Module 6 discussion

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12The power of stories

In July 1973, I was escorted into the newsroom of The Star newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was my first day of work and I was dressed in a brand-new suit, shining with enthusiasm and naivety. The veteran news- room chief who showed me to my desk guided me with a firm hand and a gruff voice. I was overawed at the sight and sound of 50 journalists at work in an open office that seemed to be nothing but noise – telephones, typewriters and talking. How could anyone actually work in here?

My new boss pointed to the journalists shouting on the telephone and taking notes, and said: ‘They’re gathering information for the next deadline.’

He pointed to the ones hammering away at their typewriters and said: ‘They’re trying to meet the current deadline.’

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Murray, K. (2011). The language of leaders : How top ceos communicate to inspire, influence and achieve results. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from westga on 2020-10-07 11:56:31.

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Then he pointed to the journalists who looked idle, staring into space with their hands behind their heads, or looking intently out of a window, and I thought he was going to tell me those were the ones on a break. He didn’t. He said: ‘They’re working hardest of all – they’re working out how best to tell their stories.’

I’ve been looking for the best way to tell stories ever since. Telling stories is in my blood, and encouraging people to tell me their stories is a way of life. Telling a good story well is hard work, but pays enormous dividends. Why?

It is because when you listen to a story, you become an active participant in the tale. A story requires you to activate your imagination to see the detail. Equally, you can hear the sounds and feel the emotions being conveyed. Research has shown that it is only when people listen with their hearts and minds, when they actively engage with a story and use their imagination to co-create the story they are hearing, that ideas take root and lodge in their memories.

Did you hear the cacophony of the newsroom? Did you feel my sense of awe? Did you see the journalists staring out the window? If you did, you were engaged in the story, co-creating it by using your imagination to see what I was describing. This is why stories are so powerful.

These days there are so many distractions in our lives – television, mobile phones, e-mail, internet, newspapers, posters, radio – it isn’t easy getting cut- through and grabbing someone’s attention. But stories can get instant access.

On the other hand, the first slide of a PowerPoint presentation is like a klaxon sounding a warning to the cynic in you. You may be interested in what is to come, but as you prepare to deal with the charts and data and logic about to unfold, the warning horn has called into action your critical faculties. The way that you listen changes. Even though you pay close atten- tion, and even though your brain has been fully engaged, you can sometimes find it hard to remember much about the presentation, just a day later. You have been so busy judging it that you have little capacity left to retain it.

A good story is like a Stealth fighter plane; it can slip beneath your cynic’s radar and fire its message straight into your heart. Most likely, the next day, you’ll remember the story. If something about the story engaged you, you’ll even retell it. You may even change your behaviour as a result. This is why leaders love stories.

Stories are the Superglue of messages, and stories move people. If you get to their hearts, their minds will follow.

Stories tell us great truths There is a crucial difference between the stories you are likely to use in busi- ness and the stories you tell at dinner parties. At dinner parties, you want to entertain. In business, you want to achieve a result. Achieving a result

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requires discipline, an understanding of the audience, a clear view of your desired outcome and a good story with two key attributes.

The best stories either deliver a powerful lesson or highlight a great and resonating truth. Through stories, people identify with tragedy or triumph, with hopes and fears, with values they value or behaviours they loathe. In this way, storytelling leaders become truth tellers to their people, and enable them to bring meaning to their listeners.

As you have already read, the leaders I interviewed told me dozens of stories. Many of them were uncomfortable with the idea of ‘storytelling’, and preferred to talk about using ‘anecdotes’ instead, but all of them used stories to illustrate a concept or demonstrate a point. My interviews were the richer for it, and I can remember pretty much every story I was told.

At first, each leader logically and rationally answered every question I put to them. But it didn’t take very long before the first story appeared. Then they began to talk in stories, and more from the heart. When they told stories, their body language changed. Their eyes seemed to light up, they would lean ever so slightly closer towards me and they would become more animated.

Many of the things leaders have to convey – from setting direction, man- aging expectations, setting and reinforcing values, revealing the authentic person they are – are not easily done through key messages. These more intangible things are better relayed in stories.

Logic gets to the brain, stories get to the heart Sir Nicholas Young of the Red Cross says a storytelling organization is a healthy organization. ‘I just love stories. They are incredibly powerful and potent ways of getting messages across, far more powerful than statistics or analysis, the death-by-PowerPoint approach. Stories move me and they move people in the organization.

