Lead With a Story

Paul Smith: Yes, well I suppose it took me 15 or 20 years actually to figure it out, but there certainly was at least one or two pivotal moments for me, and one of them was just about five or six years ago; it was here in Cincinnati at a big Procter & Gamble event, where I was in an auditorium with about 500-600 of my colleagues, and you've probably been to things like this before, it's like the annual company meeting where they deploy the new strategies for the New Year. So it's this big event, and the senior leaders are on stage telling us what we need to know for the coming year, and at the time I'd probably been with P&G 13 or 14 years and so I'd been to 13 or 14 of these such events and most of them were very good, but this one was particularly bad and literally people were falling asleep at their tables.

While they were falling asleep I was sinking down lower in my chair feeling horrible for the person on stage because it was my boss and I was part of the leadership team that helped come up with the material being deployed, so you can imagine, I was feeling terribly responsible for what was going on. So after that meeting I had been wracking my brain to figure out why was this particular meeting so awful when all the others I'd been to were so much better, and it occurred to me after some thinking that the problem wasn't the strategies being deployed, they were correct; the problem was that there were no stories to connect those strategies to the people in the audience and to motivate them to achieve them and get them to connect with them on a more personal level. As I looked at the other events I'd been to there was much more storytelling, and that was my first clue that something was wrong with what we had done and it started me on this journey to want to understand story telling better.

Rachel Salaman: So what kind of story are we talking about here? What kind of stories work well in a business environment, can you give us an example?

Paul Smith: Yes. So probably my favorite example comes from a colleague of mine named Jason Zola, and he's a Research Director like me at P&G, and 20 years ago when he was in college he had a professor that told his class such a compelling story that Jason's been telling it for the last 20 years. Apparently in that class the professor has the students go do these research projects for their last semester before they graduate, and this particular class had the project working for the local judicial system, and the judge had them research: how could you improve the jury deliberation process? So you can imagine these young, idealistic, 20-something kids being very excited about this project because they probably figured they could, you know, that was their chance to make the world a better place, right, or at least a corner of it. So they went and did all the kind of things you or I probably would have done; they interviewed other judges and lawyers and former jurists themselves, and they asked them all the same kind of questions that you or I probably would have asked, like "What was the trial about and what kind of information did you give the jurists in the jury room, and what were the instructions given them and how long did the trial last, and how late did you make them work into the night?" and even "What kind of food did you feed them?"

What they concluded at the end of the semester was that none of those things mattered much. It turns out the only thing that mattered was the shape of the table in the jury room. So in jury rooms they've had a rectangular table, whoever sat at the head of the table, even if it wasn't the jury foreman, tended to dominate the conversation, and they concluded that a less than robust and egalitarian debate of the facts ensued and therefore potentially a less than accurate verdict; but in jury rooms that had round tables there was a more fair debate of the facts and they felt like a more well-reasoned conclusion was drawn. So you can imagine how excited they were to go to the judge and give him this conclusion, and he was very excited as well and immediately afterwards issued a decree in all of the courthouses in his jurisdiction in direct contradiction to what they said; he said "Anywhere we've got any of these round tables, get rid of them, and put in rectangular tables." Now you can imagine their shock and surprise, and especially when they found out why he did that, and the reason why he did that was because his definition of an improved jury deliberation process wasn't a more accurate one or a more fair one, it was a faster one, he wanted to reduce the backlog on his court docket.

So you can imagine how these students felt, you know, they felt terrible about having been part of this, and in fact they think they accomplished exactly the opposite of what they wanted to accomplish, you know, they think it made it a less fair process. So they may have gotten an A on their report card but they felt completely defeated at the end of the year. Now Jason tells this story today and he tells it every year when we get a new batch of hires at Procter & Gamble, especially in our Research Department, and the lesson of course is that it's very important to be clear on your objectives before you start your research project, because if you're not clear you could be very disappointed at the end, like these students were.

Now he could just stand up there and tell them, "Well at Procter & Gamble Company we believe it's very important to be clear in your objectives before you start your project." Now how effective would that be, right? Not. That would just go in one ear and out the other, but telling that story allows the students to learn, or the new hires to learn almost first-hand what it's like to feel that anguish of regretting what you've just done and wishing that you had been clear in your objectives. So the conclusion I get from that is that experience is always the best teacher, but that story telling is a very close second, and just about everything else is a distant third.

