EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP AND STORYTELLING



Dr. Prakash Bhide

Effective Leadership and influencing stakeholders (followers, customers, bankers, board members etc.) with storytelling, is a cutting-edge practice and still evolving as a special competency.



Effective leadership is influencing others and is helping them in aligning their efforts and commitment to achieve a shared vision. Leaders paint an exciting picture of the vision and can effectively communicate the same through a story. Many times, leaders have to use the art of persuasion to get the full commitment of their followers. Storytelling is an effective method to achieve this as it appeals to the heart & emotions. Leaders know the way, show the way and go the way to achieve this major change from present to achieve the future vision. Dry PowerPoint slides with lots of data can convince the mind, but an effective story can galvanize action.

Storytelling is nothing new and we can find impactful & motivating stories from ancient ages. As children, we have been not only fascinated by mythological and fairytales helping us to improve our imagination, curiosity & creativity, but also forming foundations of our deep-rooted values, beliefs & character. Aesop’s fables and Cinderella and ‘Alice in wonderland’ have left long-lasting impressions on our minds. Moral Science stories also help us to make right decisions at crucial moments in life.

Indian mythology is rich with enchanting stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. There is a story of a king who was worried that his two young princes were not studying and learning. He engaged many teachers, but none was successful. Ultimately a teacher, Vishnu Sharma, was able to teach the young princes the act of kingship, through stories of animals which we know as ‘Panchatantra’. Stories of Birbal and Tenaliraman have fascinated us as children.

Many leaders have communicated the necessity of major organizational change through stories. It is said that Sir J J Irani, when transforming TISCO, communicated the urgency of the change message by personally addressing 80,000 employees, in small batches, through the story of “Ramsingh”. The gist of the story is as follows:

Ramsingh was an industrious and entrepreneurial milkman in Jamshedpur. He started small with one buffalo. He expanded his business slowly but steadily giving high quality milk to customers at a reasonable price. The customer’s trust expanded his business many folds. Soon, he had buffalos and cows in thousands. He was a very kind person and provided his cows the best of the facilities such as air-conditioned sheds, best of fodder and employed many attendants to give them a daily scrub, health checkup, vitamins and take care of them. He soon found that he was making losses in the business. The future looked dim and bleak in spite of his hard work and caring for buffalos. Ramsingh had to shut down his business. This story was a subtle message to the employees that TISCO had become unviable in profitability due to its high employee numbers and cost because of benevolent policies. TISCO had to now take very fair but tough decisions to survive in future by increasing productivity to compete in the global market

The story was followed by dialogue with the group of employees on how TISCO should survive and make its future bright & profitable and save thousands of families of TISCO employees. Over next 5 years, TISCO reduced its manpower from 80,000 employees to 40,000 employees, and drew up plans to get to 20000 employees through massive modernization increasing the productivity & output by many folds. TISCO thus became the lowest cost producer of steel in 2005 in the world.

Management storytelling is becoming popular to effectively communicate the message and help readers to learn the lessons and act. ”WHO MOVED MY CHEESE?” has become the best-seller. Similarly, “Our Iceberg is melting” by Kotter on the principles of effective execution of a major change, became No #1 in the best books list.

Effective Leadership and Storytelling uses slightly different formats than normal storytelling which is for entertainment. We can call Business Storytelling to be a Business Narrative. Stephen Denning, Clark, Noel Tichy, Howard Gardner and Simmons have done remarkable research in this area. “Springboard Story” methodology for motivating followers and igniting action for implementing new ideas is an effective way to touch the hearts & emotions of people rather than data and fact based PowerPoint presentations which can logically convince the mind but not appeal to the heart and ignite action. Of course, the story should be true and believable. The research shows that, there are eight different types of stories which leaders can use depending on the effect and outcome they would desire. The ROI of Storytelling is phenomenal.

Storytelling is a “Performance Art” and leaders have to practice the tools & techniques to hone their skills to become a master storyteller in business & management. Would you like to be an Effective Leader and Master Business Storyteller? There is help available at call.