The exercise I use with founders, business leaders and students that never fails to build trust

When I look back at my years as a CEO, there are a few moments that really stick out, one in particular, left a strong mark on me and has helped me in a very practical way develop my own practice as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence and entrepreneurial educator.

We had grown the team from a couple of people in a creaky little office to one where we could only just fit around one of those large board room tables. We weren’t a massive team but for us this was an exciting change.

At the same time we were navigating the normal challenges of a relatively early stage startup, figuring out how to position ourselves with several potential market opportunities, trying to figure out where we could fit best. We had brought in some bright young faces who were keen to take the business to the next stage, and those of us who had been there since the start were probably a little fatigued, feeling like we were going round in circles.

To help solve the challenge, I brought in an experienced marketing consultant, Alan Welsman, just like I have been inspired by him, he was inspired, like so many of us, by Simon Sinek, and he wanted to help us pull out the “why” that permeated the whole team. This would act as one part of figuring out how to position ourselves (obviously alongside consideration of market needs).

The session that he ran for us was transformative for me and the tool he used is simple yet effective.

I am going to share this tool with you in this blog, which I’ve adapted a bit over the years. I have used it many times, and is not only appropriate for founders, I have used it for career guidance, for corporate leaders and consultants. It can help individuals but more importantly it can help teams in ways you might not imagine.

The tool is a “high-low” graph.

How the high-low works

It starts with an individual activity. You begin by plotting time along the x axis and “highs” and “lows” along the y axis. The timeline can be anything from “since you were born” to “since you started this project”. I change it up depending on the group.

My instruction: it’s up to you what is meant by high and low. This is important, because this is where the richest information comes from.

You label the moments, focusing on what is most important to you, then you can start to look for patterns. Unfortunately, I no longer have the original high-low that Alan facilitated, but, if I recall rightly my lows were mostly to do with worrying about money and my highs were related to some amazing interactions that we had had with teachers and students with whom we had built a community and seen heartwarming benefits, respectively. This is a common pattern with a lot of founders.

Just do this task alone and you will already have completed a beautiful, analogue, self-reflection exercise. But the real magic comes in the next step, when you share your high low.

I always give the caveat that you can share as little or as much as you want of your high low, and that reflections on patterns are more important than the specific details, but what I observe time and time again is that teams might begin a little tentative but as they begin to share some of the walls come down and we see the real motivations which sit behind each individual.

The crux of the exercise lies in being able to take a step back, which is why having a facilitator can be very helpful. What begins to emerge as each story is told is a set of shared values, it may also reveal potential team and individual challenges which can be mitigated. I once had a team ask the question of each other:

What takes you from a high to a low?

This is a very revealing question and one that I now ask when I’m facilitating the exercise.

Benefits beyond the activity

This sharing opens up listening in a way that is difficult to find in the busy every-day, and through that listening people become more connected to one another, it is a great way to exercise your empathy muscle.

In addition to using this activity with founders, I have used this as an opening exercise for team work when I teach a leadership module at Exeter Business School. The masters students spend over a month completing different tasks as a team, then at the end of the month long team work students are assessed by a critical reflective essay. This exercise is often mentioned as one that helped them to open up to their team an build trust.

The thing they most frequently cite as the trigger that helped build the trust is the realisation that, even though others have come from different places (often multiple continents), they speak different languages, they have different economic and academic backgrounds, different identities; but they have all been through experiences in their life that have provoked similar feelings. The feelings of being out of place, being anxious, struggling with money, health, grief or just feeling stuck are universal, as humans our commonalities are much greater than we think. By asking the participants to share patterns rather than specifics this allows these pivotal moments to be revealed without delving too deeply into the specifics of anyones personal life.

But it isn’t just about connecting via vulnerabilities and hard times, they also get to know the strengths and achievements of each teammate – this really levels the playing field between the more outspoken and quieter members of the team, removing any biases or pre-judgements that people may carry.

Seeing each other as human beings allows individuals to feel more psychologically safe with each other.

In hindsight, that was one of my major goals as a CEO, at the time I would think, if I just got more money, then I can pay these people more and reward all their hard work, the money is what solves all the problems, and of course, I did provide financial reward where possible.

But 9 out of 10 funded startups fail, “just get more money” is not necessarily a realistic outcome. Psychological safety, human connection and an alignment of values IS something that you can control.

Together with my team, that day we realised that all the lows were followed by highs, that even the difficult situations made way for new opportunities to emerge and that we had all already proven that we were resilient. We didn’t know then what our future would hold, but I can say that when I look at where all those team members are now they have all proven their strengths, their resilience and their ability to be empathetic leaders.

I hope that all the teams that I have used this exercise with can say the same thing.

If this resonates with how you’re thinking about team culture or leadership development, you can find out more about my work in my other blog post or get in touch.