‘Wherever I travel in the world, I’m always on the lookout for stories, particularly stories that move people. To tears, if necessary. For a charity, getting people to give money is a real humanitarian act, and to encourage people to do that you need to move them emotionally.

‘Inside the Red Cross, stories are incredibly powerful change catalysts. People love to hear about the really heroic things that we do and those stories are very necessary and we tell them a lot, but the stories that work hardest are the ones that demonstrate what we still have to do, how much better we need to be. When I come back from a trip to places like Haiti, I can probably get more out of the organization by inspiring people with stories that illustrate what we still need to do than by telling them about things we have already done.’

Dame Amelia Fawcett of the Guardian Media Group says stories are the oldest communication tool known to man – ‘and still the most effective’. She

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cautions that good stories are authentic stories. ‘You can’t just make up stories – they have to be based on actual experience. And you have to use stories with discretion. People who use stories all the time, without backing them up with data, will fall flat. Stories can help people understand your values, or who you are, and draw lessons that influence the way they behave.’

Sir Maurice Flanagan of Emirates Group uses stories to fortify the points he’s trying to make. ‘A good story combined with strong logic and support- ing statistics can go a very long way. Logic gets to the brain and stories get to the heart.’

Rupert Gavin of Odeon and UCI Cinemas says that great stories have the power to permeate through the whole organization. ‘The best stories have the power of myth. They become embedded in your organization and the more people pick up on those stories the more they become the embodiment of the organization. Those stories sometimes can have the power to help people decide why they prefer working in your company rather than any other, or how to behave in difficult situations.

‘In our world, the world of cinema, the story is central to our DNA. If we can’t get stories, then who can? It is the power of stories that can differentiate success from failure.

‘You have to have a strategic vision for the enterprise you lead, but it only becomes powerful when you’ve converted it into a story – a story about where you have been, about where you’re going, about how you will behave along the way. And you have to persuade everybody in the organization that they are part of the story. Your story has to describe how people are going to feel when they reach your destination, so that they feel it is going to be worth the journey getting there.’

Barbara Cassani, formerly of Go Fly airline and the 2012 Olympics, says stories are everywhere and you don’t have to work too hard to find them. ‘We all know the leaders who stick to a few stories and repeat them endlessly. You need someone close to you to tell you that you’re becoming boring with the stories you tell. The great thing is that it isn’t hard to find them. When people know you want stories they bring them to you. The best stories are the ones which shine a light on exemplary performance by employees. When leaders tell those stories, they send powerful signals into the organization about the behaviours everyone should adopt.’

The four types of business stories Looking through the dozens of stories in my interviews, and reflecting on the stories I have heard from leaders and have coached leaders to tell, it seems to me there are basically four kinds of business story to look for and tell:

the ‘who you are’ story (be yourself better);�M the context or future story (future focus);�M

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the values at work story (mission and values);�M the customer or needs story (outside in).�M

The ‘who you are’ story, which gives people an insight into you as a leader, is often delivered with a self-deprecating style and a touch of humour. A close cousin is the ‘connection’ story, designed to create empathy with an audience or to break down barriers, and show people that you can identify with how they think and feel. The ‘future’ story typically focuses people on what it is that needs to be achieved. The ‘values at work’ story shines a light on employees doing exactly the right thing. (Of course, sometimes, leaders will use ‘bad values at work’ stories to show where things need to improve.) The ‘customer’ story highlights a customer need, or provides an example of great or bad customer service.

Here are some examples of each of these different kinds of stories.

The who you are story Many leaders also told me that it was useful to reveal past mistakes in order to show your human side. One such story came from Lady Barbara Judge.

‘This is a story that illustrates a big mistake I made when I didn’t ask for advice. I was asked to be chairman of William Hill, a large chain of betting shops, when it floated. I’m American, and to Americans, gambling is not seen as savoury. I thought of a working man with a small pay cheque walk- ing into a betting shop on the way home, and when he walked out again there was no pay cheque left. I thought, I don’t want to do this, because I really do not believe in gambling, so I turned it down.

‘Almost as soon as I turned it down, I started talking to people about the job, whereas before I turned it down, I hadn’t spoken to anybody. They all said I was crazy, that in Britain everybody bets, including the Queen. I was totally in the wrong, because I didn’t think to get other people’s perspectives. In fact it would have been a nice job. Ever since then, when I’ve had a hard decision to make, I always consult a number of people to make sure my perspectives are relevant.

‘Good stories always have a lesson in them. When a leader is prepared to talk about their mistakes, it helps people to identify with you. People can identify with you and build trust.’

