Are We Going Soft? Talk about performance skills, not soft skills
CHAPTER 1:
MY THOUGHTS AND IDEAS
PART TWO: SOLUTION
PART TWO
The solution to one of the biggest issues we face in today’s organizations is innate—it’s inside all of us. As human beings, one of our gifts is the ability to share stories and, in fact, this is how we have learned for thousands of years. It is only until recently that the majority of our learning and communications has come in the form of bits and bullets.
When it comes to performing better, there are many reasons that stories are the most effective way to increase performance. Chapter 2 looks at the ten main reasons why stories “work,” and provides many examples of the types of connections that stories help leaders make. With the help of many stories, anecdotes, and illustrations, Chapter 2 makes the case that leaders should consider stories to be one of the most powerful tools in their “leadership toolbox.”
Leaders make critical distinctions every day. We decide, say, the relative value of different types of investments, or the advantages and disadvantages of focusing our sales efforts on a particular market. Chapter 3 discusses the distinctions we must make when we communicate these decisions. That chapter also tackles some of the bad decisions we make based on our bias for action. Several illustrations make it clear how the different “filters” we take for granted actually impinge on our ability to communicate well. Finally, Chapter 3 looks at the various ways that stories are used inside organizations to cut through the clutter and noise and give people an opportunity to truly perform.
PART TWO: SOLUTION
CHAPTER 2:
2
STORIES WORK
PEOPLE ARE BULLETPROOF
How many e-mails do you get every day? How many phone calls? How many instant message chats do you have? Added together, it’s probably over 100. When I say this to audiences, most people start laughing and then they start crying! Do you feel like you are getting more done? Sometimes it feels like we are so busy “coordinating” that we’ve stopped “performing.” We are trading a lot more information and we are soaking up less.
“Facts are neutral until human beings add their own meaning to those facts…. The meaning they add to facts depends on their current story. People stick with their story even when presented with facts that don’t fit. They simply interpret or discount the facts to fit their story. This is why facts are not terribly useful in influencing others. People don’t need new facts—they need a new story.”
– ANNETTE SIMMONS’1
The sooner we realize that people are bulletproof—immune to the constant barrage of bits and bullets—the better leaders we will be. Leadership is a lot about influence. Heck, life is a lot about influence. We spend an inordinate amount of time persuading and influencing our teachers, kids, clients, bosses, employees, and peers to take an action, whether it be to get an A, do their homework, close a sale, or stretch to reach a goal.
In business, much of persuasion is throwing bullet points at people in an attempt to win their hearts and minds via intellectual argument. Facts and data are presented to give a business case for why something is true and must be acted upon. Because almost all persuasion in business is limited in this way, the facts and data you are presenting compete head-on with the facts and data that are already present in people’s heads. Your people may be listening as you state your case, but all too often they are thinking: Yeah, right. I’ve heard this before. But nothing really ever changes. So, forget about capturing their hearts. And without hearts, you can probably write off minds as well.
Robert McKee, the Hollywood screenwriting coach, said in a Harvard Business Review article: “The other way to persuade people—and ultimately a much more powerful way—is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story.”2
What’s fascinating about leadership in business is that most leaders that I’ve come across know that they aren’t making a connection. Leaders understand at a fundamental level that the bits and bullets aren’t hitting home, because they are just bouncing off of people’s existing attitudes, biases, and beliefs.
“Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.”
– ROBERT MCKEE3
Leaders often make two false assumptions that cause performance to suffer. First, they assume that their employees are always rational, unemotional, and analytical actors in this numbersdriven game called business. Not on your life. People are messy. We come to work with differing backgrounds, attitudes, and belief systems. We want different things. And none of us use the same “model” to interpret information coming at us, because our interpretation depends on our prior life experiences.
Second, leaders often assume that the information they are communicating is simple and thus should be easy and quick to communicate. Nope. One of the reasons that leaders often fail to communicate even “simple” information is that it’s not simple. They have had time to think it through, socialize it, and move forward. But no one else has, and thus it’s not at all simple for people. Even simple changes need time to be talked about, weighed, socialized, and, finally, adopted or discarded. Imagine a metaphorical dumpster behind your office containing all of the well-intended but discarded attempts to change behavior and enhance performance. How big would it be?
If our success in life and in business depends on how well we influence people, then we had better choose wisely when deciding how to approach them. This is where stories are starting to gain traction and play an incredibly powerful role.
GAINING TRACTION
Stories take many shapes inside organizations, from hallway conversations and e-mail anecdotes to personal stories, corporate legends, and even full-blown, highly produced videos and presentations. And as more and more leaders realize that their communications are not getting through, they are looking to stories as an alternative.
“In a business setting, a PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words, which is about 8 seconds’ worth of silent reading material. With so little information per slide, many, many slides are needed. Audiences consequently endure a relentless sequen-tiality, one damn slide after another. When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to understand context and evaluate relationships.”
– EDWARD TUFTE4
ETHICS, ANYONE?
After months of effort, a group of attorneys from one of the largest auditing firms in the world had just put the final touches on a 65-page document. The document had gone through hundreds of drafts, been reviewed by countless company executives, and made its way through a rigorous approval process. Because the document was critical to the future success of the company, the CEO and his senior management team wanted the document in the hands of all 33,000 employees of the firm immediately.
But the company faced some major problems. First, the document was
