StoryYelling for Leaders

"The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation..." Blah blah

I think we know this by now don’t we? I mean, isn’t this a tad old-school? The irony is that many leaders are just cottoning on to the idea that ‘storytelling is a powerful tool’, while the rest of the world is moving on – being swept on in fact – by the tidal wave of: the rapid rise in ai, ever more sophisticated algorithms and open-source deep fake that cannot be distinguished from the real thing. With all that we are actually drowning in storytelling.

This is a bit of a shame – and I find myself playing Devil’s Advocate to my own expertise. I have been a storyteller all my life and combine applied storytelling – teaching people how to use story techniques at work, and performance storytelling – real face to face, gritty, interactive performances, with an actual audience. And sometimes I do it online, obviously. There’s really nothing like being an experienced practitioner in a craft to keep your feet on the ground. And I have found myself increasingly uncomfortable in the whole area of teaching people with influence all the precious storytelling techniques I have gathered over the years.

Read an article about Storytelling and most will give you the generic 5 ways to tell stories to engage people. And get them on your side, and persuade them, and sell them something. And the meta message is this: “ We all want to be loved – and Hey - here’s a way to make people love you! And you can work on their chemistry so that they empathise with you and want to do what you want, and – mainly – they will love you!”

I think about that story of the famous conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who, it is said, once stopped the orchestra rehearsal, glared at a cellist and declared: "You have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands, and all you can do is scratch it!" … I want to ask the leaders I work with – ‘Is this enough? What do you want to do with this ancient and resonant skill? What stories do you want to put out into the world? Is it just about the bottom line, or is there something else you can achieve by being skilful and – above all – mindful and conscious?’. Not to remove the fun and playfulness from stories – far from it – stories are Mercurial by their very nature. And they are also deep and reach the parts Powerpoint can’t reach, so we handle them with care.

For me, the crucial aspect of the best kind of storytelling is the balance of reality and fiction.? I think most of us are now aware that facts alone aren’t engaging, which is why leaders are eyeing up storytelling techniques. But shouldn’t we beware of the siren seduction of spin (‘how can they see with sequins in their eyes?’) in the guise of ‘encouraging the teams’, or ‘visioning’ or ‘sparing them from knowing the full extent of the grim reality so they don’t get de-motivated and instead keep on producing efficiently’. This last is all too familiar in my experience and seems to fuel an embarrassingly large proportion of internal corporate messages and – just to say – the staff aren’t fooled. Instead, they go underground and begin to cook up quite another flavour of story of their own.

So – what? So - and this is just the start of a disrupting conversation – We’re never going to, and we don’t want to stop using storytelling. But how do we find that sweet equilibrium between truth and lies, fact and fiction, our own and wider interests? All the greatest and most moving and inspiring stories, whether ancient myth or modern meme, have at their heart a deep and recognisable truth about us, about the human condition, the world we live in. And this applies even to a throw-away anecdote.

We need to be real and faithful to that thread of truthfulness and then the alchemy of storytelling heightens that truth and makes it palatable and relatable. ?Hold in balance our own authenticity, with a sensitive antenna for the audience and an eye on the context we’re in. Easy to say – not so easy to do. But – it is possible and it is learnable. That’s the good news.

Storytelling has become an over-used term, applied to everything from PR to a simple explanation, to an argument, to a strategy. Let’s pause for a moment, let’s stop story-yelling and re-examine storytelling. It’ll be worth the effort.