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 whole demeanor in the room just changed, as opposed to [starting with] the numbers of how much money we needed to raise.”

Similarly, the following four leaders experienced the impact of story-based leadership. By embracing business storytelling each professional reached their goals and experienced significant leadership transformation.

CFO Becomes Recognized Leader In Financial Storytelling

Karma Auden, Chief Financial Officer of University of New England, Australia, has always thought of profit and loss statements as stories. “I believe that every number is not just a number. A number represents a person or a resource or an activity,” she said. “So you need to understand what that number represents in order to share the information effectively.”

But convincing other accountants of the value of storytelling had been a challenge. That’s why she became a Certified Story Facilitator through Leadership Story Lab. With the adoption of AI for more of the routine work of accounting, Auden believes accountants must develop their communication skills to effectively interpret the data for the business.

It’s been transformational in her own work and also in her quest of turning all accountants everywhere into storytellers. She relies on storytelling strategies when presenting budgets to different groups at her university and when she’s conducting workshops for other accounting professionals.

Auden has become a go-to expert with industry groups asking her to lead financial storytelling workshops for accounting teams. “I keep saying, I’m trying to make finance fun for everyone.”

Coaches Embrace Storytelling And See The Results In Their Clients

As a former actor and entrepreneur, public speaking coach Chris McAuley keenly understood storytelling and its power for effective communication. He now uses leadership storytelling with his clients to see transformation. One client came to him because she was painfully shy, but her role at her company required her to give presentations. To help his client, McAuley used a storytelling tool called Passion DNA to help her understand herself in a new light. Through the exercise McAuley got a sense of her passion and her confidence.

“I will write a story with an intriguing beginning, the riveting middle, the satisfying end,” explained McAuley about his client using the information from the storytelling exercise. When he sent her the story, the impact was immediate. “Her supervisor even called me and said, ‘My God, what did you do?’” Seeing herself from the perspective of her coach allowed her to tap into an innate power and confidence that had always been there — he just helped her discover it through storytelling.

Similarly, Reggie Polk, a corporate trainer at a ServiceNow, software company that helps organizations employ AI, infuses storytelling into his corporate training programs to help his colleagues tap into their strengths. “If you want to move people, then you have to figure out what makes them move,” says Polk.

“Most courses are very regimented with no room for flavor or imagination. Understandably the goal is to get a point across or reach a destination, but how do you keep an audience engaged.” For Polk, the answer is making space for authentic storytelling. By incorporating storytelling into his training, he sees his colleagues open up, make meaningful connections with each other and learn how to understand their clients’ pain points better.

Executive Rolls Out Organizational Change with Storytelling

Chuck Rhorig was tasked with leading one of the biggest organizational changes in his department at USAA, a financial services organization for members of the military and their families. For this reason, he was grateful that USAA had adopted storytelling as a key skill for their corporate strategy scorecard and provided training to help him implement storytelling into his leadership.

“I’m a lot more intentional [since the training].” Rhorig reflected. “Anytime there’s a big change, we can freak out. That’s why with that first message about the change, I spent a ton of time shaping and reshaping and practicing that story and getting it tight, not too long.”

He knew he needed to engage his audience emotionally, so they could listen to all the information he had to share. But for Rhorig, storytelling is not just about those big moments. He said, “I need to get more into the practice of bringing it into more day-to-day opportunities.” It’s about making connections and building relationships with his team at every opportunity.

The Case For Business Storytelling

As seen in these case studies, storytelling is a flexible communication tool that helps leaders communicate effectively in different scenarios — from budget meetings, mentorship and coaching to leading organizational change. Leadership storytelling is more than about being the sage on stage. It’s also about being the guide on the side. When storytelling is embraced as a leadership strategy, it unlocks relationships and unleashes skills latent within people.

If you are an executive who wants to discover the power of business storytelling as a leadership strategy, here’s how you can get started.

• Tip #1: Start asking great questions.
• Tip #2: Lean in, literally. Listen with intentionality
• Tip #3: Learn how to turn any situation into a business storytelling opportunity.

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