The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Review of The Leader's Guide to Storytelling

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« The Iraq war has lost its narrative | Main | Why storytelling is important »

September 14, 2005

Review of The Leader's Guide to Storytelling

To captivate staff, executives must be master storytellers

By HARVEY SCHACHTER Wednesday, September 14, 2005 in the Globe & Mail (Canada)

The Leader's Guide To Storytelling By Stephen Denning Jossey-Bass, 360 pages, $31.99

Executives hear much these days about storytelling. In addition to all their other skills, they are expected to be master storytellers, pushing their agenda by reaching beyond fact-based argument to touch the emotions and captivate staff through narrative. But many are no doubt puzzled and therefore paralyzed.

What exactly is a story? How do you prepare it, and just as importantly, tell it in a powerful manner? Traditionally, a story involves a hero or heroine, a plot, a turning point, and a resolution.

But Stephen Denning, a former World Bank official who became enchanted with the power of storytelling and now helps organizations take advantage of it, says different narrative patterns are useful for different purposes of leadership, and they need not be as elaborate as the classic formula.

Indeed, his favourite -- the springboard story -- is quite spare, lacking a plot and turning point. But it's vital for leaders, communicating the complexities of change in a way that motivates others to action. A springboard story tells how one person typical of the audience carried out some recent change that improved the organization. It explains what would have happened without the change. The story has a happy ending, and the teller closes with a link to the purpose he or she hopes to achieve: how this example can springboard the audience and organization to a better future.

Mr. Denning outlines seven other types of storytelling you can use:

Communicating who you are: This is a colourful, well-told story, usually based on an incident in your life, which reveals some strength or vulnerability and helps others to understand you better. In some cases, the story may be from somebody else's life -- a hero of yours, for example -- but because you consider it significant it shows others what you value.

Communicating who the company is: These are the stories told about the company and its products, to develop trust and establish a brand.

Transmitting values: These parables describe an incident that exemplifies the values you want listeners to follow -- perhaps how one employee went beyond the call of duty to serve a customer. You don't begin by specifically naming the value or end by telling listeners to abide by that value, but instead reflect on what the story means to you.

Fostering collaboration: There are a variety of approaches possible here to help people work together, from tales about the past highlighting collaboration, to stories about the glorious future that will occur through the work of a task force, to the personal stories members of a new team share at their first meeting to build bonds.

Taming the grapevine: If dangerous rumours are escalating, you use a story -- often humorous -- to defuse the gossip. But Mr. Denning warns you can't be mean-spirited and can't ridicule a rumour or bad news that is true.

Sharing knowledge: These stories explain something that has gone wrong and how it was -- or wasn't -- fixed.

Leading people into the future: These share your vision of the future in a compelling way. While the springboard story tells about something in the past that can be extrapolated into the future, this is an invented, often quite vague, but evocative story of the future, like Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. It requires a high degree of verbal skill that not all leaders possess. Mr. Denning explains in detail how to craft each story, and provides a template for building your own stories in each category. If you're confused but intrigued about storytelling, the book can certainly point you in the right direction.

Also reviewed in the notice: Seth Godin's "All Marketers Are Liars" and Don Watson's "Death Sentences."

Read the entire review

September 14, 2005 | Permalink

Comments

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LgcO31 First of all, there’s no one else like YOU—your story is unique and you can tell about people, times, and places that only YOU can share.

Why not tell your grandchildren about you….plus their grandparents, great-grandparents, and even their great-great grandparents (that’s

your grandparents)! It’s really about creating a loving, lasting bond—preserving not just life stories, but relationships, for

generations to come.

Of course, you can also give them your own advice about love, work, and how to lead a good life. Here was my grandma’s advice to me: “Be

what you want. If you do something, do it the best you can.” Because it’s my grandma, it means so much more. I’ll always be able to

remember what she said because it was actually written down. What’s your advice for your family? This is your opportunity to write it

down.

Reminiscing is good for you too! Over 100 studies over the last 10 years have found that reminiscing lowers depression, alleviates

physical symptoms (arthritis, asthma), and stimulates the hippocampus where memories are stored in the brain. So consider the great

health reasons for reminiscing too.