Rachel Salaman: And it sounds like it doesn't really matter what kind of story you use as long as it's really appropriate to what the message you're trying to get out to your audience, is that right?

Paul Smith: Yes, well I guess that depends on what you mean by "what kind of story," but it needs to be a story relevant to the situation that teaches the lesson or motivates the behavior or the change in opinion that you're trying to accomplish. I mean, that's one of the differences between business stories and any other kind of story, is that business stories have an objective, whereas most other kinds of stories are really just to entertain you, you know, like a movie or a book, and that's fine for those stories. A business story though, if it doesn't accomplish the objective of the person telling the story, then it's not a good story, and so that story has an objective, to teach a lesson, and it teaches it well.

Rachel Salaman: Now we tend to think that people are either born storytellers or not, they know how to make it engaging. How much do you think good story telling can be learned?

Paul Smith: Yes. You know, I think story telling is probably just like any other talent or skill. I think I agree with you, there probably are some people who are more naturally gifted than others, but I think similar to all those other skills and talents I think it can be learned, like music or art or math or science. I mean, you can't get out of high school without at least a rudimentary understanding of reading, writing and arithmetic, and you can't even get out of college without at least getting proficient in one other language. I don't think story telling is any different than any of those. It's not that it's not learnable, the problem is that most business leaders don't realize that story telling is a skill that they need to develop in the first place, so they don't try. I think if you try you can learn it just like any of those others.

Rachel Salaman: And we think of business communication as rational and objective, and stories, by contrast, we think of as usually subjective and emotional. So how do you square that circle? Isn't it a contradiction?

Paul Smith: Yes. You know, I think it would be if a business story was just a long series of emotional scenes one after another, like a Harlequin Romance novel, but they're not, or I think at least the good ones are not. For example, the story I just told you about Jason Zola and the jury tables, most of that story was very rational and objective; so the very rational set of people, the students, chose to interview, the smart questions that they asked, the very logical conclusion they came to and then the very reasonable recommendation that they made at the end. The only emotional part was when that judge surprised them with his decision at the end, and then all the regret and shame they felt as a result of it. So I think there does need to be emotion in a good business story, but just one, just one moment of it, it doesn't need to be the whole thing.

Rachel Salaman: And what about the kind of situations that these stories work in; are there some work situations or business situations where they're particular effective, and also not so effective?

Paul Smith: Yes, definitely. I'm not so zealous about story telling that I think it's always the solution. For example, if you're trying to figure out what your five year business strategy is going to be or needs to be you probably don't need a good story, you probably need a good Strategy Department to help you figure that out. If you're trying to figure out how many billions of dollars to pay to acquire your biggest competitor you probably don't need a good story, you probably need a good financial analyst, right? But once you've decided what your five year strategy's going to be and you need the 5,000 people that work at your company to line up behind it and accomplish it and be passionate about achieving it, now you need a good story. You know, once you've decided to buy your biggest competitor and you need the 10,000 people that work there to stay and not quit, now you need a good story.

So there are times for it and there are times that are not, but I think it's useful in far more situations than most readers realize, and I'll tell you, the five most common ones are probably these; inspiring the organization, setting a vision for the future, teaching people important lessons, defining the culture and the values of the place, and then explaining who you are and what you believe, and those are the ones that most people that do use it use it for, but what I'm finding is that there are so many more. In fact, as part of the research for the book I ended up interviewing over 75 CEOs and Executives at many companies around the world, and that's when I was surprised to find them using them in a much wider range of circumstances. So, for example, storytelling can be useful when you need a lot of heavy influence, like when you're leading change or making recommendations to the boss, but it's also good for really delicate issues, like managing diversity and inclusion or giving people coaching and feedback in a way that they'll receive it as a gift. It can even help bring out more of people's creativity or rekindle their passion for their work.

In all what I discuss in the book is 21 situations where story telling can really help the leader be effective, and I guess I'd summarize in this way; if you look at the differences between those situations, when story telling helps and when it doesn't, you'll see that story telling isn't always the right tool to help you manage things, but it's exceptionally good at helping you lead people, that's I think the main difference.

