Leadership and Storytelling

February 2021 Agenda ➢ Why Storytelling NOW ➢ The backdrop of leadership ➢ Focus on storytelling in “business” ➢ Critical elements of storytelling ➢ Characteristics of a good story ➢ Actually telling the story ➢ Lessons learned R E F L E C T I O N S

Why Storytelling Matters Now Heightened Data Awareness, Broader DataAudiences

Introduction Data Being Asked (and Being Used) toTell Bigger Stories

Introduction

“Business” storytelling 6 Basic Storytelling Principles (from MarketingResearch)

➢ Human memory is story-based ➢ The more indices in the story, the better ➢ Much of what we retrieve from memory is episodic ➢ Stories produce “proper pleasure” &catharsis ➢ Stories connect an audience to an archetype ➢ Individuals use stories for clarity and sense- making

Source: Woodside, 2010 What Kinds of Stories AreThere? ➢ Biographies and Autobiographies ➢ Thrillers ➢ Parables/Fables ➢ Myths ➢ Fairy Tales ➢ Literature ➢ Science fiction/Fantasy ➢ Comic/graphic novels Types of Stories – Machine Learning and NLP TellUs…

1. “Rags to Riches” (rise) 2. “Tragedy” or “Riches to Rags” (fall) 3. “Man in a hole” (fall-rise) 4. “Icarus” (rise-fall) 5. “Cinderella” (rise-fall-rise) 6. “Oedipus” (fall-rise-fall)

Source: Reagan, Mitchell, Kiley, Danforth, & Dodds,2016 Alignment with Established Storytelling Principles Business/Leadership Stories Are Different(ish) Eight Types of Business Stories

S p a r k i n g A c t i o n F o s t e r i n g Collaboration

Communicating Taming the Who You Are G r a p e v i n e

Transmitting S h a r i n g V a l u e s K n o w l e d g e

B r a n d i n g t h e Leading People C o m p a n y into the Future

Source: Denning, 2006 The backdrop of Leadership

CULTURE: the story of an organization as told through the behaviors of its employees Leadership is theater Critical Elements to the Story (data points) Characters

➢ Background – Origins (real and imagined) ➢ Depth – Strengths &Flaws ➢ How will they Evolve? ➢ Contrast vs Lower-Quality Data ➢ Supporting/secondary characters ➢ Difference between character and caricature Conflict

➢ What’s the Need or Question? ➢ Catalysts – Why More Important Today Than Yesterday or Tomorrow? ➢ Relatability to the Audience ➢ Avoid Answering a Question No One isAsking Setting

➢ Business Context - Not in a Vacuum ➢ What Preceding, Surrounding, Upcoming Events? ➢ Setting the Scene ➢ Will Guide Further/Follow-Up Narrative Plot

➢ What’s Your Sequence of Events? ➢ What are the Logical Connections? ➢ Does Each Phase Naturally Lead to theNext? ➢ Foreshadowing, Waypoints ➢ Step-by-Step Progression from Beginning to End Point of View

➢ Stakeholder Perspectives ➢ Operational, Financial, Technical, User-Focused ➢ Build in Interactivity ➢ Be Clear about POV Assumptions Made

Data Characteristics Theme

➢ What is Your Overall Message? ➢ What Should the Audience Know Afterward? ➢ What are the Key Insights that Must Occur? ➢ Message that Must Not be Ignored, Lost, Squandered? How to Evaluate Your Story?

