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How Great Leaders Use Story to Align and
Inspire
Stories constitute the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.
—HOWARD GARDNER, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
I
t was July 2008.
More than two hundred salespeople from around the world had gathered in a
hotel ballroom to learn about new products, gain new sales insights, and
celebrate their successes. It was always the highlight of the year: a huge party, a
lot of whoop-whooping and rah-rahing and way-to-go-ing. And this event would
be no different, except—
Read that first line again.
It was July 2008.
Anyone in sales, particularly those in 100-percent commissioned sales, heck,
anyone in the United States, will tell you that 2008 was not a year for
celebrating. A year for consoling? Yes. A year for cutting back? Yes. But a year
for celebrating? Let me ask you, how well do you think a round of rah-rahing
would go over at a funeral? Right. That was 2008.
And while the reality of 2008 was painful for everyone, it was particularly
complicated for one member of the executive team, a young man you already
know, my now-husband Michael. Since 2002, he had been working behind the
scenes for the company as their finance guy. He worked tirelessly, as finance
guys do, to keep the company’s books straight and its cash flow healthy and to
serve as a strategic partner to the owners as they navigated the somewhat
tumultuous financial landscape. Michael was good at his job, so good in fact that
the owners decided to give him a more front-facing role. Why keep this secret
weapon a secret?
As the ball dropped, marking the end of 2007 and the beginning of a brand-
new year, Michael’s role shifted, and his official coming-out party was
scheduled for the July 2008 annual sales event. There he was given thirty
minutes to simultaneously introduce himself as an emerging leader and deliver a
state of the union–type address.
For the owners, this was an opportunity for their new leader to make a splash
and rally the sales force for the coming year.
For Michael, it was a daunting minefield of problems.
When things are going great, this kind of speech isn’t that difficult. The
stakes are low and morale is high. When you’re helming a thriving organization
in a booming economy, you can get up and more or less bullhorn your way
through with something akin to, “I’m super stoked to be here! You guys are the
best! You killed it last year, and we’re going to kill it twice as hard this year!” In
essence, you can do the keynote equivalent of a double fist pump and high-five
and walk off the stage to a round of applause.
But in this case, the market was failing, the sky was falling, and Michael
would be addressing, if not a crew on a sinking ship, then at least a very hostile
and anxious crowd. A fist pump had a better chance of creating a fistfight than
any applause.
Michael knew better than anyone the challenges they were facing. He was a
numbers guy, after all. He had already determined that a “go get ’em” speech
would not only sound empty, it might do more harm than good. With the
company facing some seriously troubled waters, he needed to connect with an
uncertain, skeptical audience at a deeper level.
What they needed wasn’t a state of the union speech or some cheerleading
routine. What they needed was a story.
A real, raw, authentic story.
A story that gave them a reason to stay, to keep at it, to not quit, although all
signs pointed to a need to jump ship.
What Michael needed was a purpose story.
The Purpose Story
A quick recap: there are four key story types that drive business success. So far
we’ve examined the value story, which describes how your product or service
impacts the user. The second is the founder story, used to increase stakeholder
faith in the person who created the company. Those two stories are almost
always the first to be told in business—they’re the things that come into
existence first in a business. Invariably, entrepreneurs and the value they’re
trying to bring to the world are the first stops on the business journey.
As a business grows, however, one thing always happens: new people arrive.
Employees, contractors, temps, and freelancers begin to fill out the ranks of the
growing venture. Those new people are critical to growing a company. Beyond a
certain size, you simply can’t grow without more people. But new people pose a
problem too: they’re not the founder. They don’t have the same skills, aren’t
driven by the same motivation, and frequently don’t understand as clearly what
the company does or why.
Aligning what can eventually amount to a small army of people and inspiring
them to take action every day is a daunting but critical task, one that leaders
would be wise to turn to storytelling for. The purpose story offers members of an
established organization a reason to show up each day. To commit, to cooperate,
and to accomplish something together.
Purpose Over Profit
Remember Paul Zak? He’s the oxytocin guy who taught us about the importance
of trust and reciprocity. He observed, “We know that people are substantially
more motivated by their organization’s transcendent purpose (how it improves
lives) than by its transactional purpose (how it sells goods and services).”
1
Transcendent versus transactional purpose. At the end of the day, people in
your organization might be excited about what it is you’re selling, but they’re
going to be far more excited about why. That’s what’s at the heart of the purpose
story and how leaders can bridge the gap for their teams.
Research supports this idea. Companies that have a stated purpose other than
profit, and that align themselves with it, return more profits over time. It can
seem counterintuitive, but in the absence of a purpose, profit steps in to fill the
void.
2
Think Toms shoes with their buy-one-give-one approach. Or Bombas socks
with the same promise. Or Warby Parker with giving as much as they sell. Think
about it. If a sock company, a shoe company, and an eyeglass company can be
about saving the world one foot and eyeball at a time, what does that say about
humans and business?
We really, really need
why
in our lives.
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