by Reed Stratton, Associate Professor of Business
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but the Vegas Strip is everywhere. Your email inbox is the Vegas Strip. Your chiming, pinging, glowing cell phone is the Vegas Strip. Even your walk through the store for milk is the Vegas Stip. The Vegas Strip, with its glittering, swirling, hypnotic storefronts is the message-saturated existence we all inhabit: The Attention Economy. Information accosts us; messages compete for our focus. Those messages that rise above the cacophony win; they influence and produce meaningful action.
In an info-saturated era, business leaders must diversify communication to engage, influence, and motivate and to “get work done through people” as Mary Parker Follet said (as cited in Peek, 2023). Storytelling is an ancient technique often overlooked by business leaders, but research proves our minds and bodies are wired to know the world, understand the world, and take action from stories, so if you want your voice to rise above the clamor targeting your stakeholders, tell more stories.
What is a Story?
To be memorable and engaging, a story must zoom-in on human experience, and there are five characteristics of a well-told story that allow for zooming in. Stories must be chronological, occurring in tangible place and time: a setting. Inhabiting that setting is a protagonist, a relatable person or group with some kind of goal. AA situation must occur in the setting that disrupts the protagonist’s equilibrium: the inciting incident. It leads to conflict, the most compelling component of the story. Audience’s lean in when tensions ratchet up because they’ve neuro-linked with the protagonist, eager to learn how the protagonist surmounts the obstacles. Finally, resolution occurs when the protagonist overcomes the obstacles and experiences a change.
That formula can be adopted by any business leader who wants to use a story, and it makes storytelling deeply human. Telling stakeholders stories about a protagonist- real or fictional-, is telling them about themselves, and there are many uses for such messages. Such as communicating purpose, articulating vision, disarming skeptics, and changing culture.
How Can Leaders Use Story in Their Communication?
Communicate Your Why
Thanks to Simon Sinek (2009), business leaders know they should share their “why.” However, how should you share a “why?” The mechanism is storytelling. Storytelling makes abstract messages like “We exist to create flourishing communities” concrete. “Existing to create flourishing communities” may sound vaguely inspiring, but a more tangible “why” might be to describe the blighted town with the ramshackle yogurt factory in Upstate New York your company resurrected, building a world class facility and rebuilding the local little league field with your profits. It’s the story Hamdi Uluykaya tells about Chobani in his Ted Talk The Anti Ceo Playbook (Ulukaya, 2019).
Articulate a Vision
Ulukaya has, rightly, been called a visionary, and it’s because of his commitment to storytelling, which can be used not only to express purpose, but also to articulate vision. Stories have tangible, sensory settings, and they feature knowable characters who overcome high-stakes conflicts, emerging changed. However, a vision contains those traits, but it is a story yet to happen. Therefore, the tangible, concrete, and human details imbued in stories engage your stakeholders’ imaginations and move them to unified action. Visionary leaders like RIchard Branson, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs package their visions as stories. The most iconic example is Martin Luther King Jr.s’ (1963) vision of an Alabama where “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” The concrete details of such a story convince your brain the event has happened, making it attainable.
Disarm Skeptics
The more concrete your vision, as King’s was, the easier the audience can intuit their role in achieving it. Of course, there will always be skeptics who hold off, but storytelling can dispatch them as well with their neurological effects on audiences. The originator of “Death by Powerpoint” David J.P. Phillips (2017) says stories flood audiences’ bodies with hormones like dopamines– which sharpen focus– and oxytocin, which cultivates generosity, trust, and empathy. Research from Princeton shows that while their bodies are being flooded with these hormones, the audience’s brainwaves also synchronize with the storyteller’s brainwaves, enhancing bonding and relatability (Renken, 2020), moving them from objection to acceptance.
Change Culture
Storytelling yields acceptance of even complicated culture changes, or– as claimed in The Secret to Culture Change – creates the change itself when leaders act out stories that stakeholders later share. In 1998, Arbor Technology, faltering, invoked layoffs. Executives planned the downsizing meeting at an opulent San Francisco hotel, but it was too late to cancel. When the team arrived in the plush, cedar-paneled room, they were shocked by what was on the menu: bread and water. As the Maître d’ presented the rolls and goblets, the new CEO declared he couldn’t bear the indulgent meal originally planned while stakeholders were losing jobs. He booked that same room for the next year and promised to supply a king’s feast if they earned it. Like yeast, word spread about the bread-and-water meal (Barney, et. al. 2023). Stakeholders believed– through that act of “story building” (Barney, et. al, 2023)– that this CEO was different and the culture would be different, so they gave him a chance. Arbor flourished.
Las Vegas is rich with stories. Many stories stay in Vegas, but the insight that won’t is this: Your direct reports are dazed tourists, bewildered by the attention economy’s stimuli. They don’t know where to look or focus. By communicating with more zoomed-in, focused stories, you can convey purpose and vision, disarm skeptics, and lead culture change. Telling stories also connects you and your stakeholders as fellow human beings, and it integrates the human experience and its complexities into daily business.