leading through stories

Stories motivate the listener to ask,
"How can I work better?"

Using stories is a powerful leadership tool.

A leadership story should convey that
there is a way to ‘helicopter’ above our circumstances. We know how to be more
than we are.

This is called the engine of your story. It is a leader’s job to motivate with such an engine.

There are two other important parts to good stories: paying attention to the structure & the doorways in and out of the story.

A doorway 'In' might be: "I’ve seen this problem before. Let me tell you a story.”

Now you audience is ready to listen to you.

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one example

Sara, a product development team manager, shares a story during a challenging time: “Four years ago I signed up for a women’s only poker tournament at Foxwoods. I was an amateur in a field of pros. I needed to take care and have a strategy. My short term goal was to make the final table.”

In Sara’s story, she articulated a setting, a problem, and a clear tone — 3 main elements of story structure. The setting is a women’s only tournament; her problem is that she is an amateur among pros; and her tone is plucky — demonstrating courage in the face of difficulties. But her story doesn’t have an engine to drive her leadership message.

For her leadership message, Sara could have said, “All you need is a chip and a chair to stay in the game.” When she turned her focus to the team’s current work problem, she could have motivated her team by repeating, “All we need is a chip and a chair. And we have both. Let’s get busy solving our problem.”