Leadership Through Storytelling In The Digital Age

My last organization managed growth through a great combination of driving it organically, via aggressive business development, and by always being on the look out for acquisitions that make business sense. Before I left, the last acquisition made was of a global technology company called Tigerspike.

"Our unique approach blends technology with human expertise to deliver business outcomes, fast." ~ Tigerspike - Our Way

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As it turns out, the benefit the acquisition brought to the now parent organization was more than the fourteen years of enterprise mobility experience, or their strategic location that worked out well with the parent organization's global footprint. The greatest outcome from the acquisition in my view was a fundamental change Tigerspike brought to the acquiring organization's view of leadership and story telling.

_{Video Source: Tigerspike YouTube Channel}

It is amazing how a tech company recognizes the importance of keeping human in responding to challenges, solving problems, motivating staff, and overall leadership. After the acquisition, our meetings end with a story or two relatable to the agenda. We use to walk away from meetings with a list of action items and not much else, post the format change; we go back to our teams with a deeper understanding of the message and appreciation of why our individual to-do lists are important.

Our lives are but collections of stories. Some of our tales we created ourselves, and others we had to go through against our will. Through the use of storytelling, great organizations communicate the most important things to their staff, their consumers, and the community where they operate:

• Visiting the About Us sections of organizations' websites will most likely give a brief story rather than simply listing down what is it they do.
• Core Values and Culture Statements are also best told with the story of how they came about instead of just listing them and requiring everyone to memorize each words.
• Lessons are learned and appreciated the most from understanding the consequences from actual events.
• Roadmaps are best set by showing a story line so far, and making people see the next steps that make sense.
• We are Inspired by great men and women not so much because of what they have achieved, but by the Story;
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  the vision, the struggle, the sacrifices, then the triumph.

For ten years holding between mid-management to mid-executive level positions, I've always made it a point to meet new hire classes who joins my team. In those engagements, I often take nearly an hour to tell them stories about my journey:

• How I was once just like them being welcomed to a new organization fourteen years ago.
• How for three years I hopped from one organization to the next trying to find the perfect company.
• How I spent the subsequent years, trying to be part of the solution rather than running away from the imperfections.
• How I put in the hard work and dedication in building teams, and cultures, resulting to more engaged teams, and a number of promotions.
• How I often thought about giving up, how they may get the same thoughts especially in their first 12 months, and things I do to shake those
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  thoughts out to focus on building a career.

The art of storytelling goes as far back as the markings on caves by cave men. There's been a number of studies about the increased brain activities involved in both the storytellers and those that are listening to the stories. One that specifically looked at how the brain of storyteller and the listeners synchronizes is Uri Hasson from Princeton with this observation:

                                                                  "When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs."

"By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners' brains."

In this age when much of the technical skills required to do many roles are getting written in codes and automated through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the soft-skills that are not yet easily programmable are likely to become in demand in organizations. More than the likelihood of better chance at keeping ones job, storytelling is a hope to keep our experiences in the digital age relatable, synchronizable; Human.