Barbara Stocking of Oxfam says that stories can also help you to establish an emotional relationship with the public.

‘Yesterday I was on a visit to Wales. I went to a Young People’s Centre where they are working with disadvantaged 16- to 25-year-olds. I found myself explaining why Oxfam had come to visit the centre and telling them about the work we do. I told the story about our experience with cholera in Haiti.

‘We were trying to build latrines for people who never actually use latrines. They go home and use plastic bags which are called flying toilets. Once we discovered this, we had these biodegradable bags made, which can go into a

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big pit and be environmentally friendly. Now they are called pee-pooh bags. The youngsters thought this was absolutely horrendous but really funny. It was a great story to break down the barrier between me, as a visiting ‘chief executive’ and these young kids. Telling stories about the realities of life can enable you to engage better with people.’

The future story Sir Anthony Bamford of JCB says a recent trip to China provided him with huge insight and motivation. He is now telling the story of his trip to all of his teams to invigorate them to the possibilities that exist there.

‘While I was in China I was told about their system of five-year develop- ment plans. I went to visit various places and found that these plans cascade from the very top right down to the smallest village in China. From what I saw, most of these plans actually work to at least 90 per cent. The incredible thing is that they do what they say they’ll do. They have hugely ambitious plans in place now. A large part of this planning is to do with the develop- ment of infrastructure. Of course, for building roads and infrastructure, they require a lot of heavy machinery. The big question is: how will we respond?’

Sir Anthony now tells this story widely inside the company to keep people focused on a key opportunity for the business.

The values at work story Christopher Garnett, formerly chief executive of Great North Eastern Rail- way, remembers a time when he was trying to get employees to be prepared to take more initiative, especially when dealing with customers.

‘We often had problems when overhead wires would blow down on the tracks and stop our trains. On one occasion there was a train that got stuck at Berwick-upon-Tweed. After being held up for hours, the train ran out of food. The manager of the train called a taxi and went into Berwick and bought all the fish and chips he could find. He came back and gave the fish and chips to all the passengers. The reaction inside the company was to question why he did that. I not only backed him but went around telling that story everywhere as an example of how our values should work when put to the test.

‘That story helped to drive significant changes to people’s attitudes as they began to understand the scope they had when showing initiative. Most importantly, it told them that I would back them when they did.’

The customer story We saw in Chapter 7 how Paul Polman of Unilever used the story of his visit to a home in Egypt to explain to people what his company does for customers.

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Phil Bentley of British Gas tells a similar story about an old lady, Mrs Crampton, living in a home on a post-war housing estate in Leeds.

‘Some of the housing stock in Britain is incredibly poor. After the war many houses were made with concrete, no bricks and no insulation. We got to hear about one lady living in such a house, where she had no gas and had to rely on electric storage heaters that loaded up overnight. They gave out heat during the day but by three o’clock she would be sitting with a coat and gloves on because there was no heat left. By five o’clock she would go to bed because it was so cold.

‘We went in and we put in new windows for better insulation and we put in a special pump which is a very efficient heating system. I went to visit her after this and she was complaining again. Now it was too hot, but her heating bill had more than halved.’

Phil says he tells the story inside the company because it is a great example of showing employees how his company can bring quality to people’s lives. ‘It is a bit like the janitor telling the president he’s there to put a man on the moon – I want my people to know that we’re here to improve the lives of our customers in whatever way we can. If I talk about the importance of our community energy savings programme and how we’re spending £100 million a year, it gets lost on people. But if the story about Mrs Crampton doesn’t tug on their heartstrings, they shouldn’t be working for British Gas.’

Rupert Gavin of Odeon and UCI Cinemas tells a story about kettles in order to explain how important the consumer confidence index is in his industry.

‘As a cinema group, we probably sit in a slightly different place from a lot of other organizations who are struggling in the recession. We are selling dreams, and relatively affordable dreams. In times of austerity it is all about confidence.

‘When I worked at Dixons, we were one of the biggest sellers of kettles in the world. We wanted to know what drove kettle sales. A kettle isn’t hugely expensive, and they don’t break down very often, and they are not driven by fashion or technological trends. Yet we could see the sales changing – some weeks we would be selling 8,000 kettles and at other times of the year the sales were down. We spent forever trying to correlate what was driving kettle purchases. We tried to correlate them with new home purchases, anything that would help us to make some sense of sales.

