ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT Don Faul (left) talking about his experiences in the Marines in front of an audience at Facebook. #2 THE GOOD EXAMPLE STORY One of the best stories to encourage great work, behavior, actions, etc. is a story exalting an individual has exempliifed these traits. “Stories are incredible tools for reinforcing the quality of work you want to do or the type of behavior you want people to exhibit,” says Faul. “Especially when you’re trying to help your team live the company’s cultural values, giving them lots of rich examples of people doing it already makes a huge difference.” For instance, Faul has continually noticed how hard it is for people to offer feedback to managers, particularly those a couple tiers higher in the organization. As a result, leaders otfen get the least amount of constructive advice for improvement, when they should probably receive the most. People are afraid. They’re intimidated. They don’t want to offend or burn bridges. Telling people it’s important to offer this feedback isn’t enough. The only thing he’s seen work is telling stories that champion this behavior. “At Facebook, there was a well known story about an intern who, when given the chance to ask a question of a top executive, offered constructive feedback about a television interview the person had recently given,” says Faul. “That story has been told now dozens of times to show how important it is to speak your mind if you think leaders can get better. To show that that type of courage — to say something diiffcult to help boost performance — will be rewarded.” 26