Blog Series: The Power of Storytelling for Leaders – 1
Great storytelling requires hard work, attention to detail, and a clear understanding of the needs of the audience. As a leader your skillful use of storytelling can bring about and sustain change in an organization because of its deep capacity to communicate ideas to both our cognitive and emotional core.
Storytelling Clarifies The Vision and Mission of an Organization
Storytelling clarifies the vision and mission of an organization
- It reinforces the intent of the leadership
- Brings on board those who need to know the way ahead
- Makes champions and advocates for change by helping to inspire that change
Storytelling Exercise for Corporate Leaders
Identify an event within the organization, or an accomplishment by its personnel
- Detail the actions leading up to and following the event in chronological order
- Develop a 5 minute and 2 minute version of the story for use when speaking with your internal leadership team and personnel
Storytelling Helps to Address Challenges
Storytelling helps leaders to address the strong challenges of organizational culture
- Stories which are analogies, examples, or vignettes from history reinforce the mission and vision of a leadership team
- Leaders can also use stories to signal and simplify strategic intent
Storytelling Drives Organizational Change
Good leaders use stories that “cast” them and their organizations as agents of change, rather than defenders of the status quo
- They leverage these emotional navigational stakes to their greatest advantage by telling a purposeful story
- Research on memory conclusively shows that all the critical details, data, and analytics, are more effectively emotionalized and metabolized by the listener when they’re embedded in a story – and they become significantly more actionable
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