Leadership is a communications-heavy discipline. Your team counts on your guidance, but priorities shift quickly. Can your people realign fast enough, even when a crisis hits? When there’s no time to update your company’s narrative, what you’ve said in the past can conflict with new messaging.
Smart leaders use stories to transfer their vision to their teams. Team members then refine those core stories as necessary when new situations arise. Because story is the best possible container for memory. We don’t gather around campfires to talk numbers. Often, it’s the other way around. We try to use numbers to tell a story. But that’s like trying to carry soup to your lips with a pencil.
A Living Story
Life moves like a stream. So does the work of any organization. People’s needs change. So must the work you do to support them. What people wanted five years ago isn’t what they want today. Go ten years back and it becomes even harder to recognize the work. The landscape is changing faster and faster.
The world wants more from your organization than ever before. They want inclusivity. They want you to share their values.
Internally, leadership is spread thinner and thinner, with very little time to explain the thinking behind a decision to those on the front line. In a world where people can buy from anyone, why should they choose you? We buy from companies that embrace our view of the world and support our goals and needs.
Employees need to know what you want from them. They need to know they’re working where they can contribute the most. (Surveys say that more than any monetary compensation or paid time off, most employees rated “doing meaningful work” higher than any other need.)
How StoryLeader™ Helps You Lead Better
StoryLeader™ is a leadership and business training organization dedicated to helping leaders use stories to do the heavy lifting. We offer this service in a variety of formats including leadership training workshops, analytical reports, and more.
Our Narrative and Contextual Analysis services are designed to provide response and communications calibration to any organization working through rapid change. We analyze the needs of the organization, deploy a simple set of processes to transform current situational information into actionable communications (and sometimes training) points internally as well as rework any external (marketing/sales) alignment of goals, message, and execution.
There are several ways to deploy this resource to your organization:
| Narrative and Contextual Analysis Response | A new or pending change in the landscape occurs (internal or external). We work with leadership teams for internal instruction and role alignment. We help leadership and marketing teams realign external language by generating response guides and optional training. |
| Anecdotal, and Folksonomic Data Analysis | Numbers tell one story. What does the world say? How are people responding to changes? We gather articles and social media postings and other anecdotal and folksonomic metadata to provide analysis and recommendation reports. |
| Narrative Review and Alignment | Stories change over time. Can your team clearly explain the organizational mission and objectives and their role as it applies to themselves and the people they serve? A strong set of stories helps with this. The output of this service are reports and internal/external communications guidance. |
| Leadership Story Language for Development | Leaders rarely think of their language choices and story usage as tools to communicate objectives, reinforce preferred behaviors, and guide organizational growth. Half-day or full-day training. |
| Ongoing Narrative and Contextual Analysis Story Guidance | The world changes daily. The landscape in which your team operates is fluid. A social media post takes off and suddenly you’re on the defensive. A news report comes out and you’re the bad guy. Mergers or staff changes impose new dynamics. StoryLeader™ resources keep your stories tuned up, provide ongoing clarity, and generate light analytical reporting to keep your organization aligned, freeing you up to focus on core objectives. |
Let StoryLeader™ Save You Time and Energy
Analysis – We look at data you share (if you wish) and overall trend analysis out in the world. Will locations matter as much if everyone uses self-driving cars? Does your company need to tell nostalgia stories or “new” stories. How will news story X affect your organization?
Contextualization – If this is true, what does that mean to us? How should we respond? What does this mean for our teams? How should we talk about this in our day to day operations?
Communication – You have so many priorities and obligations. Let us work with you to craft internal and external narratives to better convey your leadership needs and shared mission parameters. You know how to write and speak and tell stories, but do you have the time? Which words and messaging will resonate and stick with people when you’re not there?
Get in Touch
I’ve got a simple contact form. Reach out and ask, “Hey, is this what I need?” We’ll determine that together. You don’t have to guess.