Storytelling has been regarded as one of the essential parts of leadership. Some of the most successful companies in the world use storytelling very intentionally as a leadership skill. Nike, for example, almost all their senior executives are designed corporate storytellers. P&G has hired Hollywood movie directors to teach its senior executives how to lead better with the storytelling skills. Airbnb has created an excellent brand community based on the stories of each host family. What is the magic of storytelling? Why we need storytelling on the way building influential leadership? What is the influence in developing a successful brand?
Why Leadership = Storytelling?
It is not always easy to build relationship with people in a short time. Let’s see if you are a team leader and want your team members could fully contribute to their work, a climate with high psychological safety will be beneficial. The key? Personal storytelling activities. By sharing the stories with each other, the focus of participants could transform from self-protection to productive discussion itself.
Besides, storytelling is helpful in improving familiarity between people. As a team leader, you don’t need to stand in front all the time, sometimes, you just need to throw a topic and let the team voice themselves. Team with a high degree of familiarity will lead to an efficient performance
Storytelling is all about sharing, which is also an easy way for people to know you better, meanwhile, enable you to understand others. Remembering the first step for us to get to know the world would, probably, start from the sentence “once upon a time…” when we are still children.
As a leader, you need employees to show the biggest passion for their work, you need them to be motivated, or to present a spirit of unity at work. But the reality is not like that, you can’t just order people to “get motivated”, “to be creative” or “start loving your work”, we are human beings and our brain didn’t work like that. But with a good story, your expression will be more convincing and acceptable especially when listeners could resonate with their personal experience. People are more willing to explore the meaning of work in the way they believe it is.
Storytelling, in this point of view, enables the possible existence of different illustrations on the same topic, meanwhile, keep them on the track to the same destination, that is all for the good sake of the company, or in the fairy tale version: “prince and princess are happily live together”.
More Engaging and More Human
Storytelling is far more useful in many situations than most leaders realize, from the abstract topics such as inspiring the organization, setting a vision, defining culture to the marketing issues like launch new products and customer relationship management. Talking about the good use of storytelling, you don’t want to miss the excellent pitch that Elon Musk adopted for the Tesla Powerwall.
At the start of the pitch, Musk didn’t go straight down to talk about the product, instead, he showed an image of burning fossil fuels, the enemy that is getting in the way of customer’s happiness. Not only painting an emotionally resonate picture that how the customers are struggling, who is to blame and why, but also spreading a sense of urgency that something has to be done to address the problem.
By explaining the crucial point in the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, Musk provided the audience a perfect reason to embrace a breaking point moment of the whole industry. Then, Musk threw a hook to his audience, the promised wonderland. Like what he said in the pitch, we will all be freed from the old model of power supply, “this handy fusion reactor in the sky called Sun” will be the future. At this stage, the audience is ready to buckle in for the rode and looking forward to seeing how Musk will lead them to there.
However, like every good story will have a twist, Musk also laid out the obstacles on the way. They are huge, tough, and most importantly, the audience should be really impressed. Because the more breathtaking the given challenges are, the better to show the superb capability that you and your team stand for. After Musk explained how Tesla will overcome the difficulties, it is the time to introduce the new Tesla Powerwall. The audience now is practically salivating for the Powerwall product video.
This pitch had achieved a huge success at an event in Hawthorne, California in 2015, after that the company followed up in a statement on its website declaring that “Tesla is not just an automotive company it’s an energy innovation company.”
It’s a milestone in the history of Tesla, the presentation video had generated almost 800，000 views since it was first published on YouTube in 2015, watch it below.
Like how storytelling helps people to build their leadership, such narrative strategies also help a brand to present its ethos and value. Sharpie is a brand of writing instruments, but mainly famous for its marker pens. Their Instagram account posts incredible creations by employees and fans of their pens, celebrating the sparks of talent.
More than that, Sharpie also encourages their audience to share their stories on the way to pursue their dream with the hashtag #StartSomething. With this hashtag, Sharpie is able to find the relevant posts and establish its own fans community.
In a post of Sharpie earlier this year, lettering artist Adam Vicarel designed a denim jacket with Sharpie markers and pens. He accompanied his post of the jacket with a story about his struggle to become a professional artist.
It’s not just an art piece, it’s a manifesto of life attitude: to live boldly and vividly. The marker pen of Sharpie is a weapon, which helps countless dreamers to fight against all the difficulties; it’s also a harbor, which provides you a moment of peace when you are tired of traveling.
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