Bonfire Leadership

Archives for October 2019

Once Upon a Time: Leadership and the Art of Storytelling

Last year, I attended a luncheon with colleagues. The keynote speaker took to the stage and we were rapt with anticipation. The speaker was a woman who had experienced an incredibly violent event. Her attacker had taken her hostage and she had managed to escape and live to tell this harrowing story. But the story was buried under about 35 minutes of statistics and data. By the time she started to share her powerful experience, the clock had almost run out. Every person at my table, and I’m sure in the room, was panting for more. We wanted a detailed account that would help us to understand what she had experienced and how she had survived it. But we didn’t get that because the speaker failed to showcase the story.

Effective storytelling is a critical part of leadership. Why? Because our stories are accounts of our experiences and experience establishes credibility. No one is interested in what a novice has to say. Your team wants to know what you know and they want to know how you know it. The what and how boils down to experience and our stories demonstrate that experience. Remember that everyone in an organization should be a leader. And everyone who is part of executing a successful event should be a leader. The speaker that I referred to earlier had a leadership role that day. Anytime that you take command of a podium, you are leading the room. Good leaders need good stories and they need to tell those stories effectively.

Stories help us to sell ourselves and to solve problems. Those are two things that leaders are concerned about: getting their team to buy in and fixing things that have gone wrong. Stories help us to connect with people. If there’s no connection, nothing gets done.

As a trial lawyer, it’s critical that I connect with people. Every case is a story, and I am tasked with telling that story in such a way that jurors or judges will be compelled to accept my point of view. Good stories require details and memorable facts. Several years ago, I handled a case that involved a 75-year-old woman and a piece of land. Ms. Jenkins had inherited this property from her aunt. The property was located in a small, rural town and had been in Ms. Jenkins’ family since the 1800s. A man who owned land adjacent to Ms. Jenkins’ place, decided that he would fence off her property and claim it as his own. Ms. Jenkins didn’t live on the property but would visit regularly and during one of those visits, Ms. Jenkins noticed the fence. She filed suit to reclaim her property and the case went to trial. During the trial, Ms. Jenkins testified that growing up, she had visited the property many times. She stated that her aunt lived there in a red house.  Ms. Jenkins, running and playing on the land and picking plums from the fruit trees that dotted the landscape. Ms. Jenkins’ command of details and historical events was impressive, but it was not enough to convince the trial judge.

We lost the case but quickly appealed. I wrote the brief for the appellate court and in the brief, I spent time discussing metes, boundaries, titles and all manner of property law. But I was careful to showcase Ms. Jenkins; I wrote about the 7-year-old girl who played ate fruit from her aunt’s plum trees. I referred to the home on the land, not by its municipal address, but, instead, I called it “the old red house.” My goal was to tell a memorable story while providing evidence that the property belonged to Ms. Jenkins. We won the case on appeal and Ms. Jenkins was once again the sole owner of the old red house and the land that it sits on. I am convinced that the details of Ms. Jenkins’ life made a difference to the appellate judges who were tasked with deciding the case. Details and vivid language matter whether you’re delivering a speech, writing a legal brief, or rallying your team to complete its mission in the eleventh hour.

Here are 5 ways to develop and use stories to motivate your team:

  1. Seek out new experiences: Great stories are found when we exit the comfort zone and break new ground.
  2. Study history: Historical figures lived fascinating lives filled with awe-inspiring adventures; tell their stories and connect them to your present mission.
  3. Set aside the data and focus on personalizing experiences: focus on people not technical information.
  4. War stories are welcome so long as they are relevant and told in a compelling way.
  5. Consider taking a course in storytelling: there are lots of on-line and live courses that teach that can teach you how to translate your experiences into stories that matter.

Let’s all strive to live a life worth telling others about.

Feel the Fire: Internal & External Motivation

Learning a new language is a prized intellectual skill. We are immediately impressed when we learn that someone is “fluent in several languages.” These multi-lingual people instantly become more interesting. There was a time when I had a decent command of French, but I didn’t nurture the skill. So now, the only French I can muster is asking how someone is doing and whether they’d like to come on a picnic with me. But I do speak one additional language besides English; I speak fluent Marine. Yes, Marines have their own language: skylarking (mischievous behavior); pogey bait (junk food); catwalk (sidewalk); ladder well (staircase); chow hall (cafeteria); ink sticks (pens); garden party (cleaning the grounds of the barracks); and go fasters (tennis shoes). These were all terms that I mastered after landing on Parris Island. There was another word, though, that was constantly in use–“motivation.” Sure, it’s a common enough word and I was familiar with it before the Marines. But during those endless weeks of bootcamp, “motivation” was a mantra, a command, a running chant, an explanation for everything that went right or wrong. (Not much went right, by the way.) The order of the day was always: “Get motivated! Be motivated! Stay motivated!” During basic training and into my active duty years, I grew to appreciate motivation as a chief component of leadership. Leaders get things done, but nothing happens without the inner drive. Simply put, motivation is about getting fired up and staying fired up.

What I’ve learned over the years is that there are two types of motivation: internal fire and external fire. Internal fire is self-motivation. It is the desire and inspiration that springs from inside. Internal motivation is critical because no matter how many people are cheering you on, you’ve still got to run the race. We’re always working to keep the internal fire going. When I was slogging through bootcamp, wondering if death would be an easier way out, I pushed through because I couldn’t stand the thought of being a quitter. When I broke my leg days before graduation and had to stay on Parris Island an extra six weeks, it took every bit of guts that I had to maintain any level of motivation. But it was that internal flame that gave me the conviction to say “I’m not leaving this damn island until I’m a Marine.

External motivation comes from the people around you who encourage your success and elevation. External fire is important because when the internal motivation is waning, outside forces can push you through. This means that we should work to cultivated relationships with people who are interested in seeing us win. But know that the external fire, no matter how bright it burns, can do nothing if there’s no internal light. As it was put to me recently: You have to give a damn. And the people around you have to give a damn. And it has to happen at roughly the same time.

I have a number of projects in full swing, and these days it seems that I’m constantly over-scheduled. “When do I get to do nothing?” I sometimes whine out loud as I scroll through my calendar of deadlines and commitments. We all have those times when the motivation tank is on “E.” Here’s how I get mine full again:

  1. Call one of my fellow creators/entrepreneurs. Iron sharpens iron, you know. And I have a roster of awesome people who know how to help me re-light the flame. In the Corps we’d ask: “Who motivates the motivator?” My friends, that’s who.
  2. Focus on how it’s going to feel when all the hard work is done. Few things are more satisfying that seeing check marks in all the little boxes on the list.
  3. Plan a reward for yourself, once the project is finished. Fantasize about said reward frequently and in detail. My rewards usually are centered around elaborate meals and sparkling wine. I’m thinking of seafood fettuccine and prosecco this very minute.

Mastering self-motivation is a critical skill that stands as a hallmark of good leadership. Make sure that your list of friends includes people who understand your vision and can motivate you toward realizing it. Once the internal and external fires are burning in tandem, you’ll get tasks done and, hopefully, have more time for wine, pasta, and skylarking.