No Leadership Without a Story

Personal communication, nowadays fashionably called "storytelling", gathering the best people around you and visualising the goal on the horizon with them. These are the three pillars of leadership. But without the first, storytelling, the other two will have little success.

Why is storytelling so important to us humans?

A decade ago, Yuval Noah Harari explained precisely why, in his book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". He distinguishes between three types of reality. There is objective reality, a mountain is a mountain, whether you believe in it or not. There is subjective reality, your personal pain or joy. And then there is intersubjective reality...

What are the Bible, laws, money, nations, nobility and kings, or even companies, a brand or corporate finance other than intersubjective constructs? They exist only because we collectively believe in them.

A fifty-euro note has value because we all share the story that it has value. A company exists because we collectively believe in the, legal, story behind it. An organisation, a business has financial value because we collectively believe in the rules of corporate finance. Without that shared story, it's nothing more than paper and ink.

Believing together in a story isn't philosophical waffle. It's the reality of our homo sapiens society.

Research by McKinsey, hardly a club of airy-fairy types, shows that the financially best-performing CEOs spend on average almost a third of their time with their stakeholders. Why? To tell them the story endlessly, to repeat it. Because companies with leaders who can credibly, authentically tell the story of the imaginary future perform above average three times as often as other organisations.

The World Economic Forum goes even further. Their recent research shows that almost three-quarters of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand they feel emotionally connected to. And how do you create that connection? Exactly. Through a story that resonates, that touches, that sticks. That is credible. That has intersubjective reality.

Neuroscientists can explain it precisely: successful storytelling triggers oxytocin (the trust hormone) and dopamine (for memory and motivation). It literally synchronises the brains of storyteller and listener. In a time when attention is a scarce commodity, that's worth its weight in gold.

This is where Harari and inspirational leadership come together. Because what does a CEO do other than create and maintain an intersubjective reality? A company culture doesn't exist objectively - you can't touch or weigh it. But just try running an organisation sustainably and successfully without one.

An effective leader understands that telling the organisation's story is an essential role. Again and again, in different forms, to different audiences. Not as a marketing trick, but as a fundamental act of creation.

Because without that shared story, the whole thing falls apart. Without a shared story, there's no direction, no meaning, no reason to get out of bed in the morning.

The beautiful thing is: authentic storytelling is almost impossible to learn. It doesn't have to be perfect. Above all, it has to be genuine. Because people - whether they're employees, customers or investors - have an infallible instinct for bullshit. They can smell a fake story from miles away.

So the question isn't whether you should tell stories as a leader, but whether you can tell them. What's your story? Do you have talent for and enjoy storytelling? And more importantly: are you believed?

You're welcome to exchange thoughts about storytelling by yourself and the other leaders of your organisation. Or about finding and selecting leaders with the necessary storytelling skills.

Warm regards,

Aegeus