Not too long ago, my company established a leadership program and held a series of 2-3 day leadership sessions with managers from various parts of the company. There were many great exercises that all of us managers went through at these sessions but one of them, entitled “Zoom”, taught me a very important lesson that I’ve tried to apply in every area of my life.
An Overview of the “Zoom” Exercise
We had about 30 people in our group going through the leadership training. The “Zoom” exercised started with each person getting one card that had a picture on it – quite a random picture it seemed. There were things like a beach, farm, stamp, picture of earth…certainly nothing that made sense at first. All we were told is that with our picture, we had to tell a story and tell it in the right order. How we went about it was up to us. NOTE: pick up a copy of this book here!
Our Approach to a Difficult Exercise
Our group decided to start this whole thing by going one by one, describing our pictures out loud to the group as a whole. At the end of that, we decided to break off into smaller groups that had pictures that sounded somewhat similar.
Going from a group of 30 to groups of 5-6 instantly made it easier to communicate and brainstorm. The larger group would naturally have had the few big personalities doing all the talking but now even those who were a bit more quiet had no problem discussing.
It soon started to become easier to see how a story may unfold as we worked through things in our smaller groups, though there were still a few pieces on either end of our story that didn’t really make sense. As each group continued working through the exercise, an interesting thing started to happen.
Folks from other groups started overhearing each other mentioning things that were similar in their set of cards. One group soon linked up with another and another piece of the story came together. This whole thing unfolded for maybe 30 minutes and at the end of it, we found ourselves telling quite the story that leveraged the whole “macro to micro” idea. Start off big with a dot that is actually earth from afar and keep zooming in, picture by picture, to tell the whole story.
The Moral of the Story
All in all, this was a great teambuilding exercise. Here are some of the benefits:
- Strengthened relationships amongst people that had not known each other for very long at all.
- Reinforced upon our questioning skills.
- Built upon our problem-solving skills.
- Identified who in the group may find being in a leadership position more natural.
- Got people up, walking around and thinking outside the box.
What I personally found most useful was the main lesson of the exercise:
“Zoom out” to take a different perspective on things. Many times we are trained by our environment to see things a certain way and this may lead to you getting bogged down in the task at hand, struggling to remain productive.
Taking a step back and thinking about the problem or situation more holistically may help you to understand why things are a certain way, what actions are truly necessary and what may be the best approach to work through them.
This is a very important lesson in every area of your life and this exercise is one you may consider doing with your team at work or children on the home front.
A Daily Reminder of the Lesson
I was reminded of this lesson in a very unexpected place recently. After dropping my son off at his karate class, I was walking my 1 year old daughter around the parking lot while waiting for him. I looked up as we walked and saw a flock of birds flying by the parking lot. When I saw this crew cruising along, it immediately reminded me of the lesson we learned on our trip. Always remember to zoom out, or take a bird’s eye view, to get a full understanding of a situation.
It’s far too easy to get stuck in the day to day struggle and get frustrated with the task at hand. When you find yourself struggling, take a step back and think about the following:
- What is it that you’re really trying to accomplish?
- Go a few levels beyond how you would typically answer this.
- What are your main goals and the goals of your family or organization?
- How does the task at hand fit (or not) with the bigger picture?
It may very well be that what you’re struggling with does not have any impact on what you’re trying to accomplish long-term. In that case, call it a day and move on to the next task that is aligned with your greater mission.
Simply looking up and seeing the birds flying over you, always taking the “zoom out” approach, is a great way to remind yourself of this lesson on a regular basis.