Posted by: Beth Sanders | July 18, 2007 at 12:49 PM

J8OfBs First of all, there’s no one else like YOU—your story is unique and you can tell about people, times, and places that only YOU can share.

Why not tell your grandchildren about you….plus their grandparents, great-grandparents, and even their great-great grandparents (that’s

your grandparents)! It’s really about creating a loving, lasting bond—preserving not just life stories, but relationships, for

generations to come.

Of course, you can also give them your own advice about love, work, and how to lead a good life. Here was my grandma’s advice to me: “Be

what you want. If you do something, do it the best you can.” Because it’s my grandma, it means so much more. I’ll always be able to

remember what she said because it was actually written down. What’s your advice for your family? This is your opportunity to write it

down.

Reminiscing is good for you too! Over 100 studies over the last 10 years have found that reminiscing lowers depression, alleviates

physical symptoms (arthritis, asthma), and stimulates the hippocampus where memories are stored in the brain. So consider the great

health reasons for reminiscing too.

Posted by: Beth Sanders | July 18, 2007 at 12:51 PM

kRQab6 First there is the need to find the real meaning life has for you. This journey we are all on is a varied one, for sure, but there are some similar things we are all going through.

Each of us, in our search for meaning in life, has a vast amount of experience to draw upon. Our struggles and hardship, along with our achievements and blessings, teach us life’s lessons. Your experience, your strength and the hope that endures are part of your unique story — and part of the reason why you should tell your life story.

The second primary reason to tell your life story is to leave your mark. We all want to be remembered. Certainly we want to be remembered for the good we've done and for the significant accomplishments in our lives. There is satisfaction in a life well-lived. Living a life fully... richly experiencing what it means to be alive and involved in helping others is a great thing. To share with others who you are, what you are about and what you believe in is passing on some very valuable personal history.

Posted by: Maria Sanches | July 18, 2007 at 07:51 PM

TgRNgr Parks was born Rosa McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama. When she was still a young child her parents separated, and she moved with her mother to Montgomery. There she grew up in an extended family that included her maternal grandparents and her younger brother, Sylvester. Montgomery, Alabama, was hardly a hospitable city for blacks in the 1920s and 1930s. As she grew up, Rosa was shunted into second-rate all-black schools, such as the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, and she faced daily rounds of laws governing her behavior in public places. Ms. magazine contributor Eloise Greenfield noted that Rosa always detested having to drink from special water fountains and having to forgo lunch at the whites-only restaurants downtown. Still, wrote Greenfield, "with her mother's help, Rosa was able to grow up proud of herself and other black people, even while living with these rules.... People should be judged by the respect they have for themselves and others, Mrs. McCauley said. Rosa grew up believing this."

Posted by: Rosa McCauley | July 21, 2007 at 01:08 PM

5si3cM The Jim Crow rules for the public bus system in Montgomery almost defy belief today. Black customers had to enter the bus at the front door, pay the fare, exit the front door and climb aboard again at the rear door. Even though the majority of bus passengers were black, the front four rows of seats were always reserved for white customers. Bennett wrote: "It was a common sight in those days to see Black men and women standing in silence and silent fury over the four empty seats reserved for whites." Behind these seats was a middle section that blacks could use only if there was no white demand. However, if so much as one white customer needed a seat in this "no- man's land," all the blacks in that section had to move. Bennett concluded: "This was, as you can see, pure madness, and it caused no end of trouble and hard feeling." In fact, Parks herself was once thrown off a bus for refusing to endure the charade of entry by the back door. In the year preceding Parks's fateful ride, three other black women had been arrested for refusing to give their seats to white men. Still the system was firmly entrenched, and Parks would often walk to her home to spare herself the humiliation of the bus.

Posted by: Jim Crow | July 22, 2007 at 02:36 PM

3CXKKb A number of universities have awarded her honorary degrees, and she earned a prestigious job on the staff of Detroit congressman John Conyers. In 1988 Roxanne Brown noted: "Thirty-two years after she attracted international attention for sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Mrs. Parks's ardent devotion to human rights still burns brightly, like a well-tended torch that ignites her spirit and calls her to service whenever she is needed."

Posted by: Elizabeth Talor | July 25, 2007 at 12:53 PM