Storytelling

How to communicate with maximum impact?

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

February 14, 2024

Introduction

The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.

The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. Steve Jobs

Storytelling and leadership

Leadership

A leader “is is one or more people who selects, equips, trains, and influences one or more follower(s) who have diverse gifts, abilities, and skills and focuses the follower(s) to the organization’s mission and objectives, causing the follower(s) to willingly and enthusiastically expend spiritual, emotional, and physical energy in a concerted coordinated effort to achieve the organizational mission and objectives.” Winston and Patterson (2006, p. 8)

Storytelling

How will you inspire others to be part of your vision if you can’t communicate it?

Storytelling is a necessity of leadership.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou — American writer, poet, and civil rights activist

The power of good stories

I’ve learned that the ability to articulate your story or that of your company is crucial in almost every phase of enterprise management. Guber (2007)

Examples:

• A great salesperson knows how to tell a story in which the product is the hero.
• A successful line manager can rally the team to extraordinary efforts through a story that shows how short-term sacrifice leads to long-term success.
• An effective CEO uses an emotional narrative about the company’s mission to attract investors and partners, to set lofty goals, and to inspire employees.
• Sometimes, a well-crafted story can even transform a seemingly hopeless situation into an unexpected triumph.

The leader as storyteller

For the leader, storytelling is action oriented—a force for turning dreams into goals and then into results. Guber (2007)

Truth at the tribal fire

• Storytelling has always been also about instructing and leading
• Great storytelling does not conflict with truth

It was he who recorded the oral history of the tribe, encoding its beliefs, values, and rules in the tales of its great heroes, of its triumphs and tragedies. The life-or-death lessons necessary to perpetuate the community’s survival were woven into these stories: “We don’t go hunting in the Great Wood—not since that terrible day when three of our bravest were killed there by unknown beasts. Here’s how it happened …” (Guber 2007)

Great storytelling does not conflict with truth. In the business world and elsewhere, it is always built on the integrity of the story and its teller. (Guber 2007).

Truth found in an effective story

Guber (2007) distilled four kinds of truth found in an effective story:

Teller, audience,
moment, mission

• Truth to the teller — what a storyteller says must be consistent in their heart and mind
• Truth to the audience — the storyteller has to understand and recognize and what the audience wants and needs and address those wants and needs
• Truth to the moment — a storyteller adapts a story to the context in which the story is told
• Truth to the mission — a storyteller is “devoted to a cause beyond self.”

Adapting to the audience and moment demands behavioral complexity.

Structure

Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion

Ethos, pathos, logos

• Logos appeals to the audience’s reason, building up logical arguments.
• Ethos appeals to the status or authority so that listeners are more likely to trust the speaker.
• Pathos appeals to the emotions, e.g., trying to make the audience feel angry or sympathetic.

Telling good stories includes:

• Thinking up in advance exactly what arguments can be made both for and against a given proposition, selecting the best on your own side, and finding counterarguments to those on the other.
• You need to be clear about what your audience needs to know (or believe, which is the same thing in rhetoric) in order to understand that you are trustworthy, that you have the right to speak on the subject and that you are speaking in good faith. Your audience needs to believe that you are “a pretty honest guy”.
• Finding ways to drive your argument it forward. This is the stuff of your arguments, the way one point proceeds to another, as if to show that the conclusion to which you are aiming is not only the right one, but so necessary and reasonable as to be more or less the only one.

Good read: Ethos, Logos and Pathos: The Structure of a Great Speech

Story structure

Behind really good stories is a well thought-out structure that forms the backbone of the story. This backbone, called the story elements, help writers develop great stories. The essential elements of a story are:

Characters
Setup or conflict
Sequence of events (plot)
Resolution

Narrative map — general structure

General structure of a good story

 

 

 

 

Narrative maps consist of several important elements that make it easier to explain messages and give them clarity and context.

• Focus: This is the central part of a narrative. It is comparable to a headline that explains and highlights the core of the story. Is the focus about innovation, change, competition or something else?
• Conflict or challenge: What is the challenge, conflict or problem in the market that your company is dealing with? Why does this problem exist? Who is contributing to it? This begins to isolate the main problem within the story.
• Opportunity: What is the impact or opportunity for your organisation? This is what some people call an unmet need or an aha moment. This is something you can use to bring about change or to address and solve a problem.
• Approach: How does your story unfold? What are the three or four characters or key elements? What is the how, where and when?
• Resolution: All good stories have an ending or conclusion. How do you resolve the build-up from the beginning? Let’s say your story is about innovation and there are four ways the company will create something new. What is the benefit to a customer, an employee, the industry or the community? Where does this story end? Who sees the benefits?

Figure 1: General structure of a good story

Exercise

Imagine you work as an internal consultant at edding and you have developed a first-class innovation: a whiteboard marker that always works (e.g. because it has a built-in sensor that tells you when it is dry and a canister that makes recycling easier).

You have the opportunity to pitch the idea to the CEO and his board. You want to convince them to take a leap of faith and support your idea.

Form small teams of max. 2 students together, think of a story you want to tell and write it down. Be ready to perform it.

Note: Additional tips for writing a good story can be found on the cards available on Moodle

Narrative map — marker

Figure 2: The structure of a marker story

Example

Ric Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down?

Narrative map — Hudson River

Figure 3: The structure of the “3 things I learned while my plane crashed” story

Delivering

Some advice on public speaking from David JP Phillips, who has has spent 7 years studying 5000 speakers, amateurs and professionals.

Q&A

Literature

Guber, Peter. 2007. “The Four Truths of the Storyteller.” Harvard Business Review 85 (12): 52.

Winston, Bruce E, and Kathleen Patterson. 2006. “An Integrative Definition of Leadership.” International Journal of Leadership Studies 1 (2): 6–66.