If you’re trying to build a team, I must ask: “What’s your story?”  This isn’t your personal background or what you’ve been doing in your team building efforts. Nor is it fishing, hunting, or war stories.

This is about stories you’re using to build your team into a cohesive unit.

Annette Simmons, whom I first met in 2003, is author of Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins. She says to study just about any inspiring leader and you’ll find someone who can tell a story that drives home a point – down to a person’s core.

Why does it work? According to James Bonnet, a TV / screenplay writer who was twice elected to the Board of Directors of the Writer’s Guild of America, a good story stimulates our imaginations to the point we can see real possibilities in the real world.

He says a good story also provides us with a road map, outlining the actions needed to meet the goals – including how to overcome the obstacles we will inevitably face.

If you’re a team leader, manager, or supervisor, think for a minute how powerful one story can be!

Think about the young child who pulled his mother from a burning car wreck as he repeated “I think I can, I think I can” – a line from his favorite children’s book.

Or how a story about the Amazon River stirred a young printer named Samuel Clemens to leave the printing business for adventures on the Mississippi … and become the great Mark Twain. 

The point of a story can be triggered by just one phrase. “Remember the Alamo” rallied people to stand up and fight against all odds. It wasn’t a magical phrase, but it focused people on the point of a story.

We need to create vision and mission statements and build teams around core values. Read any of my previous work and you’ll quickly see I’m a huge advocate of that. But perhaps more powerful will be the story or stories that you and your team tell … What are they?
 

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Filed in Business, Motivation, Management, Leadership, Workplace, Corporate Culture