Want to Be a Better Leader? Sharpen Your Storytelling Skills

You’ve probably heard the expression, “many hands make light work.”

We live by this expression in my household, where my 11-year-old and 8-year-old boys pitch in to help us set the table, load the dishwasher, take out the recycling, and other simple household tasks. They understand that if everyone pitches in and does their small part, the work gets done faster, and we can all move on to our next activity.

Good managers know how to rally their teams around the idea that “many hands make light work.”

But how do you gather those “hands” in the first place?

How do you inspire a group of disparate individuals to all work together, side by side, toward a common goal?

The answer, of course, is by being a great leader.

And contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be in the C-suite or hold a “director” title to become one.

What you do need, however, is a group of followers. To be considered a leader, you must successfully convince people to start following you—and more importantly, keep following you.

While we often discuss storytelling from the lens of external customer marketing campaigns, storytelling skills also make a huge difference when trying to inspire and motivate internal followers.

Suppose you want to shape both internal and external behavior. In that case, you must have all your communications grounded in the right narrative.

‘Purposeful Work’: How leaders attract followers in the modern workplace

There’s been much talk about leadership in the business world since Millennials, and Gen Z entered the workforce.

Careers have become less about hunting for a paycheck by working for somebody, and more about working with somebody to feed one’s personal fulfillment and purpose.

These generations are said to crave “purposeful work” over a job that pays the bills.

We live in an age where the “job for life” and a single-company career no longer exists. There are countless paths to earning income online. Many have realized they have a choice in how (and where) they make a living.

This notion has shone a spotlight on organizational leaders’ role in creating an environment of community, togetherness, and collaboration toward shared goals.

Long before Millennials were even born, American writer and speaker Dale Carnegie published the now-famous book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936).

Dale Carnegie’s insights are particularly relevant to leaders who must build strong, trusting relationships in the workplace if they hope to convince people to follow them.

In other words, telling someone to do something for you doesn’t work; it’s much more effective when people are inspired to do something with you.

Consider J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic story of “The Hobbit.” How did Gandalf convince Bilbo Baggins to leave his comfortable, quiet life behind and go on a perilous journey to recover stolen treasure from a dragon?

Gandalf doesn’t tell Bilbo to go out on his own and figure it out— he spins a tale of adventure, where Bilbo would accompany him and a group of dwarves to reclaim the treasure together, where even the smallest person (hobbit) counts, even if it is because the skill is of a burglar.

The reward of achieving something because of his unique traits, plus the camaraderie and fellowship, outweighed the risks of the task itself.

Bilbo ultimately sets aside his fear and hesitation to join Gandalf’s quest.

Like Gandalf, today’s leaders are responsible for creating an attractive environment that makes top talent actively want to join in their “quest”—to follow them, work with them, and find that greater purpose by serving the organization’s customers.

Such “rallying of the troops” is especially challenging in the COVID era of remote work and social distancing: Perks like pizza and ping pong have disappeared.

The only leverage leaders have right now is a top-notch work environment and company culture. Because I promise you this, people will tell stories about their bosses right now, more than ever. Don’t forget that.

Why great leaders are also great storytellers

Think of the best boss you’ve ever had.

Did this boss communicate openly and transparently? Did they encourage you, praise you, and offer helpful feedback when you needed it?

Did they leave you you feeling like a valuable and integral part of the team?

Whether you realized it or not, that leader used basic storytelling techniques to capture your attention and tap into your primal emotional need to feel valued and important.

They recognized that you and your colleagues desired a sense of belonging, esteem, and self-actualization (according to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). In their conversations with you, they strived to help you see that your role and work could fulfill those higher-level needs. In essence, your boss knew how to communicate the value you received by working at the organization.

This idea of communicating value to your audience cuts to the very heart of good storytelling.

Suppose you want people to retain and act on the information in your story. In that case, they need to understand why that information is valuable to them. You must take an “outside-in” approach and consider why your employee, colleague, or customer would care about what you’re telling them, so you can ultimately impart value for that person.

Mapping out your story with the right framework

At Go Narrative, we often discuss our 3D Story™  framework to help businesses understand how a properly-structured story can help their audience better receive, process, retain, and act on the information.