‘Finally we found that there was one very important factor – the consumer confidence index. This determined the movement in kettle sales, and not just kettle sales but other things as well. The confidence index was completely different from pay and discretionary spending power – it had everything to do with how people felt. We discovered it was one of the most telling indexes that the country has.

‘Do I feel good? Do I feel optimistic? I may have the money but if I’m worried that things are going to get worse I’m not going to spend on big ticket items if I am concerned. But I will spend on small luxuries. This is why the cinema market has actually done quite well during the recession. Going to

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the cinema is a small amount of enjoyment with relatively little commitment. As a result the cinema has done well, theatre has done well – and condoms, of course, have done well.’

Good stories are easy to find and easy to tell

Good stories will have characters with personality. They will have a conflict or challenge. They will have vivid images. They will have a key turning point. They will ‘show’, not ‘tell’.

Chris Satterthwaite of Chime Communications advises that even people who are not skilled at storytelling can tell a good story if they stick to the simple formula of ‘Problem. Solution. Benefit’.

He says every story contains that basic formula. ‘Problem? The princess is stuck in a tower where no one can reach her. She sings at night to overcome loneliness. Solution? A brave prince hears her magical voice and is moved to fight his way to the top of the tower to free her. Benefit? After overcoming a series of challenges, they ride away into a happy future together.’

Craig Tegel was managing director of Adobe Systems in Northern Europe when I worked with him. Now he is president and representative director of Adobe in Japan. He had always been concerned about communicating with large groups of people. ‘When you work for a multinational it can be hard to convey the corporate message in a way you can put into your own voice and get over with authenticity.’

When I first met him, Craig faced a crucial presentation in front of 300 customers. He had to engage these people, be truly authoritative and spark change. He was armed with a battery of communication materials – slides, video clips and a carefully crafted script – yet he was still worried. Something felt wrong. I told him to use just four stories. No slides, no script, and just four stories he enjoyed telling. He should use those four stories as the four pillars of his talk, and build what he had to say on those stories. Obviously, he was reluctant, looking back at all the work in his mountain of close- written slides. After a little nudging, he agreed.

We quickly identified the things he wanted people to be thinking and saying after his speech, which in turn helped to identify four stories that we knew had the right takeouts. We found those stories in his experience inside 30 minutes, and articulated them in minutes flat. We rehearsed them several times, with me subtly refining the way he told them, but he was a natural. (We are all natural storytellers; the art is in our DNA.) Afterwards, I sent him home to practise in front of a mirror. In less than 24 hours, he was ready.

Craig threw away his graphs and stood before his people armed with only a microphone. He told the stories well. They all came from his experience, reflected his values, cut to the core of what needed to be done and powerfully,

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emotionally demonstrated why clients needed a new relationship with his company. Afterwards, he was jubilant. The feedback was incredible.

One member of the audience said: ‘You really knew what you were talking about... authoritative, clear – and with no damn slides to distract, people really heard what you had to say!’

Craig’s relief was immense, his clients were engaged and his confidence redoubled. Now he is a strong advocate for the real bottom-line business benefit of stories. ‘The right use of stories opens up new leads and new pos- sibilities. After presentations, clients come up to me and say, “I relate to what you were saying, I believe you understand what we’re going through, I would like to talk to you about what Adobe can do for me.” Inside and outside the company, stories work. The best is that more customers come to us from listening to my stories and I have the pleasure of knowing that what I get out of it overlaps completely with what the company needs.’

A key point of this story is that practice makes perfect. You should never tell a story if you don’t love the story. Of course, you have to judge whether the audience is in the mood for one, or whether analysis actually is better – and there will be those times. However good the story, it can still fall flat if badly told. I believe that you have to tell a story to yourself at least 10 times before you become comfortable with it.

Choosing the right story So, storytelling in business can give leaders an ‘emotional edge’ that leads to real competitive advantage. This is why I collect them, relish their structure, characters and colour. I admire their ability to hook the imagination and their versatility to fulfil varying needs at different times.

What stories should we choose? The key principle, as always, must be to change behaviours and achieve results. The first step is to define your purpose. Since stories in business are designed to provoke action, be clear what your stories are for. Remember: it is the takeout that is key, not the message. Ask yourself who you need to influence and what you want them to do. Give particular attention to ‘What’s in it for him?’ – ie what benefit accrues to the people whose behaviours you want to change, what will persuade them that acting differently is in their interest too? Finally, know what you want them to take out of the story, but don’t make this your message.

