stories whenever that seems helpful. These stories will help bring the WHY to life. If you still have
the flip-chart pages from the Why Discovery process or even pictures of them, now would be a
great time to share them. Seeing those marked up pages with words crossed out and themes
circled can help everyone who wasn’t there get an idea of how it all came together.
If every member of a team doesn’t grow
together they will grow apart.
When you finally arrive at the flip-chart page that reveals the Why Statement, read it out loud and
then give the group a chance to take it in.
This moment is where things can get a little tricky. People can get hung up on the words rather
than the meaning and feeling behind the words. We recommend taking a few moments here to let

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everyone know that the words aren’t perfect. This is just the first iteration or an early iteration of
the Why Statement. Let them know that sometimes the words used in a Why Statement may
change a little over time, although the feeling behind the WHY does not. Encourage them to
withhold their critiques of the specific language, for now, and to focus instead on what the WHY
might look like in action. See if you can get everyone to agree that they have a shared sense—a
feeling—for the WHY, even if its articulation is not, in their minds, 100 percent perfect. This will
help you avoid semantic quicksand and keep the momentum going.
We have experienced situations when the WHY simply didn’t resonate with one or two people in
the room. Some of the common reasons for this are that:
In the past, the organization hasn’t always lived its WHY.
The WHY doesn’t align with what the organization and/or the team members have agreed on as
their current strategy.
Sometimes team members feel it’s right but don’t believe all employees will get behind the
WHY, so they feel the need to change it.
Occasionally, a team member who doesn’t resonate with the WHY isn’t a great fit for the
company.
If the majority of the room isn’t on board with the Why Statement, there is a good chance it
needs more refining.
If everyone is not in consensus about the WHY, that’s okay. Your goal is not to convince everyone
to buy in, but to provide an environment in which they have the opportunity to be inspired by it.
Remember, the whole idea behind articulating the WHY is so that we can work together to make
positive change in the world.
Now that everyone has a good understanding of the WHY and its underlying themes and stories,
they are ready to be split into groups to carry on the conversation. Ideally, each group will include
three to eight people. The groups should be small enough that an effective exchange of ideas can
happen. Each group needs to report back to the room at the end of this section, so make sure you
don’t have too many groups.
One way to encourage ownership of the WHY is to have each group share personal experiences
that support it. Here are some prompts to get them started:
Tell a specific story about the reason you love working in this organization. Share a story of
when you felt proud to be a part of this tribe.
What about the story you just shared validates our WHY?
Who in our organization best embodies our WHY?
Give each group its own flip chart and have the participants write down their answers to each of
these questions as a list of short sentences or phrases, with an emphasis on stories. Just as in

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the Why Discovery session, the stories that carry the most meaning will be the ones that are the
most specific and human.
Allow at least twenty to thirty minutes for this exercise. More often than not, you’ll need to bring
the segment to a close due to lack of time, not due to a lack of conversation among the
participants. After you call a halt, have each group report on their discussion to the rest of the
team. That should take about five to seven minutes per group.
When people get passionate about how their personal experiences line up with the WHY, it means
they are starting to take ownership of it, which reinforces their connection to the work and to each
other. Channel the energy generated by this exercise into the final piece of the workshop.