The secret of great leadership: spontaneous storytelling
Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld call it improvisation. When a client called my training ‘the best fun ever’, I realised one of B2B’s best approaches is to do the same - make it up as you go along
This is a story about ignorance – mine - and why it’s so useful. Because if you want to increase productivity in your organisation, sometimes it’s best to hire someone who’s adept at making it up as they go along. Or – a far better word – who enjoys improvisation as much as stand-up comics like Jerry Seinfeld.
I’m often brought into companies where process and fear have got in the way of innovation and creative disruption. Instead of people improving, they’re hampered by the compulsion to do the same thing over and over again.
My role is to liberate people to think and act in a different way, and ask the same question that I do: ‘Why?’
Why are you doing it like that?
Here’s a tiny example. And yet for me, it’s a massive barrier to effective business-to-business communication.
Look at the most recent PowerPoint or PDF deck in your inbox. Maybe you did it, or someone sent it to you. Open it up. What’s the first thing you see? The absolute first thing.
The front page, right? And what does it say?
Narrative: Latest version…
Q1 Budget Update…
2025 Insights Report…
Research Findings…
Qual/Quant Study…
…or something similarly bland.
Why? Because it’s always been done like that. It’s what everyone expects. It’s what the front page of a B2B business report is meant to look like.
In journalism, that space setting up a story is sacrosanct. The headline (those things I’ve listed above are labels, not headlines) is the most important tool you have to tell everyone what matters and why they should care. And if you can’t do it in less than 10 words, you’ve failed.
When I work for teams that want to improve their internal communications, I’m not as specialist as they are, I don’t know the departmental politics, I’m ignorant of the intricacies of the product, I’m new to the data, I barely know when Qs 1-4 happen.
But I do know what makes a great story. And everyone loves a great story.
People who see things in a different way, whose skills are far removed from your own, can help you find solutions to problems that process - and our devotion to process - has created and which we become blind to.
In the modern AI-administered workplace, we need to be better trained in unleashing those innate ‘human’ skills.
Creativity.
Critical thinking.
Communication.
Empathy.
Curiosity.
Leadership.
Collaboration.
Instinct.
And, yes, storytelling.
Which brings me to my second confession. Not only am I ignorant but I also run a training company, even though I haven’t a clue how to be a trainer.
And I think that’s an advantage.
I’ve just taken on a new global client who has asked me to help with their internal storytelling and last week came the best endorsement I’ve ever had:
‘Was that training? It didn’t feel like it. It was fun and I wanted more of it. Most of the training we do here is boring.’
I’m not a proper trainer. I have no qualifications beyond my endless curiosity and desire to show people how the skills of a journalist can be as useful in their corporate environments as they are in a newsroom.
For me, training is like a long conversation, debate, a forum for questioning and arguing with each other, in which we rip apart ideas and expectations, try to solve problems in entirely different ways.
And improvise, so that I’m learning as much as everyone else in the room. So that we’re all on the edge of our seats wondering what comes next. So that we’re not just exhausted by the end but a little bit changed.
Here’s what else I’ve learned:
Training has to feel practical to people’s real-work situations. You can’t just display your knowledge and experience as an educator. If all you’re doing is imparting information, you’re a dinosaur.
People quickly forget what they’ve learned or don’t put those learnings into practice soon or frequently enough. The Forgetting Curve, pioneered by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, suggests that if new information isn’t applied, we’ll forget 75% of it after just six days. The real magic comes in the follow-up ongoing mentoring when you personalise tools and techniques practiced in the training session.
The ambition of every trainer should be to make themselves redundant. Find someone in the organisation who’s really good at the skills you’re teaching and work with them more completely so that, fully trained, they can become you.
According to research by City and Guilds, a UK-based skills organisation, almost 60 per cent of employees think their training content is not ‘exciting or engaging’. Plenty of others thought it had no impact on the standard of their work.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that the best training is when the ‘professional’ is learning at the same time as everyone else. That’s how to make your knowledge more valuable, exciting and resonant to everyone else in the room.
Ignorance truly is bliss.
READ THIS
In Will Storr’s excellent new book about storytelling, A Story Is A Deal, he talks of Kevin Costner’s first and biggest flop. You can watch it here. Before he was famous, Kevin was the star of Apple’s ad campaign for the Lisa computer. Everyone involved forgot the essential rule of business storytelling – people want to see themselves in your story. It needs to feel relevant to them. Watch the ad and then watch the one Apple created the following year for its far more successful Macintosh product. When you tell your business story, ensure that people truly want to feel part of it. Will’s book is an excellent read.
WATCH THIS
What is the story of time and can you build a scale model of it? All 13.8 billion years of it. This group of friends did, in the middle of the Mojave desert. Telling the stories of the universe and then that of civilisation, in what is essentially a highly innovative lightshow with fantastic graphics. Ten minutes of your time for one of the humblest lessons you’ll ever learn.
LISTEN TO THIS
I love the History’s Secret Heroes series narrated by Helena Bonham-Carter on BBC radio. It always uncovers little nuggets from World War Two, small acts of resistance and courage. This one is about a German-Jewish refugee, Curt Bloch, hiding out in an attic in the Netherlands, who creates a satirical Private Eye-style magazine lampooning Hitler and the Nazis. A different kind of bravery. I suspect we’re going to read many new stories of individuals taking a stand against authority in the months and years to come.