The best leaders have the best stories. In most cases their stories are so good that people don’t even know they are stories. They just know that whatever the leader suggests they will happily do.
A leader does not lead by offering facts – that’s the job of the manager. The manager is the one who talks about stats, budgets, targets, quotas. When the VP of Finance or Production gets up there in front of his Power Point presentation you can bet his tailor-made suit that he’s got a ton of hard facts he’s going to download on his prisoners (oops, sorry, I meant ‘on his listeners’).
They are hard facts because they are precise and non-fuzzy; they are also hard to get your head around, hard to listen to and hard to swallow. Those banks of number, pie chart after graph – your mind wanders off to the latest problem of your teenager and whether there will still be construction on your usual route hoeme.
After lunch, how many of the numbers can you remember? A few that relate to you and your department will stick. The rest will bounce off you like pebbles off a wall. Do you buy into them? Well, it looks like you’re going to have to.
The leader, meanwhile, might throw in a few facts to back up what he is saying but his story is all about what this strong and dedicated team is going to be able to achieve. He knows that facts won’t get buy-in but telling stories will ensure an audience who listen and who understand at an emotional level what he’s getting at.
What stories are those? Well, there’s the one about his grandfather who started the company. He has told similar stories before but he never repeats them, just finds another with another inspirational message and shares it with all his friends in the audience. Or there is the story of how he came to take over the company. How difficult things were then and how his friends, right here in the audience, helped to bring them around. He has faced difficulties before – two or three stories would fit here – but always come to a successful conclusion. He didn’t do this alone, no sir, he had friends who supported him. and he knows that he has supporters here who will carry this company forward.
You’ve heard this kind of message before, or at least some neat little sound bite from it. Few hard facts, no Power Point. His aim is to connect with the audience. He does this partly by his dress, probably an open- necked shirt and casual pants. He does it by his vocabulary – the vocabulary of his audience, not of the lawyer or accountant. He does it with a relaxed and confident manner. But most of all he does it with his stories.
His stories have warmth. They are personal. The audience have grandfathers who seemed to be just like his. They have had job decisions to make, just like he did. They have faced difficulties too. There is a connection and a bonding. They will buy into his message at an emotional level. They will probably go back to their office, shop floor or home and say, “Guess what Paul Leader said today. He said…”
The leaders message – the pill under all this jam – is accepted and taken in almost without hesitation. And not only has this message been accepted at an emotional level, but he has prepared the way and built credibility for his next message.
This is the power that stories have to build and maintain leaders. Good stories need research, creativity and practice. But they are worth it.