Rachel Salaman: Your book is unusual because it is both a guide to storytelling and it's also a repository of stories that people can use. Could you talk a little bit more about the structure and why you chose to write it that way?

Paul Smith: Yes, well I didn't start out with that structure being in mind. I really thought I was going to write a book about how to do storytelling, and when I got into all of the research and interviews, first I had to go back and read all the books and academic articles that have been written on story telling in the past, right, that's the first step, you need to know what's been done before. Then as I got into the interviews it occurred to me in both those sets of research that there were two main barriers keeping leaders from using story telling more often. The number one barrier, by far the biggest barrier, is that when a leader gets into a situation where they need a good story and they just don't have one, they don't have the right one, that's the biggest barrier. So what my reader needed, what I needed, is a whole host of stories, a database of stories to tell at the right time in the right place. So that's why the majority of the book is stories in these 21 leadership situations, challenges where you can use these stories to navigate.

The second biggest barrier was that people just don't know how to craft their own business story, and so that's the other half of the book, is how to do it, what's the structure of a good story, what are the right elements for success; should it be emotional, should it not, should there be a surprise in it, should there not, those kind of things. The way I ended up structuring it, instead of it just being Part 1 and Part 2, which I thought I would do, it's called a break narrative structure, and it basically mixes the two together so that you never have to go more than four or five chapters of these leadership challenge stories before you get to one of the chapters about how to do it. That's so, if you want to read the book front to back, you're not going to get frustrated, "I'm two-thirds of the way through the book and I haven't even gotten to the how to do it yet," you get to have that along the way, that was the idea.

Rachel Salaman: And what's your take on borrowing other people's stories? Is it a simple case of mentioning where the story comes from, or should you ask permission before telling someone else's story, if that's practical and possible, if the person is around to ask?

Paul Smith: Right. You know what, I think if the only stories you ever told were about yourself I think you'd come across to people as a pretty self-absorbed egomaniac or something, right? So of course I think you should be telling other people's stories that you heard from other people, and people do it every day, I don't think leaders and business people should be any different. Now if you happen to know the original source of the story and, like you said, you may not because you may have heard it fourth and fifth hand, sure it would be nice to share that, but I think there's probably only two situations where I would really worry much about asking permission. One of those would be if you happened to be a professional speaker being paid for a speech and the story you're borrowing came from another professional speaker who might consider it part of their private repertoire of stories, then it's kind of a professional courtesy in the industry that you should ask. I think the second situation would be if it's a very personal story and it was told to you in private, then you might want to ask the person, "Is it okay if I tell this or if I use your name or should I not use your name?" But even if it's a personal story and you heard it from somebody in that auditorium I was in with 500 people and the person was on stage with a microphone and they told all 500 people their personal story, well it's not a very private story any more, is it. Obviously they're okay with it being out there, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

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Rachel Salaman: Now as you mentioned, your book really goes into the nitty-gritty of how to tell a good story and how to make it effective. In the book you say that all stories should have three things; context, action and result, which gives us the acronym CAR, C-A-R. So can you just talk us through how that might work in a business narrative?

Paul Smith: Yes. So let me explain first that there are all kinds of story structures out there, you know, there is a six-step story structure that Hollywood screenwriters use and a nine-step one that cognitive psychologists are fond of, there's even a 12-step heroes journey popularized by Joseph Campbell a number of years ago. So there are lots of story structures, and I've studied them all and my conclusion is that all of them will work, OK, none of them are bad story structures. The difference between the one that I'm proposing and those is that I'm proposing a story structure for a business audience to tell business stories, and you've got about three minutes to tell a business story before you lose your audience. You know, you don't have two hours in a movie theater or six weeks of one-hour a night curled up by the fire reading that novel, so you don't have time I think for a 12-step hero's journey. So I've tried to come up with the shortest one that would work, and I think if you had any fewer than these three steps it wouldn't be effective.

