Overcoming Challenging Situations through the Power of Storytelling

We face leadership challenges every day. Rather than tackle them head-on, sometimes the best way to get your organization to overcome them is through the power of storytelling.

Today’s post is the sixth in a series by Paul Smith, thoughtLEADERS instructor and bestselling author of Lead With a Story.

You’re busy as a leader. You don’t always have time to invest in learning new leadership skills. I recognize that and I’m here to help. Below are 5 great lessons in easy-to-digest 10-minute podcasts you can listen to at your convenience.

These podcasts are based on interviews with 100 executives and leaders at dozens of companies around the world as they learned their most important leadership lessons – sometimes the hard way. They feature stories from executives at Proctor & Gamble, Dollar General, Hewlett Packard, Kellogg’s, Dun & Bradstreet, Saatchi & Saatchi, Verizon, and many more. Each episode brings you an important leadership lesson through a single compelling story.

These next six episodes will help you communicate more effectively as a leader through appropriate storytelling and better writing, learn how to create strong and more productive working relationships among your team members, consider an unconventional method to get to ‘Yes’ faster, how brutal honesty can sometimes be the best thing your customer needs to hear from you, and find the courage to make that critical investment even during tough economic times.

The intimacy threshold: storytelling differences across cultures

Meet an expert storyteller who’ll learned a great lesson about cultural differences in the use of emotions in business stories when one of his best stories fell flat on a new audience.

The jaw-dropping power of telling the customer ‘no.’

One of the most attention-grabbing and change-producing surprises you can give your customer is the brutally honest candor of being told, “no.”

How to never work with strangers again

Learn how you can create stronger, more productive working relationships in your organization by just telling a few stories.

5 timeless tips for writing with more impact

Head of communication at McKinsey China, Glenn Leibowitz, joins me this week to discuss 5 of his best tips for more impactful writing.

Challenging assumptions: An unconventional way of getting to YES

A counter-intuitive way to get more of your recommendations adopted by challenging your audience’s assumptions, rather than their conclusions.

The bamboo years: courage to invest in hard times

How a bamboo tree in Japan gave a US company CEO the courage to make difficult investments in tough economic times.

So there you go… six great leadership stories in a few minutes apiece.  If you want more stories like these, you can subscribe on iTunes or click here to sign up for a weekly newsletter delivery to your inbox.  If you’re interested in becoming a better storyteller yourself, check out our Influencing through Storytelling course where we can come into your organization and help you build this powerful, critical skill.

– Paul Smith is a former director and 20-year veteran of the Procter & Gamble Company, and author of Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives that Captivate, Convince, and Inspire and his most recent book Parenting With a Story (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Paul is also the primary architect of a thoughtLEADERS course on Influencing through Storytelling and loves teaching every minute of it.

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Photo: Bamboo thicket by Joi Ito