Stories, Leaders and Neurons. The ability to Lead with fairytales.

How Storytelling Elevates Leadership

Welcome to LeadershipLens—where the magic of storytelling meets the art of leadership in today's topic! 🧚🏼

Picture this 🎥: a cozy warm fireside gathering 🪵, with that smell of well polished wooden parquet, filled with loud laughters and huge plates of juicy food , where...

Are you still with me? Only that fireside picture was needed to travel your imagination out of this article.
That's the essence of storytelling—a vibrant tapestry that weaves connections and sparks imagination, let's learn about some practices that would ignite our spirit and ways of how, we actually, act as Leaders.
"Allow me to be cinematic due to the topic... ". Join us, on a journey where every word is a spark, every tale a beacon, and every leader a maestro of inspiration!

Did you know that?
Storytelling transcends mere conveyance of information; it fosters empathy, engages emotions, and embeds messages deeply within the listener's psyche.

Effective leaders recognise this and master the craft to inspire action, build trust, and foster a shared vision.

Talk like an author

Have you ever imagined yourself closing any talk accompanied with massive clapping, insights planned into audience's head, leaving a mesmerising experience or message behind?
Practice the Three essential tips for leaders to effectively leverage storytelling:

Tip Number 1

Craft Authentic Narratives:
Drawing from personal experiences or challenges and triumphs, will enhance authenticity and will help you connect in a deeper, and even more, genuine way with your audience. Authenticity is the cornerstone of compelling storytelling. Strive for vulnerability, humanising your leader persona, sharing both successes and failures. With no more to say on this, you will end up to be easily relatable and memorable to most of your audiences.

Tip Number 2

Embrace Emotional Resonance:
Do you want to measure somehow a story? Number of emotions raised is the metric you need. Emotions are the currency of effective storytelling. Leaders must tap into the emotional core of their narratives to captivate listeners and drive meaningful engagement. What are your goals? Ignite passion? Build rapport? Embrace empathy? You should leverage emotional resonance to galvanise teams towards shared goals.

Tip Number 3

Illustrate Purpose and Vision:
Purpose and vision are the nuclear fuel of every organisation or a team. Those fuelling components are the reason behind almost every extra mile walked and every proactive thinking of your people that aim to a benefit that exceeds personal level.
By, just sharing stories that describe ways of supporting a broader and bigger generic purpose, is not what you need. Is it bad to do it? Of course not!! A purposeful story is better than just a story with no purpose. Although if you aim a bull's eye, get a little bit deeper, to your team's or organisation's dreams, biggest failures or achievements. Resonate to the greatest sacrifices of your people, create a narrative about all those extra milers. That, will automatically place you in their hearts of your audience and on the top of the podium of effective leaders.

Hungry for more?

Belong to the top 5% of speakers.
Every great story becomes even greater depending on how you present it. Public speaking skills are your partners on it.
If you want to start climbing the ladder of the top speakers, get your hands dirty on the following tip on storytelling:

Did you know that?
There is rule on storytelling, and it's called the golden rule for a reason.
"Show. Do not tell."

So, why this rule is so shiny golden and well perceived by every top ranking speaker globally?
It is directly connected with people's emotions, and we as people are more likely to remember something if we somehow connect to it.
To master this art, follow an expert practice, given below and keep practicing, as every audience is different and you may have to apply different ways to it every time.

Expert practice:
Senses engagement.

You need 2 to 4 human senses engaged, as you talk, if you want to be memorable by your audience after leaving the stage.
2 senses engaged, is actually the average as most of the stories manage to hit that standard, 3 is what separates boys from men and 4 is the top caliber level ones. But how?

Let's bounce back to our introduction :
"a cozy warm fireside gathering 🪵, with that smell of well polished wooden parquet, filled with loud laughters and huge plates of juicy food , where..."

Every time, start with a general description of something common, as "the fireside gathering". You engage the sight sense with this tip. If you can add an adjective there even better, as "cozy and warm", that help to relate even more with emotions.

Here's the expert tip, SMELL! From all of our senses smell is the strongest one, when it comes to storytelling. Even if this tip is well known, I have found really few speakers, that use this expert tip in their talks. So, always engage the sense of smell when storytelling, as "the smell of well polished wooden parquet". Did you spot the adjectives again?

Then, complete the scene with some sounds, as "loud laughters". Adjectives everywhere, uh?

Till here, you are already an undeniably great speaker. Still, if you manage to engage, at least one more sense, you will achieve god level standards, like we did using "huge plates of juicy food" through our introduction, then your story allows you, to engage also the sense of taste. Taste, is also, a very strong human sense as is directly related to very strong emotions, as digest and flavour, which are triggering dopamine to our brain body, making them memorable.

That't the reason, actually, I use the "HUNGRY for more" section, too.
We have to love neuroscience.

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Conclusion: As we bid adieu, let us remember: within every leader lies the power to ignite minds, stir souls, and shape destinies. Embrace the magic, unleash the power, and let your story illuminate the path to greatness!

Article quote:
"In the end, we'll all become stories. Make yours worth telling."