“My executive team isn’t aligned. They’re all working hard, but they don’t seem to understand one another or where we’re headed.”
Those were the words of a new executive director of a large nonprofit. He called me after six months on the job, he voiced a concern many leaders face.
He wasn’t looking for another strategic planning session. He needed his leadership team to become a team first. One of the most effective exercises I’ve used for this challenge is something I call The Epic Story of Us.
Every Team Has a Story
Organizations don’t become what they are overnight. They are shaped by people, milestones, successes, setbacks, leadership changes, and pivotal moments. The problem is that most teams only know pieces of that story.
Long-tenured employees remember events that newer members have never heard about. Newer leaders often don’t understand why certain traditions exist or why some decisions still influence the organization today. Without a shared understanding of the past, it’s difficult to build a shared vision for the future.
Building the Epic Story
The exercise is remarkably simple. Cover a wall with large sheets of easel paper. Draw a timeline across the middle.
Think of the timeline as having three layers:
- Peopleabove the line
- Timelinethrough the center
- Eventsbelow the line
The timeline begins with the arrival of the longest-tenured person on the team. Each person has five minutes to tell their story—from the day they joined until the next team member arrived.
Every participant started by providing answers to these three questions:
- Why did I join this organization?
- What was the culture like when I arrived?
- Who and what shaped my experience during that period?
As they speak, the team records important people above the timeline and significant events below it.
One important rule makes the exercise work: no interruptions. Everyone gets to tell their story without correction, debate, or additional commentary. After everyone has shared the group spend 10–15 minutes adding missing events or additional context.
Why It Works
I facilitated this exercise with a 12-person executive team. With five minutes per person, the activity required patience.
For the first time, team members understood how each colleague had experienced the organization differently. Someone who had weathered a difficult restructuring viewed the culture differently than someone who joined during a period of growth. Leaders who had lived through major organizational milestones suddenly understood why certain decisions or reactions existed today.
The exercise created something that strategy sessions often fail to produce: Empathy.
People stopped seeing one another only through today’s challenges and began understanding the experiences that shaped each person’s perspective.
Turning History into the Future
The timeline itself isn’t the destination. It’s the foundation for the next conversation.
At the conclusion of this session, I asked every executive to answer two questions individually:
- How would you describe our culture today?
- What should our culture become?
Those responses became the starting point for a series of weekly leadership meetings over the following month. Because the team now shared a common understanding of where they had come from, they were able to build agreement on where they wanted to go.
A Challenge for This Week
Every team has an epic story. The question is whether everyone knows it. If your team feels disconnected, lacks trust, or struggles to align around a common vision, don’t begin with another strategic plan.
Start building team alignment by understanding the journey that brought everyone to the table. Sometimes the fastest way to move forward is to first appreciate the story that got you here.
What story is your team telling—and does everyone know it
