Lead with a Story: Experience is the best Teacher [ARR]

Annie's Reading Room

Today marks the beginning of our next book, Lead with a Story by Paul Smith.

Experience is the best teacher, but a compelling story is a close second. That’s why the Ted talks and your favorite professors are so engaging.

Corporations are also recognizing the importance of telling stories. For example, at Nike, all senior executives are dubbed “corporate storytellers.” and several companies teach storytelling skills to their leaders.

The book begins with an important question: Why Tell Stories?

1. Storytelling is simple. Anyone can do it. You don’t need a degree in English or even an MBA.

2. Storytelling is timeless. Unlike fads in other areas of management such as total quality management, reengineering, Six Sigma, or 5S, storytelling has always worked for leadership, and it always will.

3. Stories are demographic-proof. Everybody – regardless of age, race, or gender – likes to listen to stories.

4. Stories are contagious. They spread like wildfire without any additional effort on the part of the storyteller.

Experience is the best Teacher

5. Stories are easier to remember. According to psychologist Jerome Bruner, facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they are part of a story. Organizational psychologist Peg Neuhauser found similar results in her work with corporations. She found that learning derived from a well-told story is remembered more accurately, and for far longer than the learning derived from facts or figures.

6. Stories inspire. Slides don’t. Have you ever heard someone say, “Wow! You’ll never believe the PowerPoint presentation I just saw!” Probably not. But you have heard people say that about stories.

7. Stories appeal to all types of learners. Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners all benefit from stories. Visual learners appreciate the mental pictures storytelling evokes. Auditory learners focus on the words and the storyteller’s voice. Kinesthetic learners remember the emotional connections and feelings from the story.

8. Stories fit better where most of the learning happens in the workplace. According to communications expert Evelyn Clark, “Up to 70 percent of the new skills, information and competence in the workplace is acquired through informal learning” such as what happens in team settings, mentoring, and peer-to-peer communication. And the bedrock of informal learning is storytelling.

9. Stories put the listener in a mental learning mode. Listeners who are in a critical or evaluative mode are more likely to reject what’s being said. According to training coach and bestselling author Margaret Parkin, storytelling “re-creates in us that emotional state of curiosity which is ever present in children, but which as adults we tend to lose. Once in this childlike state, we tend to be more receptive and interested in the information we are given. Or as author and organizational narrative expert David Hutchens points out, storytelling puts listeners in a different orientation. They put their pens and pencils down, open up their posture, and just listen.

10. Telling stories shows respect for the audience. Stories get your message across without arrogantly telling listeners what to think or do. Regarding what to think, storytelling author Annette Simmons observed, “Stories give people freedom to come to their own conclusions. People who reject predigested conclusions might just agree with your interpretations if you get out of their face long enough for them to see what you have seen.” As for what you do, corporate storyteller David Armstrong suggests, “If there was ever a time when you could just order people to do something, it has long passed. Telling a story, where you underline the moral, is a great way of explaining to people what needs to be done, without saying, ‘do this.’”

This book is broken up into chapters titled with various management challenges, and contain stories in each chapter to facilitate broaching those topics. Other chapters will serve as guides to develop your own compelling stories.

The first seven (short) chapters invite us to “Envision Success” and craft our own story. I’ll give you the insights I learned next week!