Story for Leaders

Key Concepts

Storytelling as a leader creates meaning 

“Leadership is more important than ever. Leaders can help give meaning to what is happening. And that’s what I think story really is – meaning making.” (p. 9)

“A lot of leaders I meet complain their teams lack energy. If you are one, ask yourself: ‘How meaningful is the work I am asking people to do?’ Meaningless work is very hard to get excited about”. (p. 15)

“Create a worthwhile story and even menial tasks become meaningful. Your job is not to trick people into doing meaningless work – but to make work meaningful. Less directive, more narrative. If you have director in your job description, then direct – like a film director would.” (p. 15)

Story makes it easier to change things

“The leaders I work with are all, in their way, trying to influence change: culture, attitude, performance, results, mindset. In one way or another, their job is to upset the status quo. The trouble is the status quo often bites back, putting all sorts of obstacles in the way. It can’t be done! We tried before and failed! There isn’t the money/time/resources. It’ll never work! And these can look very compelling. But a leader who views this as a giant game of ‘Let’s Pretend’ isn’t going to be so easily stumped; that leader won’t let facts get in the way of the reality they want to create. Facts are just fictions that have been around long enough to seem real.” (p. 16)

The Three Fs

“If your own story is going to be successful, it must compete for light and nutrients with these alpha narratives.” (p. 27)

Fear

“You’ll know fear stories are operating in the background of a company whenever you hear phrases like: it’ll never work...we tried that already…where will we get the money…ask the lawyers…there are going to be job losses…we’ve always done it that way…” (p. 27)

Fantasy

“These are the cartoon-simple fables that optimistically assume you jump from A to Z without any intervening difficulty. You just close your eyes and wish. It’s all simple, straightforward”. (p. 31)

Formula

“And third, obstinately chuntering through the jungle with its head down, is Formula, with only one tale to tell really. The formula story says: If I just keep on doing what I am doing, life will leave me alone. Stick to the knitting and everything will be ok.” (p. 33)

“Formula lovers believe that what worked in the past will continue to work in the future. It’s the favourite tale of the Neutrals. These are the perfectly affable types in lots of companies who pay lip service to the changes you suggest and then go back to doing exactly what they have always done.” (p. 33)

Plans v Stories

“So how are stories different from plans? It’s something I ask audiences all over the world. Here’s what they usually say (top five):

• “1. ‘Plans are about things, stories are about people’ 

• “2. ‘Plans are about facts, stories are about feelings’ 

• “3. ‘Plans are dry, stories are colourful’ 

• “4. ‘Plans are dull, stories are fun’ 

• “5. ‘Plans are real, stories are made up’” (p. 42)

“Your audience knows the difference between plans and stories – and while they see the merit of planning, they yearn for stories. Especially about the future. As a leader, it’s vital you remember this. Every time your audience wants a story from you, and you give them a plan, you lose them.” (p. 42)

Expertise v Exploration: “Do your people look at you as a tour guide, taking them on a well-worn tourist route to the future? Or as a leader taking them on an adventure? If you don’t know, ask them.” (p. 43)

Should v Could: “As someone who has spent a great deal of time in the arts and in business, I have noticed that business spends most of its time talking about what ‘should’ happen. Reason rules. What you are proposing is legitimate only if you can build a ‘case’ for it. The arts are focused on what ‘could’ happen. In my experience, artists don’t create because they ought to but because they want to.” (p. 43)

Wiggly v Straight: “Plans get you from A to B by the most direct route. Stories get you from A to B by the most interesting route.” (p. 43)

The seven story must-haves

Must-Have #1: A Hero

“A hero is not even necessarily heroic. In fact, outside the 2- dimensional storytelling of superhero comics, heroes rarely are conventionally heroic. You know, the type that laughs in the face of danger, feels no fear and catches bullets in their teeth. The heroes you need to focus on – and which your audiences will connect with – are ordinary people who do extraordinary things.” (p. 52)

Must-Have #2: A Why

“What is important, of course. We’re curious about the action. But, in truth, we can quite often guess a lot of the what in advance.” (p. 55)

“But while the audience is interested in what and how, they are truly fascinated by why. Why reveals the deeper motivations powering the story and its characters, the intentions that make them choose option A rather than B, C or D. As a storytelling leader you need to be aware of this and build your stories from the why upwards.” (p. 56)

Must-Have #3: Allies

“We all have blind spots, limits to what we know, think and can perceive. The allies provide additional perspective which the lone hero lacks. Without them we are fatally blinkered. With them we get 360, wraparound vision.” (p. 57)

