Storytelling--The Secret Key to Leadership

Why storytelling?
Nothing else works.



Slides leave listeners dazed. Prose remains unread. Reasons don’t change behavior. When it comes to inspiring people to embrace some strange new change in behavior, storytelling isn’t just better than the other tools. It’s the only thing that works.
The basics of leadership storytelling was the topic of my talk at the TEDx conference in Utrecht on November 8, 2011 on moral persuasion. In the talk:

• I explained how Al Gore went from being Mr. Boring to Mr. Excitement and in the process won an Emmy, an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize.
• I told how I stumbled on the power of leadership storytelling while working at the World Bank.

• I noted that most leadership stories don’t work. The stories that most leaders tell are ineffective or even counterproductive.

• I described the four main characteristics of leadership stories that do work:

1. Why the story must be authentically true, and the danger of telling “Titanic” stories.
2. The neuroscience of why Hollywood is right: although negative stories are useful for getting attention, to inspire action stories must be positive in tone.
3. Why leadership stories need to be told in a minimalist form, and why there are two listeners for every participant.
4. How complex ideas are communicated by contrasting the story of the situation before the change idea and the story of the situation after the change idea, with a story about radical management that shows why Apple [AAPL], Amazon [AMZN] and Salesforce [CRM] are prospering, while old firms like Wal-Mart [WMT] and General Electric [GE] are struggling.