Leadership is the art of inspiring others to make a story come true. Therefore, if you’re leading people, you’re telling them a story – by definition. Of course, your story might not be connecting as deeply as you’d like, and that’s why leaders benefit from becoming better storytellers.
How are leadership stories different from the stories we tell around the campfire or in movies?
The biggest difference is that “happily ever after” hasn’t happened yet.
- In her strategic messaging and positioning engagements with CEOs, as well as her storytelling workshops for teams, she always starts by familiarizing leaders with the structure of fairy tales and movies. The same structure underlies all narratives that connect on an emotional level.
What’s your #1 piece of advice for integrating storytelling into one’s leadership style?
Ask yourself these five questions: Whose lives are you out to change? What’s at stake if you succeed or fail? What does the Promised Land look like? What are the obstacles to reaching it? What evidence can you offer that you can make it happen?
Can you share an example of a leader achieving concrete results with storytelling?
Any leader who achieves anything does so by telling a great, credible story
- Elon Musk
- When people ask for help to tell better strategic stories, I often start by sending this breakdown of Musk’s narrative
Do leaders need to be vulnerable to share something about themselves in order to be effective at storytelling?
Yes, and in specific ways
- Why do we like the characters we encounter in movies and TV shows: see them struggle, see them care about others
- Breaking Bad’s Walter White: we root for him because we see him struggle against a series of ever-nastier bad guys and because we know he cares about his family
