Why Storytelling is a Must for a Leader

The following chapter is from the Art & Science of Storytelling Book

Get rid of the ‘once upon a time’ notion.

Normally, when someone is thinking storytelling, they are thinking too much in terms of fantasy.

Read this book a few times.

There hasn’t been anything that has escaped the domain of practicality.

Everything being discussed will aid you if you deal with humans because humans are information-processing systems.

Stories are built into the psyche.

We don’t want to be general with our language, we want to be precise.

It’s one thing to learn the art of a field.

It’s another thing to learn the science of a field.

But only a rare few can combine the 2 until art & science become one.

A storyteller and a leader go hand in hand.

What separates a boss from a leader?

• A boss is a title.
• A leader is a character trait.

A boss forces people to work.

While a leader inspires others into action.

To inspire someone, we don’t need to jump on a table and give them a rah-rah speech.

As a matter of fact, we can be tamed.

We need to give them clarity.

I want to give you a scenario, and I want you to think about what the lesson is. Cool?

‘Yeah, cool. Let me hear it!’

Imagine there is a boring YouTuber who is speaking in a monotoned voice to the camera.

He has 0 enthusiasm, his shirt is dirty & he seems like he’s about to fall asleep any second.

This YouTuber is giving a talk about how to carry yourself in a networking event if you’re shy.

• 100 people watch this YouTube video.
• 99 close the YouTube video in disgust.
• 1 person is glued to the video.

The reason that 1 person is glued to the video is because he is shy.

Plus, he has a networking event coming up in 10 minutes.

Therefore, he ignores the YouTuber’s lack of charm and is still inspired by the content.

Can you give me your rationale for why something like this occurred?

‘Is it because the YouTuber reminded the shy guy of himself?’

That’s close, but can you get a bit more specific?

‘The YouTuber gave him clarity?’

Yes!!!!

When you give someone clarity, you give them confidence.

A leader must be able to give clarity at will.

If you can give someone clarity, they will overlook a lot of your flaws and look to you with inspiration.

Here’s the thing a lot of leaders do when their workers are not inspired:

• They huddle them up in a cramped-up room and start pounding away more deadlines and ultimatums to the workers.

This only irritates the workers and drains their enthusiasm.

How much more effective would it be if the leaders would take some time to teach the workers how their roles serve the entire system?

Right now, the workers are working, but have no clue of the purpose behind their work.

This happened to me before.

There was this one internship where I was making a bunch of Excel sheets.

My manager was very nice, but busy as hell.

He would just keep giving me random Excel sheets to make.

So, I kept making them.

After a certain point, I was bored because I had no clue why I was doing what I was doing.

One day, there was a woman named Jennifer Mullet who came to my cube.

She looked just like Ellen DeGeneres.

‘Are you Arman Chowdhury?’

‘I am,’ I responded.

‘Come with me,’ she said.

She took me to her office and said:

‘Thank you so much for your Excel sheets. Ron has been sending them to me. Do you know how much you’ve helped my staff?’

I had no clue what the hell she was talking about.

That’s when she started to create a bunch of boxes on the whiteboard.

She drew at least 10 rectangular boxes.

In one of the boxes, she put my team’s name in it.

Slowly, she began filling in the boxes with the other team names.

Then she started linking the boxes together.

Once she began linking them together, she was telling me why she was sequencing them in that particular order.

‘So, EMEA impacts APAC & APAC impact USA, blah blah blah…’

Slowly but surely, I was seeing exactly what she was doing.

‘You know your Excel sheets? I gave them to all these different teams. For the past few months, we were having a lot of miscommunications because we all go by different time zones. But your Excel sheets allowed us to follow a standardized format. This has saved us a lot of time.’

Just imagine!!! I was working on these Excel sheets like a mindless puppet for so long without have the slightest clue as to what I was doing.

When Jennifer gave me the BIG picture understanding of what I was doing, I felt a flurry of sensations in my heart and my skin felt warm.

At the end of my internship, I had a meeting with upper management to share what value I added to the company.

This meeting would decide if I got a full-time offer in the future or not.

I was able to share the value I provided based on the conversation I had with Jennifer.

She gave me clarity.

The thing is that a lot of workers have 0 clue what purpose they serve to the bigger picture.

This is when you:

• Compartmentalize
• Dominate

Compartmentalize allows you to talk to the worker/or teams 1 on 1.

You don’t always have to have a big get together when you are leading with stories.

Instead, getting the right people for the right event is all it takes to make an impact.

Jennifer didn’t bring 240 other people to her 1 on 1 meeting with me.

Instead, it was just me and her, which allowed the meeting to be impactful.

As for dominate, it’s back to the sticker on the forehead trick:

‘What’s in it for me?’

Jennifer wasn’t over here babbling away about the work she does with her team.

She simply shared the big picture to give me more clarity.

That’s what stories do to someone.

It gives them clarity.

It takes them out of the forest & gives them a bird’s eye view.

That’s how a leader inspires.

Get The Full Art & Science of Storytelling Book Here:

✨Ebook
✨Paperback/Kindle
✨Audiobook

– ArmaniTalks