What's Your Story?. Craig Wortmann
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this business?”
At that moment, we began to look at this case differently. Suddenly, we were in the action, and we had an emotional connection to this entrepreneur. The case came alive and we started to see it as a story that could end badly. That night, Steve taught us some important lessons about how to (and how not to) finance a new business. More than 12 years on, I don’t remember the name of the company, the industry, or the other characters. But I remember the lessons of the story. And that’s the only thing that counts.
This difference between case studies and stories is precisely what great teachers, doctors, and business leaders understand so well. You bring case studies “back to life” by adding the details that connect to what we care about, transforming an otherwise dry sequence of events. As the case unfolds in front of you, a story develops when you talk about what the characters were feeling—what scared them and what exhilarated them. That layer of extra information makes all the difference. It is what helps us engage with the content and what helps us remember.
“I have argued that a key—perhaps the key—to leadership, as well as the garnering of a following, is the effective communication of a story.”
– HOWARD GARDNER6
WHY STORIES WORK
I have worked with many leaders who send the memo and then ask: “Why aren’t my people getting it? It’s so simple!” My answer to these leaders is also simple: Tell them a story. It does take a little more work up front, but not much. And the downstream benefits far outweigh the up-front costs. Before we explore how to do this, let’s look at why stories work.
“We value narrative because the pattern is in our brain. Our brains are patterned for storytelling, for the consecutive.”
– DORIS LESSING7
There are ten main reasons why stories work, and these reasons are why business leaders are warming up to stories as a tool to enhance performance.
1. Stories create presence
One of the challenges that leaders are beginning to wake up to is presence. When most communication is facilitated by technology and comes in the form of bits and bullets, how can we ensure that we actually have people’s attention?
As the pendulum begins to swing and we pay more attention to information overload, many leaders are realizing that stories are a powerful tool that can be used to connect with people in a way that we are present to each other. Because stories are a two-way form of communication, and because they can’t be captured in bullet point form, they demand our attention. In a real way, they make us sit still for a minute. And when we give a story our attention, we can question, clarify, and confirm what’s taking place so that we walk away with a solid understanding of what’s being communicated.
Another reason that stories create presence is because they allow for a much-needed break from our information-drenched day. They give us a chance to pause and catch our breath.
Like the 1929 advertising slogan for Coca-Cola, a good story is “the pause that refreshes.” If there is something we truly need in our work day, it is to be refreshed. One of the hardest parts about any job—whether you are the CEO or you are a brand-new employee—is dealing with information overload. Sharing a story with people who normally have heads down pounding away at their jobs creates a space for them to pause, listen, reflect, and integrate what they have heard. Even the most simple of stories creates this space.
If stories are migrating along a path toward being considered serious business tools, then one of the stops along the way is Hollywood. Many business leaders and the publications they read have looked to Hollywood, not for entertainment’s sake, but for ideas and methods of storytelling. If the American movie machine has proven anything, it’s that people all over the world love a good story. Stories entertain, inform, refresh, and connect us—all good reasons to be present to them.
But why do stories create presence through connecting us? Because stories often connect with our emotions—something that bits and bullets never do. Therein lies the key lesson from Hollywood. Stories connect to our emotions. (This is where business leaders usually run away.) A natural ingredient of stories is emotion. If the story involves people, it often involves emotions too. I’ve seen leaders who are uncomfortable discussing anything with emotion try to “turn off” that component of the story, and the story always falls flat. They have hollowed it out and it no longer rings true. When leaders include the actual emotions of the story—whether their own or those of the characters—people get to see and hear something that they don’t often get in business. And it makes a connection to what they would be feeling and thinking.
Emotions engage our hearts. We can sympathize with a person in the story who is struggling or scared or tired. We feel joy when the person in the story overcomes her obstacles. These basic human emotions that we experience with stories build a connection to our hearts and a presence that is fundamentally different than the normal business communications aimed at our heads.
“When an idea wraps itself around an emotional charge, it becomes all the more powerful, all the more profound, all the more memorable.”
– ROBERT MCKEE8
“I’M WITH YOU”
A story I often tell to aspiring entrepreneurs is about the early days of growing WisdomTools. The economy had tanked after 9/11 had taken place. The Enron debacle was in full swing. It seemed as if all of our potential clients were hiding under their desks for fear of being laid off. As a result, no one was buying anything and we were in a deep dive. Without clients, we had no money to make payroll. We had to make very, very difficult decisions to let most of our staff go. It hurt so badly that it felt like we had all been punched in the gut.
After we watched our friends and colleagues go, the remaining members of the team came together to talk. We discussed how hard it was and how bleak the future looked. The inevitable question came quickly: “Craig, is this going to happen again? How soon?” Because I didn’t know the answer, I told everyone, “I have no idea. I have no answers for you because I can’t predict when this might end.” And then we started telling stories. We told stories about when the company got started, and what Marty’s (our founder) original vision was. We told stories about the clients we served and the fun we had had.
As the meeting wrapped up and over the next couple of weeks, each remaining person on our team, in their own way, came up to me individually and said: “I’m with you. If this thing ends badly, I’ll be there. I just want you to know that. I’m not giving up.” I had never had more love and respect for a group of people I worked with ever before. And I never looked at the company the same way again.
2. Stories aren’t bullet points
When a leader tells a story, context gets created. Context is what is missing from bullet points. In the transition from our thoughts and ideas to writing (or saying) them as bullets points, all of the context gets stripped away. But context—“seeing” the situation unfold as the story is told—is what enables us to truly understand.
“Stories are shortcuts we use because we’re too overwhelmed by data to discover all the details.”
– SETH GODIN9
Stories honor the complexity of our lives by showing real situations and all of the messiness of those situations and the tradeoffs inherent in them. By contrast, when we strip away the context from situations to get down to the bits and bullets, we oversimplify. By oversimplifying, we remove the real learning and leave people feeling empty.
WHAT LISTING PLEASE?
Using bits and bullets versus telling a story inside an organization is like trying to have a conversation with automated directory assistance. In order to squeeze more costs out of our business units, we talk more often to technology than we talk to humans. Consider dialing directory assistance. Instead of just asking a person to look up a number for us, these systems rely on our ability to pronounce the name correctly. Indeed, this is powerful technology that saves a lot of money,