Soul.com, a supplement startup company, blossomed quickly then showed signs of falling numbers. Matt Treestom, the CEO, hired a consultant firm to advise him on strategy going forward. The first thing he was advised to do was flatten his management, to create teams instead of hierarchal roles for workforce structure. He was told that focusing on business strategy alone was not enough; it was the strength of the team communication that was the foundation of success.
It was fairly simple to group the business into sections and name a team for each. But the team communication was terrible. The old hierarchal roles didn’t just disappear. Some of the team members felt they were right and others wrong; some felt timid and never spoke up; bullies, bullied and bystanders were aplenty. Fortunately the consulting firm Matt hired was prepared to deal with this. All the Soul.com teams were brought together at a weekend retreat. One of the consulting coaches told them, “This weekend you will get the basic tools for embodied self-awareness. These tools will form your communication foundation. Each team will hone their individual tools together, as a team. Soul.com is, from now on out, a business of creative leaders. All of you are leaders.”
That weekend everyone designed a visual for emptying thoughts, dumping judgment and for scrubbing old story, in particular, the stain. Music was played and one of the coaches would call out which action to take. “Empty your thoughts,” they would call out, and each team member held out air containers to catch thoughts falling from above. They emptied the container and caught more. The music would get faster and the effort to contain and empty became more challenging. Sometimes they partnered up and mirrored each other's methods of emptying thoughts.
They studied videos of workers filling and dumping buckets of ice, water and, finally, sand. The ice was fairly easy. The worker’s bodies were shown as a light grid which showed which muscles to engage for greater efficiency. The water had to be scooped from a lower center of gravity, and the sand required powerful legs and back. “Dump your judgment,” the coach called out, urging the team with their voice to dig deeper, work harder. “You have to dump your judgment in order to develop active listening.”
Then they perfected their story scrub. They practiced washing actual dishes to load their body with short term memory. The consulting coach told them that the more they worked for Soul.com, the more they would learn how to listen to the stories they told themselves, and reframe the stories that no longer suited them individually or as part of a team. You will be doing lots and lots of scrubbing,” the coach affirmed.
The weekend ended with the introduction of Story Dance. The CEO, Matt Treestom, explained that every month there would be an all-business Story Dance Off. “Myself included,” he added. “Everyone will be asked to add themes to the pot. These themes will reflect important issues our society is dealing with, such as depression, anxiety, and gender equality. Each team will select a theme and a song, put together a group story dance that expresses the theme in some way, starting with emptying thoughts, dumping judgment and scrubbing story stain. Each month our consulting coaches will add new movements to choose from that we can add into the mix. All of this has been designed to cultivate creative, active listeners, and to develop a ritual of embodied communication.”
Each team had an hour to come up with their first group story dance, based on emptying, dumping and scrubbing. The energy in the room was abuzz with collaboration, defensiveness, a general push-pull of opinion, yet each team presented their story dance with enthusiasm, especially when the consulting coaches reminded them over and over it was not a performance, but a chance to express as teams what they knew to be true.
All in all, Matt was well satisfied with the retreat, and he could see definite light in the strategic tunnel of future business growth.