So, for example, if you think about that jury table story I told you, it had all three things; it had "context" at the beginning, so you learned it was about a guy named Jason Zola and these young, idealistic college students on this class project for a judge, and the job was to improve the jury deliberation process, that was the context or the background. The "action" of the story was all the research they did and the conclusion they came to, and then the "result" at the end was the judge's surprising decision and how that made them feel and the lesson that they learned from it, and of course the lesson that you as the listener should learn from it, so that's the context, action and result.

Now imagine how that would sound if I told it this way, what if I started the story off: a number of judges and lawyers and former jurists were interviewed about their experience in the courtroom and they were asked about the length of the trials and the jury instructions and how late the jury deliberated and even the food they were fed, and it turned out the only thing that seemed to impact the accuracy of the verdict was the shape of the table in the jury room, round tables were good and rectangular tables were bad, but then when the judge heard this he ordered all the round tables be removed, and it turns out he wanted faster trials. Can you imagine how upset those students that were conducting this must have felt, you know, or something like that.

So that could be an effective story, but I think not nearly as effective as the way I told it, because in this case I started with the action and I totally skipped the context, and that's the mistake that most business leaders make when they tell a business story, is they're so excited to get to the action part, and they probably think that they're being very focused and action oriented and they skip the context. If you don't know that that story is about a bunch of idealistic college students who think they're trying to solve one problem and only, it turned out later, to find out they're solving another problem, then the story's not nearly as interesting and it's not nearly as effective. So that's why the context is important at the beginning, and that's why most leaders skip it because they don't think it's important, and it turns out its vitally important. So those are the three steps that I think you just have to have.

Rachel Salaman: Now there's a chapter in your book on stylistic elements, which novice story tellers will find particularly helpful, and this is where you tell us how to begin a story. What are your tips for story beginnings?

Paul Smith: Yes, so remember I said I think you've only got three or four minutes to tell a business story? So you'd think "Gosh, my audience doesn't have time to get bored, and three minutes instead of two hours, it should be easy for me to hold their attention," and it turns out it's not that easy, because when you go see a movie you've paid money, you want to go see this movie, and when you buy a book to read a story you've bought the book and you're expecting a story and you want to read it, but in the middle of a meeting your audience didn't ask you to come and tell them a story, so they could disengage in about 15 seconds if you don't start the story right and engage them in it. So the three things I suggest for starting a story in a way that will get them engaged and keep them interested, the first one is a surprise, and that's probably no surprise to you or anybody else, that obviously kind of shocks people out of whatever it is they were thinking about and gets them to focus on you, but I think it's the least effective of the three, I think the other two are even better.

The second one is to open up a mystery, and by that I mean pose a question that you don't answer right away, that the listener has to stay listening and they're interested in knowing the answer, it must be an interesting question to them, and then don't answer it until the end and that will keep them interested, to learn the answer to this mystery. And then the third one, which I think is the most effective, is introduce a relatable hero, the main character that's relatable to the audience, and stick them in a relevant challenge, one that your audience might find themselves in some day. So, for example, that jury table story really had two of these things; it had a bit of the mystery, because you learned at the beginning that this team was off trying to figure out how to improve the jury deliberation process and you were probably kind of curious, "Hmm, I wonder what they found out?" or "I wonder if there is a way to improve the jury deliberation process?" but you didn't find out till the end, so you kind of had to stay tuned to find out. But it also had this relatable hero and a relevant challenge, because most of the people, in fact all of the people that Jason tells that story to were college students just six weeks earlier – remember, these were new hires he tells the story to – and they almost all had some kind of a class project. So it was a very relevant story for them and that was introduced right at the beginning, college students in a research project.

So those are the things, those three things, and especially the last one, that really gets your audience to pay attention, because they want to know what this hero in your story learned, "I want to learn from their mistakes so I don't have to make them myself," and that's why they stay tuned.

Rachel Salaman: So to get into even more detail you also include some tips for a clear writing style, which a lot of people find really useful. Can you tell us a few of those now?

