{"id":2805,"date":"2010-05-09T13:51:18","date_gmt":"2010-05-09T17:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"\/news_blogs\/john\/?p=2805"},"modified":"2024-02-22T13:53:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T18:53:55","slug":"the-leaders-guide-to-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cccc.org\/news_blogs\/john\/2010\/05\/09\/the-leaders-guide-to-storytelling\/","title":{"rendered":"The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Facts and logic can engage the mind, but if you want to motivate <\/strong>people so that they act enthusiastically and with real commitment, if you want to persuade<\/strong> them to adopt a particular course of action or way of being, you have to engage their hearts, and a great way to do that is by telling stories. Stories<\/strong> can be incredibly useful because they are much more memorable than plain facts or logic; they draw your listeners into the topic so they become personally interested and emotionally involved, and they help people understand what you really mean. They connect people’s aspirations with your ministry and the future state you are called to create. In another post<\/a>, I talked about how stories keep your ministry’s Christian identity alive. You still need facts and logic  of course, but augment them with stories to add the sparkle and zip that inspires people to take action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn How to Tell Stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how do you tell a story well? There are lots of books that promise to let you in on the secret. If you check Amazon for storytelling books, you’ll find just under 20,000 of them! I haven’t read them all; in fact I think I’ve just read one. The good news is that after reading just this one, I felt no need to read anything else. Often the first book whets your appetite and then you read others to go deeper, or to get a fuller understanding. The book I read left me feeling I knew enough and what more could be said?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the storytelling<\/strong> books I considered reading are quite generic. They might tell you how to tell stories that you could use around a campfire, or with your kids or friends, but will these books help you at work? I picked one that was written specifically for organizational leaders, and the table of contents includes the kind of stories that I, as a leader, want to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In\u00a0The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative<\/em><\/a>, Stephen Denning walks you through the different kinds of stories that organizational leaders use, tells you when you should use each type, and shows how you craft a story to suit its particular purpose. Here’s just a brief summary of the story types:<\/p>\n\n\n\n