 If you’re not familiar with this framework, it describes three distinct phases in a person’s journey:

  1. Desire: The person wants to do or obtain something that will improve their lives.

  2. Difficulty: Something is standing in the way of achieving their desire.

  3. Denouement: There is a resolution—an “untangling of the knot” (the French translation of denouement) where the person overcomes their difficulty, often with the help of a guide (you!), to arrive at their desired state.

Every good story can be broken down into these three elements.

Always do this from your audience’s perspective, whether they’re a customer or an employee.

The person you’re speaking to should be the hero of the story you’re telling so they can connect deeply and directly to the desire, difficulty, and denouement you’re describing.

Let’s look at the 3D Story™  breakdown of a typical organization that wants to inspire its team to serve its stakeholders better:

  1. Desire: The company wants to help its customers achieve their goals and improve their lives.

  2. Difficulty: The company faces some internal communication issues, and its various departments are not on the same page about how to help customers.

  3. Denouement: The company’s leaders rally the different teams around a unified story about their customers’ desires, difficulties, and denouements. Each person in each department now understands their role in ensuring customer satisfaction.

This example might sound a bit, “meta.” However, it all boils down to one universal truth: Leaders need to tell the right story if they want to shape organizational behavior for the better.

Shaping and making organizational stories

When applied appropriately, the 3D Story™  framework can help shape your thinking as an organization. Identifying your audience’s “3Ds” will inform which stories are most important and useful to tell.

Those stories can then be used as a problem-solving tool across the organization.

What you’re doing here is bringing other departments with you on your journey to helping the customer.

You’re inviting them to work with you (not for you!) to make sure your customers achieve their desires.

By telling the right customer stories at the right time, you’ll inspire and empower all departments in your company to think critically about your customers’ needs and pains and develop products that serve.

The next time you prepare for a “tough conversation” with a colleague or employee begins with first understanding their 3Ds.

What are their priorities?

What’s difficult for them as they try to get things done?

How do you help them untangle their knot?

As a leader, your primary storytelling objective is to plug into what your internal audience does and communicate the customer’s 3Ds in a way that makes sense to their own stories. We often help clients clarify their internal 3Ds so they can create alignment on goals and objectives. I want to share an example where we did this for a corporate client several years ago.

The project required our client to bring the four major organizations together to get the necessary support and resources to create an award deliverable.

How did we do it? By helping our client intentionally interpreting each department’s 3Ds and communicating their role in the project in a way that made sense to them.

We naturally positioned the value and benefit they, as an individual team or department, would receive by participating in the project and working with our client to make it happen.

This should be your goal as an internal storyteller. If you’re able to do this successfully, you’ll have engaged in story-making.

When people in your organization look back on this time years from now, they’ll have a story to tell about what happened and how they came together to achieve something great.

They can bask in that shared sense of togetherness and purpose, which is essential to creating a cohesive and effective team environment.

The acts of storytelling and story-making remind your stakeholders that we all achieve things with the ideas and support of others—nobody is an island, and everyone plays an integral part in the organization’s accomplishments.

At Go Narrative, our secret sauce is not just telling stories; it’s about using storytelling for action.

Telling the right stories to and about people in your organization leads to action.

Stories enrich us; they’re the fabric of our lives. Leaders need to identify those stories and reinforce organizational behavior by talking about both successes and failures.

Even if you’re not in the C-suite, remember that leaders can emerge from anywhere in an organization. This is sometimes known as managing/leading up, and it can help you tremendously in your career.

If you want to flex your leadership chops and be seen as “management potential,” storytelling is one of the most important tools at your disposal. When combined with real strategic forethought and skill, good storytelling can firmly position you as a leader and allow you to build or grow your following within your organization.

Want to uncover the right storytelling strategies to help you shape internal and external stakeholder behavior? Book a complimentary 30-minute consultation with Go Narrative, and let’s chat.

Go Narrative is a Seattle Based company that assists business leaders in technology companies build and implement advanced marketing strategies. Get attention. Be heard. Sell more.

www.GoNarrative.com | eBook available at  https://www.gonarrative.com/ebook1landingpage |

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