The seven stories of inspirational leaders

Nike says that if you have a body, you're an athlete. I say that if you have a team, you're a leader. And if you're a leader, you must be a storyteller.

Now, you’d better be a good storyteller, someone who can speak to their people and inspire them to move mountains.

Everyone can be a good storyteller. We are all potentially able to tell stories that speak to the heart of our teams, getting them out of inertia and empowering them. But one has to know how to do it.

In this article, I will explain how seven basic stories work for inspirational leadership so that you can use the right narrative based on the moment the team is in and the goal you are pursuing. You can use the plots I will show you in a speech or as a general narrative that you adopt to inspire your team. The story structures that I am showing here, can also represent a roadmap for you as a leader in specific situations.

We have always told stories to understand the world around us, the circumstances we live in, and, most importantly, ourselves. The story you tell your team serves just that purpose: to orientate, guide, and encourage them.

Power-questions.

Before we dive into the details, to prepare an inspiring story, ask yourself the following questions:

• First, what is your team's role in the story? How do they contribute to the success you are pursuing? Should they take initiative and lead? Should they follow you? Should they change their attitude?
• Second, identify what is opposing your success. What is hindering your team from reaching the goal? Is it something that seems to be overwhelming them? Is it a challenge they don't yet understand? Is it their own resistance to change?
• Third, visualize what awaits the team once the goal is achieved: your vision for success.
• Fourth, what is the fundamental desire that can move your team towards the common goal? Is it finding ways to overcome a specific challenge? Or is it using the journey of overcoming a crisis to find a set of shared values that strengthen the team? Or is the goal simply to return to the safety of the business you had built together? Or, to finish with my examples, do you feel that your organization is facing a crisis that represents a complete restart and you want the company to function again, renewed and stronger? Each example of desire I've brought corresponds to a different narrative. You will learn to choose the best one for each situation.
• Fifth: the final point is the most important. All changes that come to us from the outer world are merely a reflection of a personal change that is needed. You must ask yourself: what do we need to change as individuals and as a team to successfully face the challenges we encounter?

Interpreting the moment, understanding what is happening, and designing the path to move forward is a key skill set of inspirational leaders. Use these skills to decide what you want your team to feel and adopt one of the seven narratives I will now present to gather and motivate your team.

The seven narratives.

The seven narratives are based on the theory of Christopher Booker, author of The Seven Basic Plots. This theory identifies the fundamental plots that underlie the stories we tell and that have been told for millennia. They represent seven narrative patterns, seven archetypal templates that our brains recognize and accept without cognitive questioning. Integrate the seven templates into the way you speak to your team, and your speeches will become powerful, inspiring, and arguably irresistible.

I will explain in greater detail two narratives that can be used very often and give you a brief overview of the other five. I will soon publish a small ebook with the details of all the narrative forms you can adopt, so stay tuned.

Overcoming the monster.

Use this narrative when you and your team are threatened by a problem that comes from the outside and seems to be enormous and overwhelming. For example, a new competitor enters the market in a threatening way, or a startup creates a new category that makes your value proposition uncompetitive.

DESIRE: Normally the monster appears as something that is unclear, unknown, and threatening. Ignorance magnifies fear. If you cannot decode the threat, you must encourage your people and fuel their desire to face the problem and come out as winners.

CHALLENGE FOR THE GROUP: As individuals and as a group, you must grow and evolve to acquire the power to solve the threat coming from the outside. Encourage them to gather around the values you share or to find strength in past victories. This will set the conditions for them to work at their best and possibly overcome the danger.

VILLAIN: Monsters are guardians of something coveted, limitless avengers, or predators. Use one of these categories to define the evil your group is facing. And remember that every monster has a weakness. That represents your hope for salvation, your window of opportunity.

CHANGE: You do not negotiate with a monster, it must be slaughtered. To overcome the problem you face, reasons don't matter. You must unite all your forces and fight for the ultimate victory. Encourage your group not to hesitate to act with strength, precision, and decision.