Let people come to that conclusion themselves. David Morley of Allen & Overy says messages sink in better when people

work things out for themselves. ‘There’s something about the discovery process which helps people to remember better. When they conclude things from your story, it is so much more powerful than if you try to tell them in a series of dry points.’

You may believe your organization must embrace change. Look for a ‘future story’ that talks so vividly about your vision of a typical day in the

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future that it will make everyone else want to get to this inspiring place. You might want your people to have a different value. Then look for a great story about a principled decision. But be warned: you had better be someone who really aspires to that future or makes those principled decisions, other- wise all the story shows is the fatal gap between the storyteller and the story. The storyteller has to be authentic.

One simple story can achieve more than a volume of rules

There is a great truth in the fact that we sometimes find ourselves having to communicate on millions of trivial issues when we fail to get over just one simple profound point.

Some years ago, I was asked to counsel the safety director of a home construction company. He was passionate about health and safety but his staff knew ‘Steve’ as angry, controlling and adversarial; they had no sense of what drove him or why he pushed so furiously for every last detail to be checked. Steve fumed that his people ‘weren’t paying attention’, hated that they merely responded to crises and never sought active ways to tackle problems or bolt the fine points down.

We dug into his beliefs and values to find what really drove him. Steve told me how, at a previous company, a boy had strayed onto one of his sites. He had managed to get through a gap in the fence after everyone had gone home, fallen into a deep pit excavated for foundations and had been severely injured. In pain, bleeding profusely, he died alone in the night.

Steve took on the agonizing responsibility of telling the boy’s mother himself. It was his duty, but it was the most harrowing experience of his life. It was made all the more bitter when he learned the gap in the fence had not been secured by one person in his crew. The pit had not been protected properly by a different member of his crew; by themselves, minor omissions, but a confluence of details which proved fatal.

Steve’s credo became that no detail was too small when it came to health and safety. No one could have mistaken the strength of his feeling when he told me, ‘I never want to have to tell another mother that her child has been in an accident on one of our sites.’

I advised Steve to go and tell that story everywhere in the organization. Every chance he got, he was to tell that story without making any other points. ‘Just tell that story and then get out,’ I told him. His story, when told, had a profound and positive impact on his business.

Steve’s entire workforce saw why attending to such details of health and safety practice was important and responded wholeheartedly. His story moved them in a way that rules and regulations never could. Authentic, based on his strong point of view and entirely appropriate to his organization, it

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changed behaviours and raised the benchmark for safety. His people did what was right whether he was there or not and were happier doing it.

Initially, Steve had acted rationally in pursuing a strategy of active health and safety for his company but this alone left him frustrated and his people cold. His story channelled his passion and produced a win–win for all the stakeholders – especially Steve, who now knew what his integrity could achieve.

Once you understand the power of stories, finding the right ones for your business is just a matter of looking and listening. Stories have the potential to encourage the heroes around you. ‘Listen with intent’ and you will find stories everywhere. Think about your stakeholders – your customers, employees and shareholders. Look for strategy stories, product benefit stories, brand stories, stories about history, quality and image.

Armed with these stories you can challenge, enable, inspire and encourage the behaviours the organization needs. Use them to celebrate the everyday heroes around you and they may even make a hero of you in return.

This is not to banish logic – use analysis when analysis is better, sense when a story is wanted and when one is not. Never use a story you don’t love or one that is half-baked. But a story you believe in, when used well, offers a route to the heart. That’s where we go to get people to take action with energy and enthusiasm.

K E Y P O I N T S F R O M C H A P T E R 12 Stories are the Superglue of messages.�M Great stories have legs and travel far: they can define you or your �M organization. Every leader uses stories, knowing that we are wired to listen, �M imaginatively, when we are told stories. Good stories get under the cynical radar and touch hearts.�M Backed up by facts to cover off the mind, stories have the power �M to move people. The best stories tell us about customer experiences, good and bad;�M

or make heroes out of employees delivering the values of the – organization; or show up the frustrations of workers unable to do their best – because of the system; or vividly portray the future; – or reveal aspects of the leader to the audience. –

Let people conclude the message or lesson in the story – that will �M make it more memorable.

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The best stories have in them a resonating truth, and must be �M authentic. Use the problem–solution–benefit (or disbenefit) method to tell �M your stories, as this is the basis of pretty much any story you care to think of. Tell only stories you love, and make sure you practise.�M Repetition is key. Only when you’ve told a story 10 times do �M people start ‘getting it’.

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