Since my last email three CEOs have shared with me that their primary concern was the overwhelm and fatigue of their leadership team and their employees. Last time I wrote about how to structure your leadership communications. Today I want to touch on something more powerful than facts, something that connects and energises people on an entirely new level; something that literally 'floodlights’ your communications: storytelling. In the same way that recognising your people for outstanding acts of thoughtfulness and courage, the act of sharing personal stories reminds us of our shared humanity and purpose. (In the words of the brilliant Ben Crowe, Ash Barty’s mindset coach, “We are human beings not human doings”.) As a result, sharing authentic, inspiring human stories can actually ease the sense of fatigue and overwhelm and increase your listener’s cognitive capacity to respond under pressure. More than ever, right now your people need to hear great, authentic, inspiring stories. The good news is that you don’t need a marketing team to do this for you - you just need a few essentials: 5 Essentials for Emotionally Intelligent Storytelling
Ensure relevance to your audience. Share a story that you know will resonate with your listener- and make sure they also resonate for you because your emotion will then transfer with sincerity.
Follow a structure. A clear structure makes it easy for the brain to absorb and remember.
Be authentic. The less polished the more impact. If possible, add visuals – images are processed 60,000 times faster than text.
Tell your story about a single person not hundreds of people. As every good fundraiser knows, your audience will 'switch off' when you talk about the thousands of people you’ve helped. The main character of your story has to be an individual (client, employee, founder, volunteer, parent, carer, donor) not an organisation.
Ideally, tell it in the first person. As a leader, you have to be prepared to be vulnerable in order to earn your right to lead in a crisis. So share something of yourself.
Our stories build us and bind us. They can also have the opposite effect. Whether you’re aware of it or not, we're always storytelling - to ourselves and others. So, it all gets back to self-awareness and reflection.
Which is all so much harder when the ground is constantly shifting.
Hang in there, I hope you find this content helpful. Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Warm regards
Fran