Paul Smith: Yes. So there's really something strange that happens to people when they write their stories down. So even a gifted speaker tends to turn their ideas into this complex swamp of words when they commit it to paper, and I'm not really sure why that is but there must be something about the formality of writing that makes us want to fluff up our language; we think that these long, elaborate sentences full of big words is more professional, and they're not, all they do is confuse your audience. So the best advice that I have for people is to write the way you speak, and you've seen these horribly long, complex sentences in formal business writing that just confuse people and they have to go back and read it two or three times and it's got these really big words, "We need to optimize our processes to maximize our this and that," and it's very difficult to wade through. But you know that those people that wrote that would never, ever say those words to another human being face-to-face, ever, because they would sound like some strange corporate robot, right? Nobody speaks that way. If you write the way you speak you'll avoid all of that problem.

So there's basically four things that are different between the way people write and the way they speak. One is people use shorter sentences when they speak, about 15-17 words is typical for spoken language; written language people tend to use 20, 25, 30 words in a sentence, and that's just too long. Secondly, people speaking with smaller words; in fact, I think about 15 per cent of your words when you write should be three syllables or bigger, or no more than 15 per cent, less is fine but more is not good. The third difference is active voice versus passive voice. People speak in active voice, but sometimes we tend to write with passive voice, and so this is the difference between, "Newton Company won the contract and they were very excited," as opposed to, "The contract was won by Newton Corporation," you know. So it sounds like a subtle difference but it's just more genuine and authentic to write in active voice as opposed to passive voice. And then the fourth and last one is to get to the verb quickly. You know, it's odd that when we write we tend to start our sentences with these long prepositional phrases and the verb is buried at the end, and that's really difficult to read because your brain has to remember all those words in the first part of the sentence before your brain can find out what on earth is happening to all these words at the beginning. But if you start your sentences and it's got the verb up front, like, "We did," or "I think," or "We should," the verb is right there at the beginning and then the rest of the sentence makes so much more sense to your audience.

So those are the four differences, but basically its write the way you speak, and there's a tool that you may be familiar with that will help you do that and it's in most of the word processing programs; I know it's in Microsoft Word. In the grammar checker there's a place that you can ask it to give you a reading level score, the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level Score is one of the most popular ones, and it basically gives you a grade level; first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, whatever, and it can go up to 20 or 30 or 40, so it's not really a grade level, but the idea is it tells you how complex your sentence structure is, and where you want to be is about 8-10 on this scale. That's what "The Wall Street Journal" is written at, "The New York Times," most of the major magazines are written on this level of 8-10. If you're higher than that your writing style was just too complex and it's probably difficult for your audience to follow along.

Rachel Salaman: You also talk about literary devices that can be used in stories. Can you just briefly tell us what some of those might be?

Paul Smith: Yes. So there are three, but the first one is really the most important, and if you did nothing other than the first one I think you'd be doing well, and that is having dialog in the story. I think that's one of the key differences between what I would call a story and a case study or an example or something else. If you listen to a kindergarten or come home from school and tell what happened that day you'll see how they do this; they come home and they say "Well Johnny said this, then the teacher said this, and so we all had to do this, and then we said..." That's the way people from even a young age tell stories, they tell what other people said. So if you put dialog into the stories it makes it so much more of an enjoyable story than a dry case study. Compare these two sentences, I could write a story and include this sentence: "I talked to the CEO yesterday and I think there are three things she really wants us to do, and here they are, one, two, three." Now compare that to if I instead said this: "I talked to the CEO yesterday and she said this, she said ‘There are three things I want you to do. Here's the first, second and the third.'" Now that second one I'm actually quoting what the CEO said instead of telling you my interpretation of what I think she meant, so it's so much more authoritative and positive and engaging when somebody actually quotes what somebody else said instead of giving you my interpretation.

I don't know if you're familiar with this reference, but back a number of year ago there was a popular television commercial about the financial advisory firm, E.F. Hutton, and it always ended with somebody saying, "Well my broker is E.F. Hutton and E.F. Hutton says...," and then everybody in the restaurant gets quiet and leans over to listen. That's exactly what happens when you get to that part of a story, where you say, "Well I met with the CEO yesterday and she said..." Now do you think anybody in the audience is going to be not paying attention at that moment? I mean, they're going to be riveted, "I want to know what she said at that moment," as opposed to what you think she meant. So dialog is very, very important.

