Lead with a Story summary

When was the last time that you had a remarkable – or horrible – customer service experience? Did it motivate you to leave kudos for the customer service representative in the “how are we doing” box? Or maybe leave a scathing review on Yelp?

If you’ve ever left a review, then you’ve done that company a favor. In fact, these stories are a great way for consumers to share insights on how to get customer service right. Consider the story of Ray Brook, who was visiting Portland, Oregon for two busy days filled with meetings:

How many businesses promise to “put the customer first” or declare that its employees are “the most important part of the business?” These hollow messages are a dime-a-dozen, and customers and employees alike are well within their minds to consider them utterly meaningless.

A company's values and culture are best spread through compelling stories, not vague slogans or hollow promises.

Most of us who work for large companies don’t know our colleagues very well. We might become true friends with one or two coworkers, but we likely won’t get past such shallow topics as “Nasty weather today, huh?” or “Did you see the game last night?” with most of the team.

However, as a leader, you want your employees to build relationships. So how can you overcome this obstacle? One way is through stories.

Be honest: have you ever read through all the documents that outline the rules and regulations of your company? Chances are, even if you are in C-level management, that you haven’t. So, how do you learn all the rules?

Perhaps the most obvious way is trial and error, simply doing what you feel is appropriate and then correcting your behavior after being reprimanded. However, while this may help a few people learn a few things, this method can only provide limited knowledge. After all, how many rules does the average employee actually break?

Imagine that you are bringing a long, exhausting project to a close, and you want to start slowing down your efforts and moving on to a new, exciting project. Your boss, however, disagrees. What can she do to motivate you to continue and keep giving it your all?

She could spout nonsensical motivational phrases about “giving it 110 percent” – or she could tell you an inspiring story. We can draw some inspiration from history by looking at the famous story of the Tanzanian runner John Stephen Akhwari:

At school, we learn that a story needs a beginning, middle and end. In more scientific jargon, you need context, action and the result (CAR). And what’s true for schoolchildren is true for business as well.

Let’s start with context:

After all of these blinks we still haven’t actually talked about what constitutes a story. No matter what the content of the story actually is, a good story hinges on its ability to evoke the emotions of the audience.

However, you don’t want to evoke just any emotions. If you want your audience to become motivated by your story, you’ll have to appeal to the right emotions. For instance, it’s easy to get people teary-eyed when you tell them a heartwarming story about puppies, but this won’t be that useful to you unless you own a pet store.

You’re at a conference and you feel your eyelids growing heavier and heavier as you listen to a speaker drone for hours. When he finally finishes, how much of the story do you expect to remember? Probably next to nothing.

For more memorable storytelling, inject your stories with a bit of surprise.