Posted on 06/18/2009 5:36:57 AM PDT by Dysart
Great leaders get there partly by telling great tales.
"The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms," wrote the poet and social activist Muriel Rukeyser. To the schooled and scientific mind, that may sound sacrilegious, yet we know there is some truth in it. Our lives are a series of stories woven together--our own stories and the stories of those around us.
Great leaders--religious, political or business--realize this and are good storytellers. Jesus spoke in parables. Krishna and Rama came to life through the stories they told. The Torah, Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious text, the first five books of the Old Testament, is not a boring list of rules but a set of moral lessons and commandments intertwined with a wealth of life stories.
n the business world, many successful top executives are very good storytellers. They entice us with their stories all the time, telling us how they started their businesses, what they stand for and where they are going. Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks ( SBUX - news - people ), tells us the story of his trip to Milan and the passion for fresh, richly brewed espresso he discovered there and carried home with him. From that kind of simple story we--employees, customers, shareholders--derive meanings for everything a company does. The trouble Starbucks' coffee buyers go to to select the highest-quality beans from the remotest regions of the world, the care their brewers take--everything becomes romantic and fascinating, enticing us to stand in line as long as it takes to get our cup of coffee.
Bill Gates continually told us of his dream of putting a personal computer on every desktop and in every home. That great story inspired Steve Ballmer--and probably others...
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I became a much better story teller once I realized that all the points in the story do not have to be literally true.
Right. Often the veracity itself isn’t necessarily the thing- the lesson is. This has been so for many moons and from many originators.
Understanding that makes you a better listener too.
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