➢ Accuracy ➢ Does the analysis/presentation really say what you say it says? ➢ Resonance (does it mean something to the audience?) ➢ Actionable (can people actually do something with it?) ➢ Understandable ➢ Comprehensive Characteristics of a great story Let Me Tell You a Story There was a big boat It sank Let Me Tell You Another Story The sheer size of and her sister ships posed a major engineering challenge for ; no shipbuilder had ever before attempted to construct vessels this size. The ships were constructed on Queen's Island, now known as the Titanic Quarter in Harbour. Harland and Wolff had to demolish three existing slipways and build two new ones, the largest ever constructed up to that time, to accommodate both ships. Their construction was facilitated by an enormous gantry built by Sir William Arrol & Co., a Scottish firm responsible for the building of the Forth Bridge and London's Tower Bridge. The Arrol Gantry stood 228 feet (69 m) high, was 270 feet (82 m) wide and 840 feet (260 m) long, and weighed more than 6,000 tons. It accommodated a number of mobile cranes. A separate floating crane, capable of lifting 200 tons, was brought in from Germany. The construction of Olympic and Titanic took place virtually in parallel, with Olympic's keel laid down first on 16 December 1908 and Titanic's on 31 March 1909.Both ships took about 26 months to build and followed much the same construction process. They were designed essentially as an enormous floating box girder, with the keel acting as a backbone and the frames of the hull forming the ribs. At the base of the ships, a double bottom 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) deep supported 300 frames, each between 24 inches (61 cm) and 36 inches (91 cm) apart and measuring up to about 66 feet (20 m) long. They terminated at the bridge deck (B Deck) and were covered with steel plates which formed the outer skin of the ships. The 2,000 hull plates were single pieces of rolled steel plate, mostly up to 6 feet (1.8 m) wide and 30 feet (9.1 m) long and weighing between 2.5 and 3 tons. Their thickness varied from 1 inch (2.5 cm) to 1.5 inches (3.8 cm).The plates were laid in a clinkered (overlapping) fashion from the keel to the bilge. Above that point they were laid in the "in and out" fashion, where strake plating was applied in bands (the "in strakes") with the gaps covered by the "out strakes", overlapping on the edges. Commercial oxy-fuel and electric arc welding methods, ubiquitous in fabrication today, were still in their infancy; like most other iron and steel structures of the era, the hull was held together with over three million iron and steel rivets, which by themselves weighed over 1,200 tons. They were fitted using hydraulic machines or were hammered in by hand. In the 1990s some material scientists concluded that the steel plate used for the ship was subject to being especially brittle when cold, and that this brittleness exacerbated the impact damage and hastened the sinking. It is believed that, by the standards of the time, the steel plate's quality was good, not faulty, but that it was inferior to what would be used for shipbuilding purposes in later decades, owing to advances in the metallurgy of steelmaking. As for the rivets, considerable emphasis has also been placed on their quality and strength. One of the last items to be fitted on Titanic before the ship's launch was her two side anchors and one centre anchor. The anchors themselves were a challenge to make with the centre anchor being the largest ever forged by hand and weighing nearly 16 tons. Twenty Clydesdale draught What is Your Favorite Story? What Makes a Compelling Story? Interesting Message Relatable Plot twist Positive Makes you think Tension Understandable Flow Satisfying conclusion Action Immersion Dialogue What Makes a StoryNOT Compelling? Boring Scattered dialogue Poor character Foreign language development Odd sentence One-dimensional construction characters Anti-climatic ending Plot is disjointed Overdone/cliché No action Too much detail Too much action Not enough detail What DrivesAction? ➢ The opportunity to be a hero ➢ Ownership ➢ Heightened emotional state ➢ Discomfort ➢ Engagement ➢ Having a clear path ➢ Resources ➢ Replacement behaviors ➢ Public declaration Story Variations by Modality andAudience ➢ Method can expand and limit storytelling capability ➢ Familiarity with topic (novice, journeyman, expert) ➢ Language ➢ Metaphor ➢ Interest level ➢ Context of situation ➢ Perspective ➢ Cognitive complexity ➢ What’s the point? Instilling Empathy, Emotion, &Engagement

➢ Managing pace ➢ Humans-behind-the-dots ➢ Rhetorical questions ➢ Call-to-action ➢ Make-a-guess

Source: Riche, Hurter, Diakpolous, Carpendale, 2018 I may not live to see our glory But I will gladly join the fight And when our children tell our story They’ll tell the story of tonight The Best Stories are Crafted…

Story Characteristics BUILDING THE STORY BACKWARDS

Story Element Questions to ponder The End Why are you telling a story? What outcomes do you want to see or decisions need to be made? What is the purpose of the story? Genre What type of story is it? Action? Drama? Comedy? RomCom? Setting Where does the story take place in time and space? Action What do you want people to do? OR What was done? Dialogue What do you want people to be saying or hearing differently? Narration From what perspective are you telling the story and to whom? Choice points How were you rewarded? What decisions did you make? Characters Who or what are the characters in the story? Once upon a time How do you intend to communicate the story? Title What is the marketing/punchline/point?

Characteristics of a Great Story Actually Telling the Story Before You Take Your Story Live

Actually Telling the Story Characteristics that Make for a Good Recitation Characteristics that Make for a Good Recitation ➢ Presence ➢ Engagement ➢ Delivery ➢ Visuals ➢ Graphs ➢ Pictures ➢ Gestures ➢ Human-ness Involving the Audience When Telling the Story

Static Dynamic Use of metaphor Reflective “Native” language techniques/language Make them the React to responses protagonist/hero Real-time adjustments Pose questions Do the math for them Other Considerations in Telling the Story

Who is the story teller? Is the audience ready to hear thisstory? What is the current context for telling this story? …..and how does that change the story itself? Gathering/Observing Evidence of Impact ➢ The story (or versions of it) find their way back to you ➢ Language changes to match the story ➢ Actual state change (increased engagement, additional resources provided, etc.) through empirical measurement ➢ Observe what is not acted upon ➢ Decision-making processes change in method or person ➢ Noting who actually takes action, show impact and those that do not How this Fails Mistakes and Missteps: Lessons Learned ➢ Choosing a messenger that sends the wrong message ➢ Overcomplicating already complex stories ➢ Oversimplifying the situation, actions, and visuals ➢ Diving in too deep before orienting the audience ➢ Failing to prepare for the “nothing surprising here” reaction ➢ Letting your own biases creep in ➢ Not making a clear point REFLECTIONS and REACTIONS and QUESTIONS Amy D. Grubb, Ph.D. Federal Bureau of Investigation

with a lot of help from

Evan Sinar Ph.D. Chief Scientist BetterUp