Lead with a Story: Envision Success [ARR]

Annie's Reading Room

Chapters two through six under the heading of "Envision Success"

provide ready-to-go stories that can help set the tone and open the listener up to a manager’s requests or ideas for change within an organization. The stories cover the managerial topics of:

Set a Vision for the Future

Set Goals and Build Commitment

Lead Change

Make Recommendations Stick

Define Customer Service Success and Failure

Structure of a story.  Most fables and fairytales start with once upon a time. That set up is actually quite useful for all types of storytelling because it sets the storyteller up to give details about the characters and setting. But perhaps a more “adult” way of thinking about the structure of a good story is the acronym CAR: Context, Action, and Result.

Envision Success

[Not to get all career counselor-y on you, but this also the recommended way to structure your answers to behavioral questions in an interview setting].

Context is the part of the storytelling business leaders most often under develop, or skip entirely. As a result, their stories are often confusing and uninteresting. The context provides all the necessary background for the story to make sense. If done right, it also grabs the audience’s attention, convinces them that your story is relevant, and generates interest and excitement to listen to the rest of the story. Important components of the context are as follows:

1. Where and when? This seems easy enough, but this is also an opportunity to avail the audience of whether your story is a truthful account, or more of a fable. Be honest with your audience as it is important to build trust and credibility. In other words, don’t take credit for a story that didn’t really happen to you.

2. Who is the main character? Most of us know enough to include a main character in our story. But it is important that that main character be someone the audience can identify with. The main character of a story could be Superman, but most of your listeners probably can’t bend steel or fly, so the audience won’t be getting any helpful advice or confidence they can do the same thing.

3. What does the character want? What is the “treasure” the subject seeks?

4. Who or what is getting in the way? This is the obstacle, the villain, or the enemy in the story. A story without a villain or overcoming something indicates to the reader that the protagonist was just lucky.

Action. This is where you tell what happened with your main character, where the hero does battle with the villain. He or she may have ups and downs in the story, but that is what makes it exciting and where lessons are learned.

Result.  The result is the final stage of the story where you accomplish three main things. In addition to telling how the story ends, this is where you explain the right lesson the audience should have learned, and link back to why you told the story. Whether you spell out the morale of the story or not is up to you, so use your judgment.