Esther Choy, Author at Leadership Story Lab

Quick Checklist: What You Need To Know For Your Performance Review

Performance reviews are nerve-wracking for everyone. Career decisions and remuneration may hang in the balance. You want your manager to see your past year’s accomplishments the way you see them. So the question becomes: How do you prepare for your annual review? The answer to this question is “storytelling”—if you take the time to apply storytelling…

How To Engage Your Audience: 3 Ways To Build Suspense

Think of the last time you couldn’t put down a book, or when you found yourself watching another episode of a show when you should have been in bed an hour ago. What happened? Your discipline isn’t lacking a tune up. It’s because suspense was at work — engaging, you, the audience. You wanted to…

Leadership Storytelling 101: What All Leaders Need To Know

With back-to-school supply lists in hand and the smell of pumpkin lattes in the air, it’s time to brush up on basic leadership storytelling tools. Whether you are an experienced leader or new to the role, these storytelling tools will help you lead your team more effectively. You can use them to improve your everyday…

Genuine Executive Presence: 3 Surprising Steps To Actually Develop It

In her book Executive Presence, Sylvia Ann Hewlett argues that executive presence is defined by three pillars: How you act, speak, and look. She gives concrete tips on how to achieve executive presence, including, “minimize signs of age and downplay any infirmity.” Executive presence is often described as an intangible quality like “grace under fire” expressed…

What Happened When Leaders Tested The Power Of Business Storytelling?

Since the early 2000s, business storytelling has become a key communication strategy for leaders across sectors. At a board meeting, nonprofit leader Arlene Milon saw the impact of effective storytelling: “We had a lot of data to share, but instead I kicked off the [board of directors] meeting with a story and heartfelt thanks. The…

Business Leaders Must Read These 5 Surprising Children’s Books Now

Summer is a great time to catch up on reading. This is a list of children’s books that business leaders should read. Why children’s books? Because they are short. They are fun. And they pack in quick, deep leadership lessons business leaders can benefit from. Leadership growth isn’t only found in business books or 5…

John Leguizamo and Hugo Gamino Share The Value of Authentic Leadership

What happens when your childhood dreams seem impossible—not just because they’re hard, but because no one who looks like you seems to have done them before? That question threads through the work of Emmy-winning actor John Leguizamo, chef and culinary strategist Hugo Gamino, and the senior leadership team at nglmitú—a digital media company. In a…

Leaders On Leadership: 10 Valuable Lessons That Will Make You Think

In the last eight years as a Forbes columnist, I have interviewed leaders who have shared a great deal of insights on successful leadership. Here are 10 quotes on leadership that illuminate the concrete actions that successful leaders “do,” not just “think” or “believe.” These quotations are from leaders with a variety of backgrounds and…

Astonishing But Hidden: Why Women’s Leadership Stories Matter Now

Many of the world’s most powerful women’s leadership stories have been forgotten by history. Take Zheng Yi Sao for example, the most successful pirate in history who at the height of her power had a confederation of 70,000 pirates under her command. Her incredible financial success and biography have been well documented. So why have…

Why Leadership Storytelling Is Actually So Powerful

When we are inundated with negative emotion and uncertainty, we often find ourselves reacting instinctively — fight, flight, freeze. None of these responses are ideal in the long-term. How can we counter these primal responses so that we can make more informed and nuanced decisions? Leadership storytelling. Storytelling is so powerful because it serves as…