“Allies, note. Not friends”. (p. 58)

Must-Have #4: The Nemesis

“First, at some deeper level we realise they are only the flip side of the hero coin. Good guy and bad guy are actually dancing partners. No protagonist can be great without an equally excellent antagonist.“ (p. 59)

Must-Have #5: Highs and Lows

“Diagonally rising lines are death to stories. Straight ones of any direction are. Who wants to hear a story which keeps travelling remorselessly in the same direction – be it up or down? Stories need highs and, even more importantly, lows.” (p. 61)

“The lesson for you as a leader? If you want to impress people, tell them your achievements, your high point. If you want to lead them, share your difficulties, your lows and how you dealt with them.” (p. 64)

Must-Have #6: Choices, Choices

Must Haves #7: Surprise!

“If you want to hook your audience, you will give them what they want but not in the way they expect it. You will not be predictable, except to lull them into a false sense of security. Which will make the surprise all the more of a jolt”. (p. 69)

Shifting from “presentation” to more engaging storytelling

“If only the modern presentation was a gift! More often it feels like a punishment – both to those who are asked to present and those in the audience. Presentation has come to mean a person standing in the dark clicking through PowerPoint slides as their colleagues – anything but present – squint at emails and watch the clock.” (p. 76)

“I would argue that a leader needs to cultivate the art not of presentation, but of narration; the ability to use story to cross the space between you and your audience and create meaning in their minds.” (p. 76)

Effectively telling your story

1. Start Well

“You aren’t going to get a better moment to make a powerful impression and hook the audience than at the start.” (p. 77)

2. Be Specific

“The veteran script-writing teacher Robert Kee once told a class I was attending: ‘A writer knows the names of things’. That was his way of telling us to be specific, not vague, with our language. The pen you are using isn’t just a pen, it’s a 1952 Waterman or an original Bic with the end chewed off. It wasn’t given to you as a child, it was given to you by your Aunt Rachel on your 14th birthday. You didn’t just put it down, you placed it on the fake walnut top of the kitchen table you just bought from the IKEA in Wembley.” (p. 80)

3. Be 3 – if not more – Dimensional

“So when you are telling your stories make sure you include all three systems. Focus purely on visual language, go on and on about your vision and how things will look in the bright and colourful future you are picturing… and you just lost two thirds of your audience! Sight, sound and sensation are the primary colours of story. A skilled story maker uses all three to enthral the audience.” (p. 83)

4. Time

“If you want to engage your audience, you have to tailor your story length to the situation.” (p. 89)

5. It’s Personal

“I think of this as Less Me, More I. Effective leadership isn’t about ego (me, me, me) but it absolutely is about who you are as a person, what you stand for and – if necessary – what you’d fight for. That’s what I mean by the ‘I’. This is where story helps you enormously. When you recount a story, you’re naturally more engaged than you are when reciting figures. And this automatically makes you more engaging.” (p. 94)

“Whenever you tell a story, your audience hears two. There’s the story that’s being told. And there’s the story of the person telling the story.” (p. 95)

“If you want to come across as an authentic leader, the rule of thumb is be authentic.” (p. 96)

Quotables

“I was surprised by the number of companies who didn’t seem to actually produce anything. By the strange jargon managers used, instead of saying what they meant. By the hours people spent in meetings not actually meeting each other. By the way people were expected to work ever longer and harder, not smarter or better. But the biggest surprise of all was to discover how much of the so called ‘real world’ was actually made-up. And how few people seemed to realise this. Particularly how few leaders.” (p. 6)

“Too often leaders become trapped in being managers. Their lives become operational, not inspirational. And inspiration is what leaders are for.” (p. 18)

“It’s very hard – if not impossible – to tell a good story that’s poorly constructed.” (p. 58)

“The speed the world is changing and the complexity that’s unfolding means that plans, while essential, are insufficient. In a world that is ‘getting better and better and worse and worse, faster and faster’ as my friend Jim Garrison neatly puts it, the future has arrived before your plan for it is complete.” (p. 41)

“As a leader it is worth remembering, for your people, the nemesis very often is you. It’s you that initiates routine-disturbing change. You are the one with the vision that requires them to stir themselves to action. You are the one wanting more for the team or business than it wants for itself. You are the one who has new ideas that upset their world, turning things upside down by reading books like this one.” (p. 60)

“Live like the story is going to end” (p. 139)