Rebirth.

Use this narrative when the team has gone through a failure, and you need to reactivate them. All organizations and all teams go through rough patches. You must be resilient, learn from false steps, and get back on track: you must be reborn.

DESIRE: With this narrative, you focus on reactivating your team, so encourage them to look to the future with confidence and, above all, instill in them the desire to return to a condition of harmony and positivity.

GROUP CHALLENGE: Why did the failure occur? Generally, because the group was not mature enough to face the challenge presented to them or even to prepare to face it. Encourage them to reflect and find new strengths within themselves and the group. An evolution in consciousness and maturity is the journey they need.

VILLAIN: Two causes may have led to the failure from which we want to be reborn fortified: ignorance or lack of maturity. That's where the villain is. Tell them that they must acquire new knowledge and maturity, as individuals and as a group.

CHANGE: With a new perspective, renewed motivation, and knowledge up to the situation, the group will be ready to be reborn and flourish again. Encourage them to look confidently to the future and be aware that the path may be tough, but they will return to a state of well-being and strength.

Now let's look at the other five narratives in less detail.

From rags to riches.

Use this narrative when the team or the company is not expressing its full potential. Especially if there is an event or some force external to the organization that is preventing them from growing and improving.

In this case, instill in your people the pride of manifesting what they can become and do. Only then will they be recognized for what they are really worth. Help your people connect with their strengths and decide to make the necessary effort to empower themselves and improve.

The quest.

Use this narrative when you are pursuing something important or difficult to obtain, and it is not possible to discern all the details of the goal you want to achieve. When you are in start-up mode, when you are innovating, or when you are entering a new market, this is the narrative that best suits you.

Magnify the effect of reaching the goal. Clarify that achieving it will change the team's condition. Your goal must become an absolute desire that moves them and makes them overcome any type of difficulty. When you use this narrative, the group has not yet integrated the greatness of your goal. Help them understand what is at stake.

Voyage and return.

Use this narrative when you see that the team is not ready for new and important challenges. It may be because the individuals have not integrated into the group and lack the maturity and altruism necessary to express the potential of the collective. The journey is fundamentally a necessary maturation process for the team to come together on shared grounds. It is a perfect narrative to introduce the creation of a company purpose or to prepare for a particularly important strategic plan. Encourage your people to live the process with consciousness and strive to evolve and be able to do great things.

Comedy.

Don't be fooled by the name of this narrative. The essential characteristic of comedy is that the hero doesn't see things for what they are, makes a judgment error, and blocks all other characters. Use this narrative when you need your team to change their perspective and judgment on some important issue. It is a useful narrative in the case of internal conflicts or when the team is stuck and not progressing towards its potential.

In this case, you are not leading people to a change of consciousness. They are simply wrong: they make decisions based on a set of information and beliefs that lead them to fail. Offer them examples and tools to realize their mistake.

Tragedy.

Few narratives are as useful for a leader as that of tragedy. But never use it alone, always use it in conjunction with another brighter narrative. The tragedy narrative serves to remind your team of what can happen if they fail to be united and as one. Use it in situations of grave and imminent danger with a group that is falling apart. You can apply it to past events to explain what went wrong, or to other companies to avoid their mistakes. Tragedy is the story of an ego poorly managed. In this narrative, you speak to the group, but what you really do is call on each member’s sense of responsibility. The change that occurs in a tragedy is the gradual transformation of the hero into a villain. In a company, this is the collapse of the group and the dominance of tribalism and internal conflict. Encourage your team to undertake other journeys, avoiding the danger of a spiral of perdition that ends with collective and personal failure.

I invite you to experiment with the seven narratives and apply them naturally and with creativity. They work at the level of emotions and their archetypal structure is so powerful that the effects will surprise you.

I am a brand strategist and I believe that business should help people to be happier. So I work with corporate and personal brands on a journey to the next level, with powerful strategies and inspiring narratives.?