People are natural storytellers. From the moment we learn to speak, we use stories to communicate and to express our needs and desires. Great storytelling happens when the person telling the story is emotionally involved in the story itself—passionate about the narrative and interested in listeners' responses.
Great leaders mirror those dispositions. They are passionate, and they care about the response of people they are leading.
Here are three more similarities between great storytelling and great leadership.
Understanding your audience
An author must understand her audience's motivations and values. This is important to constructing a narrative that resonates with them. The same is true of leadership. This is how leaders build and sell a strategy their staff can get behind.
Learning to understand an audience is about understanding the social context in which the audience is sitting. We are influenced by our surroundings, our friends, our education, our political involvements. These understandings (or social and cultural norms) make up an audience's "master narrative." A master narrative is simply a meta story that connects many other stories together. An example might be "the American Dream."
Suppose we understand our audiences only to realize later that we've made a mistake. Audiences will remember a story, and leaders will gain traction for a vision, only if the audience is truly understood.
Paint a clear picture for a better world
Those who understand the social and cultural norms that drive their audiences will be more innovative. They will develop stories and strategies that either reinforce or propose an alternative to predominant master narratives. For example, actively advocating for diversity and inclusion reinforces our community's master narrative that anyone can contribute to creating a more open world. We can also reinforce this narrative through postings that request the time and skills of editors, designers, writers, marketers and other non-developer jobs in open source projects. This is a counter narrative to an unfortunate master narrative that contends "only developers are involved in open source."
Beyond reinforcing the master narratives of their audiences, both storytellers and leaders need to use inclusive and descriptive language. Simplifying and describing a vision and telling a sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat story are identical in that they should evoke a desire to find out what happens next. What's a vision if no one is interested in implementing it? And what’s a story that no one is interested in finishing?
Exhibit courage and confidence
A great story is one that stays in our hearts and minds forever. It is one people retell over and over again, one that spreads a feeling of interconnectedness. Having that kind of emotional attachment to a story means a storyteller was able to describe something real. Something raw. He or she put forth both characters and conflict that connected with the audience in a visceral way.
Leaders are the same. They connect with people as human beings. They dare to put themselves on the line and take risks to connect with their audience, followers, or staff.
A great leader, like a great storyteller, has to be courageous, bold and confident.
Special thanks to Tsering Lama, who has taught me a bunch of stuff about storytelling.
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