Storytelling for Leaders: Persuasive Communication

Article by Diego Ingrassia – “Storytelling for Leaders: Persuasive Communication” – MAY 2017_ LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT

Stories are ‘user manuals’ for our lives. They guide us, with concrete examples, on our way. Telling stories works, and this happens in a wide variety of contexts. The words of our stories can raise awareness, motivate, create desire and inspiration.

Each of us wants to influence, involve and inspire others so that our ideas are heard and remembered. A well-communicated idea can create sharing and enthusiasm for a common goal.

Managers want to be effective leaders, recognised as well as recognisable, i.e. they want to be able to influence others through their communication, without needing to appeal to hierarchical rank in order to be followed. But charisma or the intuition of the moment are not always enough to achieve this. Instead, the solution often lies in the skilful and strategic use of communication: knowing how to say the right thing at the right time in order to be able to remove obstacles and resistance.

However, a fine line divides those who use narratives in an appropriate manner and those who, despite knowing some communication techniques, appear less than spontaneous and contrived when expounding. This happens because people, when using anecdotes or examples to try to be persuasive, often overdo it. Attempting to juggle highly sophisticated and detailed storylines, or overusing unfamiliar voice modulation techniques, can lead to grotesque results.

The use of storytelling for professional purposes never falls into a kind of ‘Once upon a time …’ fairy tale told to children, just as it should never become a self-aggrandising form of storytelling. It is a technique that, if known and mastered, improves our expressive skills and involvement without making us abandon our personal style and natural spontaneity.

Persona GLOBAL®, a multinational company that provides specialised certification programmes to professionals and managers committed to developing their relational and management skills, has conducted rigorous research over a period of 20 years, during which it has studied the communication of the world’s top managers in depth and with precision. The results of this research inspired the creation of a true methodology: ‘Storytelling for Leaders’.

The methodology is perfectly applicable in the business world precisely because it is inspired by the communication styles of the world’s greatest international business leaders. The strengths of the methodology cover different areas and objectives:

• Storytelling aligns and motivates teams: enabling them to become more in tune with the corporate vision. A Story used to communicate an organisational strategy; explain a change; describe a planning activity, or provide the team with a clear direction or strategy, or many other similar applications, is better received because it conjures up images that help to glimpse a better future, providing the necessary energy.

The Storytelling process is also more effective in helping to create a better future.

• Storytelling creates cohesion:Eminent social psychologist Robert Cialdini has shown that we are most influenced by people who are similar to us. A ‘connection story’ reveals our personal characteristics to the public in an indirect way, preserving spontaneity. Companies, on the other hand, often make the mistake of proposing ‘brand stories’, aimed at emphasising their history and products, using suggestions and images that appear alien to the public’s sensibilities.
• Storytelling helps and makes public speaking more effective:Those who by trade are called upon to speak in public often fall into the error of seeking refuge in the use of words and formulas, now so worn out, that they arouse irritation and annoyance in the listening audience. We have become so accustomed to certain terms that we are led to a natural protection mechanism that defends us from vague and approximate language, typical of ambiguous or rigidly cold and formal situations. Abstract language is the enemy of effective communication. Stories that break through are about real people, real events, concrete actions, thoughts and feelings of the characters involved that make the listener think and feel. They succeed in influencing people and in getting them to change their way of thinking and behaviour, because they do not try to convince and do not impose pre-packaged solutions, instead they invite people to consider an alternative possibility, to let themselves be led by something new and unexpected.

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• Story-Listening: is the art of making someone proficient at telling a story, through the right questions that open up the relationship and the appreciation of the most significant details and details. Telling good stories is therefore a skill that can be facilitated and passed on for the benefit of a common outcome.

The Storytelling for Leaders Workshop helps people to enhance their skills as storytellers, increasing their communicative effectiveness, both in public speaking and on a personal and professional level. Awareness of the power within words is indeed the secret of every true Leader.

I&G Management has been transmitting methods to improve the performance of Italian managers for thirty years, and precisely because of the growing interest in this methodology today, it has decided to import it into Italy and make it available in our country.

The first StoryTelling for Leaders workshop will be held in Milan on 14 and 15 July 2017, an opportunity to be seized by those who want to be among the first certified people in Italy.