Storytelling Animals

“Tell your people the reality they are living in,” said Robert Vischer, President of St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was responding to a question about the role of leaders in front of a group of 120 visitors from government and businesses on a “Best Practices Trip” to the Twin Cities from Portland, Oregon.

As I noticed heads nod around the room at this comment, I thought of the many times over the past year I’ve heard leaders talk about their plans without mentioning the shifts we are living through and how these changes factor into their work: business leaders talking about workforce training without noting the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, public sectors leaders describing potential infrastructure projects without acknowledging the possibility of the federal government withholding public funds based on President Trump’s political allegiances, and non-profit leaders downplaying signals of a recession and the likely impact on their budgets.

President Vischer’s comments echo the insights from Jonathan Gottschall’s 2012 book, The Storytelling Animal, which describes how storytelling is a deeply embedded trait. Since humans broke off from apes and chimps about 5 million years ago, we have been telling stories to ground ourselves and find meaning.

If you are a leader in a business, government agency or non-profit organization, whether you like it or not, you are the lead storyteller. One of your most important roles is to remind your employees of the organization’s origins and history, how their work fits into that history today, and what story you want to tell in the future. The story of both today and the future needs to make sense to people within a narrative. Without stories, we are just a series of seemingly unrelated events without connection or purpose.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss says the most successful American presidents share three characteristics: (1) an understanding and appreciation of the country’s history, (2) the capacity to change and grow, and (3) a skill at storytelling for persuasion.

Even beyond presidents, this rings true for me. The best leaders I’ve worked with are curious about the stories all around them: the stories of their organizations, their communities, and the people within it them. They evolve as their contexts and experience shifts, and they interpret these changes for people they lead. In short, they use stories to focus their organization and inspire action. We are storytelling animals.