The other two I'll mention real quickly; any time you're talking about real people mention their real name, unless they don't want you to. It makes it more credible and flattering to the person who the story is about. Then last one would be repetition, and this one may sound odd but it's just like in nursery rhymes as a kid, repetition in a story works for kids but it works for adults too, so don't be afraid to use some of the same language over and over, and it makes the story more memorable, but dialog is the most important one I think.

Rachel Salaman: Now you talked a little earlier about writing stories down. Should people be writing stories down and trying to memorize them if they were planning to use a story in a presentation, for example, or should we be approaching spoken and written stories completely differently in a business setting?

Paul Smith: Yes, that's a good question. The answer is yes, I think we should be writing them down, but not so that you can memorize them. I think you should write them down so that you can remember them, but remembering a story is different than memorizing a story. I mean, listening to somebody tell you a memorized story would be a bit like having somebody read you a story, it would kind of be boring, right? So I don't think you should memorize your stories, but you need to remember them and writing them down will help you remember them. Remember we just talked about writing like you speak? So you're asking about should we approach spoken and written stories differently? I think the answer is no, you should be writing like you speak anyway, so if you're doing that then you're going to be approaching them both in the same way, and I think both your written and verbal stories will be more effective if you treat them the same.

Rachel Salaman: Now everyone likes to be entertained by a good story once in a while of course, but if you tell too many stories you might get a reputation for being a bore. Is that something you've come across?

Paul Smith: Well yes, we all know people like that, right, but the good news is I think there's a very simple way to avoid it and that is to make sure that you're not telling a story for the wrong reason, and I think there are two reasons that will put you at risk of being a bore. The first one is that if you're telling stories just to entertain people, now that's kind of the preface of your question, people like to be entertained by a story, but that's not what business stories are for, they're not just to entertain people, that's not what my book is about. Business stories should be told with an objective, of getting people, like I said earlier, to either change their opinions or their behavior. You're trying to get them to do something, like approve your recommendation or perform better at their job or be more creative, and entertainment stories puts you at risk of wasting people's time in the office. So if all of your stories are just not related to what we're talking about and it's just because it's a funny story I think you could become a bore very quickly.

The second bad reason to tell a story is if all your stories are about you and quite frankly you just enjoy bragging about yourself, and you know people that do that; all their stories are about them and how they did this awesome thing and aren't they wonderful, so that could get you to be thought of as a bore very quickly. So what you should do is mix in stories about other people, or make sure that some of the stories about you are when you made a mistake, you know, don't always be the hero of your own stories because you will come across as conceited and a bore.

Rachel Salaman: So what final tips do you have for someone who might not be used to telling stories but would like to use them more?

Paul Smith: Yes. You know, the most common mistake I see is people apologizing for or asking permission to tell a story in the first place, and you've heard people do that, they'll be in a meeting and they'll say something like this: "You know, I'm sorry, I just have to tell a story here, it'll just take a minute, real quick." Or they say, "You know, I'm sorry, can I just tell a story here? Do you mind if I tell a personal story?" So they're either apologizing or asking permission or both, and I think that sends a terrible message to the people you're talking to, that sends them a message that you don't think the story you're about to tell is nearly as valuable as whatever else was going to happen in that three minutes anyway. If you really believe that, well you shouldn't tell your story, you should get back to the bullet points on slide number 72 or whatever you were talking about. You know, leaders don't ask permission or apologize for leading, they just do it. So when you're leading by telling a story, just tell it. In fact, I would advise people, don't even announce that you're going to tell a story, you know, that normally accompanies a bad story anyway. Accomplished good storytellers don't say, "So I'd like to tell you a story and the story's about such-and-such, and so here's kind of how the story starts, the story starts out like this." They don't make a fuss about telling a story, they just start telling a story and you don't even realize as the audience that somebody's telling you a story, you're just enjoying what you're hearing and you might realize half way through, "I'm listening to a story." So don't apologies for it, don't ask permission for it, in fact don't even tell people you're going to tell them a story, just tell it.

Rachel Salaman: Paul Smith, thank you very much for joining us.

Paul Smith: You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

The name of Paul's book again is "Lead With a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives that Captivate, Convince and Inspire." You can find out more about it at www.leadwithastory.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.