When a leader inspires, he or she breathes life and energy into their followers. When we reflect on the extraordinarily motivating speeches Churchill made, it’s clear that no amount of PowerPoint (had it existed) and no amount of consultancy or accountancy models would ever have had the effect of his well chosen words. And Martin Luther King had a dream, he didn’t have a change goal and wasn't at a critical point of inflection. Or was he?
The results of a study at the London Business School show how much of the message we retain depending on the vehicle of communication:
- Statistics = 5-10%
- Statistics and Story = 25-30%
- Story = 65-70%
And the moral of this story is that if you are delivering the ‘Who we are' (Brand Identity), 'this is where we’re going' (Mission/vision), and 'this is how we’re going to get there' (strategy)’ piece, then don’t rely too much on statistics alone to land the message.
Business, emotion and non-sensory language (or why so many business speakers are boring)
Do you remember the strapline to the ‘80’s movie ‘Alien’? ‘In space no one can hear you scream’. These few words create an image (space), a sound (screaming) and a feeling (not a very nice feeling). Compare it with ‘dedicated management capability’ or ‘randomised user-orientated response’ – these are non-sensory words, and they abound in the corporate world. Now, if you put enough of these non-sensory words together you will trip something in the listener’s brain and a film and a fog will appear before their eyes as they fall asleep or escape into daydream.
Tell me a story
These non-sensory words are the vocabulary of science, borrowed in business to give a veneer of credibility (‘it must be true, it sounds scientific’). Somehow we are not reassured by too much feeling or emotion in business. After all, the language of love, romance, of the emotional life is the language of metaphor (‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?...). This language excites the imagination; it creates feelings, images, sounds, smells. Remember your first kiss? The first record you bought? The smell of coffee roasting? The visual imagery of being surrounded by your loved ones? Often we believe that these feeling, these emotions, cloud and corrupt the experiment and enterprise we call business. Yet if you want to tell me about values, like trust and integrity, don’t give me the science or the text-book definition, give me the metaphor, give me comparisons to help me understand, give me examples, tell me the story.
Getting the story straight: the hero’s journey
The most effective and versatile storytelling tool must be The Hero’s Journey based on Joseph Campbell's notion of the mono myth. There is no space to do justice to it here, but by way of a simple explanation, the Hero’s Journey represents the central narrative that underlies any story of growth or change regardless of cultural origin. It is a framework which allows an organisation, team or individual to examine past and present change, both personal (largely emotional) and corporate (largely rational) and to anticipate and explore future change.
The Hero’s Journey formed the main plank of a leadership program for a large petrochemical company. The requirement was for creative consultancy and support to ensure that the leadership models moved from theory to action. The metaphor of a journey in which their goal was perceived to be heroic and worthwhile was a powerful theme for the hard nosed, analytical top 200 worldwide. What might have been an adequate leadership program, turned into something of a movement once the goals, ambitions, leadership competencies, business targets and the roles of each individual were seen through the lens of the Hero’s Journey.
The work of these leadership programs was practical stuff with real life outcomes, and the commercial objectives of the company were surpassed ahead of time. This success was correlated to the emerging inclusive culture instigated by the leadership program and the tools and practices having been driven so deeply into the individual business units – in particular.
Storytelling has now become a widely accepted form of instilling advice and best practise in refineries. The Global Vice-President described the program as being responsible for ‘… a phenomena that's growing within our organisation’. When did you last hear that about a communication campaign?
Thus far, we've applied the Hero’s Journey as a storytelling device:
Above all, the Hero’s Journey and the stories it inspires is a means by which corporate objectives may become personal aims, and thereby create value, purpose and perspective. It provides an opportunity for people to bring themselves to work and I believe the vast majority of us know that we’re much more effective and fulfilled when we do.
(Blog based on the chapter by Ian Buckingham and Paul Miller in the forthcoming Communicator's Handbook, Gower 2008).