Why great leaders are often great storytellers

This week is National Storytelling Week in the UK. Its mission is to promote the oral tradition of storytelling.

I have always been fascinated by storytelling in corporate life. At the heart of most successful organisations is a very strong sense of purpose and direction. Great leaders typically know how to create a solid sense of purpose by delivering the organisation’s narrative effectively and with genuine commitment. These leaders understand the power of communication and influence to connect colleagues to strategy.

Storytelling helps us make sense of what’s really important about our organisations. As leaders we can use the human desire to make sense as a helpful way to increase our people’s engagement and resulting discretionary effort.  I have written in previous blog posts about the American organisational theorist Karl Weick’s belief that sensemaking is, at least in part, grounded in what has already happened. Weick describes^[i] sensemaking as how people seek to understand the organisation in which they work as a social process of storytelling, discussion and simplifying complexity. Through this process we can help people to develop a shared understanding of what’s important and why, as part of the transition to becoming more connected.

We have worked with Shop Direct over several years. They have moved from being a traditional, paper-based catalogue retailer into a leading digital retailer. When I spoke to HR director Jacqui Humphries for my Connected Leadership book, she said that, “Storytelling is one of the most important types of communication in an organisation and I don’t think most businesses do enough of it. Most organisations ‘tell’ people what to do. Storytelling is all about increasing understanding and creating an emotional connection. It’s all about explaining why things are important and using real life examples. Storytelling is crucial.”

Jacqui will join me as a special guest panellist following a Connected Leadership masterclass at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School which will be co-hosted by the Chartered Management Institute on the evening of Wednesday 16 March. I am very much looking forward to the event, and know Jacqui will add a great deal of insight. If you’re interested in coming along, please let me know.

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[i] Weick, K. The Social Psychology of Organising, 2nd edition, (McGraw-Hill, 1979).

Sensemaking and the power of simplicity

A clear purpose such as Lego's can inspire others

In my last post, I referenced the work of Karl Weick into sensemaking.  A great insight from Weick is how, when it comes to sensemaking, simplicity can be very powerful. He noticed that people need plausibility rather than accuracy in order to believe in a cause. In our everyday lives, we need to filter noise to see clear understandable signals.  So as leaders it is helpful to recognise that simplification enables action.  And above all, a strong simple story energises action.

Lego is very clear about its purpose, which is to ‘inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow’. This encapsulates their role in both play and education and is part of why the Danish company has enjoyed such success all the way from simple plastic blocks to the widely-acclaimed Lego Movie. Lego aims to inspire and develop children to think creatively, reason systematically and release their potential. People can understand this. They get what Lego is all about, and they buy into it. Lego has successfully built on this purpose to the extent that in 2015 was rated as the world's most powerful brands by consultancy BrandFinance. It would appear that for Lego, everything really is awesome.

Why is Lego such a good example of sensemaking? Well, if we can provide plausible reasoning to fit the facts, we can energise others to act with greater understanding and commitment. This is typically more important than logical certainty.  A story that puts the facts as we know them into perspective with a plausible level of certainty is more likely to inspire people than a detailed business case. The simpler, the better.

Making sense

We are all making sense of what’s going around us all of the time.  Some of it is retrospective. As the American organisational theorist Karl Weick has said, sensemaking is, at least in part, grounded in what has already happened. People pay attention to things in the past to help make sense of the present, so as leaders it is helpful to recognise the importance of feeling that the past is important.  We can do this by demonstrating our respect for the history of our organisation, and by identifying how it helps to tell our collective story of our value and role in the world. 

We may need to over-simplify history to help the process, but that's okay if it helps our people feel comfortable with the present.  In one large bank I worked with, for example, we drew on the proud history of the founding fathers (and how they had taken personal risks in times of war to protect the money and records of their customers) in order to reconnect leaders with their underlying sense of purpose beyond making money.