Leading with the Stories We Tell.
Storytelling is the tool that addresses people’s emotions, before their rational minds. It has the potential to overcome the barriers that some build to protect themselves against external world views or ideas. - Ludmila Mládková
Stories that are inspired by experiences, born from engaging with people, coping with a situation, learning a new skill or developing ideas leave better impressions on people. Your characters should be drawn from real people and when appropriate, fictional ones. Use analogies that properly illustrate your point, and tie in with your theme.
Storytelling is useful in inspiring, setting a vision, teaching important lessons, defining culture and values and explaining who you are, what you believe and most importantly why you believe it. - WorldWorld Literacy Foundation
For those of us who are creative storytellers, the ideas we strive to convey are interwoven with certain value propositions that let our audience relate with the lessons and sentiments we capture and express, and forms part of the style deployed for the narrative.
To prevail on your audience, you must retain their attention. This is a quality often integrated into leadership styles. Your team must be made to feel like they are a part of something bigger. You must give everyone the opportunity to contribute; which further encourages them to become more open and productive within the team and independently. So will your readers if your story is authentic.
Throughout life, we build on and enhance the skills to become effective leaders. We use critical thinking to ponder on challenges; we use creativity to tackle issues in a unique way, social and emotional awareness to build empathy and inspire the teams we lead - World Literacy Foundation.
Building blocks to reflect in the process of leadership include character, personal capabilities, interpersonal skills, leading organizational change and focus on results, given in no particular order. These are the skills that make people effective leaders.
So if you are reading this, begin to integrate storytelling into your leadership style (if you haven’t).
