Storytelling for IT Leaders: Tips to Turn Tech Speak into Influence
The word “storytelling” likely conjures up a few scenarios in your mind. From children's bedtime stories, to classic literature, to ancient tales shared across generations.
Yet - in the modern, corporate landscape - storytelling is still incredibly powerful. Just as stories were used as a crucial tool for both socialising and survival in years gone by, being a great communicator and storyteller is still a crucial skill to foster engagement and understanding from an audience. We’ve just swapped the campfire for the boardroom table!
And taking people on a journey is an essential way of engaging a listener and subtly achieving buy-in - especially in what can be very dry, stat-and-jargon-heavy fields like IT. So, let’s investigate why corporate storytelling works and how IT leaders like you can nurture your inner narrator.
What is Storytelling in Leadership?
Storytelling is a specific communication skill which involves relaying prior or current situations, lessons, data, and business cases by weaving them into an interesting, engaging narrative. Stories like this employ emotion, novelty, and pacing to keep your listeners’ attention and interest.
We all know that the best leaders, visionaries, and public speakers - especially those in IT - are great communicators. Rather than simply laying their cards on the table and flatly stating their point, they spin a yarn that reveals ups, downs, and lessons along the way.
Why Storytelling Works
Storytelling is one of humankind’s oldest skills.
Think about it. Eons ago, our ancestors would spin yarns around a fire - likely using narrative structure to share information pertinent to food, shelter, and survival.
Over time, those stories developed into classical antiquity, having enjoyed the established wealth of oral traditions to share life lessons, morality tales, and spiritual learnings. In some places, stories, wisdom, and record-keeping were even rendered portable with the likes of papyrus, writing tablets, and other fascinating methods.
These writing methods led to vast handwritten tomes, further sharing stories and ideas with those who had the privilege of being able to read. And the birth of the movable-type printing press further transformed the medium of written story-weaving forevermore. Oral and theatrical traditions remained in abundance, disseminating everything from lofty ideals to bawdy tales far beyond the limits of language and geography.
Which brings us to the modern era and the advent of the gramophone, radio, and eventually the domination of TV as many people’s mass media of choice. Yet an even more nascent era is brewing in the age of the internet, with streaming and information available at the tap of a screen.
It goes without saying that we’ve been primed to tell - and hear - stories for millennia. The history of storytelling is the history of humanity. The medium may have changed, but our ability to connect through wise anecdotes and tall tales hasn’t.
There’s a reason I led with the history here. If I’d simply shared the below statistic, it wouldn’t have had quite the same impact:
63% of individuals remembered a story-driven presentation, while just 5% remembered a statistic-led one. (Source)
What Stories Do To Us and For Us
Because the telling and receiving of stories is so ingrained within us, they affect us in a deeply personal way.
- Stories capture attention - There’s a reason that most TED Talks start with an engaging story! Good stories naturally grab our attention, draw us in, and get us primed and receptive to hear more.
- Stories are enjoyable - We digest stories as entertainment during downtime, so a good story can help break the ice and relax everyone a little. We love the “ride” of a good story so much that we willingly engage with sad or scary stories.
- Sharing builds trust - By sharing anecdotes from our lives and how they shaped our own perspective, you foster relatability, connection, and trust from your audience.
- Stories can add clarity - A good story can better frame or articulate a less tangible or highly complex vision, or communicate a data-heavy concept, in a way that may otherwise be difficult to grasp.
- Stories inspire - We respond well to stories where a particular challenge or conflict has been overcome. This can inspire the audience to overcome similar challenges, engaging both hearts and minds.
- Stories show rather than tell - A good tale lets your audience picture a situation in an incredibly tangible, perceptible way. It illustrates the lessons of the story so they feel more vivid.
- Stories tap into emotional memory - People remember personal experiences, tragic setbacks, and stirring motivations far better than nebulous concepts and dry figures.
10 Tips to Grow Your Storytelling Skills as an IT Leader
Storytelling is a very personal skill. It’s something that comes with practice and is informed by your own personal communication styles, your audience, and the message you’re aiming to convey.
We can, however, share a few useful tips to point you in the right direction.
Structure Your Story Well
Many of us were taught that stories need to have a “beginning, middle, and an end,” though those concepts are a little abstract. You may prefer to approach the stories you tell in the boardroom as starting with a problem, going on a journey, and eventually achieving an outcome.
Use Stories to Translate Ideas and Concepts
Think less about the rigid facts and figures you’re looking to impart and more about communicating the underlying point(s) you’re aiming to make. A well-crafted story can help non-techie listeners clearly absorb concepts, goals, and stakes - clearly painting a need for investment, grasping a specific type of risk, or understanding competitive advantage without getting into the weeds with technical explanations.
Create an Emotional Hook
Facts and figures might inform the mind, but stories move the heart. When we wrap dry, fact-forward topics like IT in a blanket of narrative, we humanise those concepts; making it easier to turn information into inspiration.
Know Your Audience
When using stories, you need to be able to read the room! Choose or craft your stories around the kinds of people present and what will likely be most relatable and acceptable to them. For example, what will be acceptable and relatable to a group of entry level security analysts celebrating a project well done will be very different to those within an emergency C-Suite/stakeholder meeting after a particularly disastrous financial year.
Digest Other Stories
One of the best (and most entertaining) ways to grow your story-weaving skill is to consume other stories. Whether it’s reading the literary greats, checking out some pulpy online fiction, listening to autobiographical audiobooks, or watching an incredible movie, there are narrative lessons abound if you keep your eyes and ears open.
Craft Your Unique Voice
Storytelling is incredibly personal. After all, no two people are ever going to tell the same story in the same way! Carefully choose the stories you tell to harness the common ground you share with the audience, blended with your own personal experiences and life lessons. Start using stories within presentations and meetings and invite feedback from others to help hone your craft.
Carefully Use Analogies and Similes
Illustrative and comparative language can be used to great effect within storytelling. They are a simple way to make lofty, intangible concepts easily grounded and fathomable. For example, “Our siloed, legacy systems are like a handful of separate, aging portacabins each used by our different teams. We need to rebuild a single, permanent, for-purpose, joined-up system - just like building an office that allows us all to work together!”
However, take care not to make your analogies too complex as people may struggle to follow along.
Make the Lesson Clear
Don’t let the details of a story (or the complexities of a particularly laboured analogy) cloud the point you’re ultimately trying to convey. Ensure that the ultimate lesson, upshot, or moral of the story takes precedence over any stylistic, humorous, or narrative decisions.
Balance Story and Visuals
Given that technology is a very data-heavy field, there’s a real temptation to lean into graphs, charts, facts, and figures. But that’s how you end up with the dreaded “death by PowerPoint”! Weaving stories into the narrative told by the figures is a great way to boost memorability, to emphasise a point, or provide essential vision and context.
Practice, Practice, Practice!
Storytelling isn’t something you can study and immediately become great at. It takes real-life practice to sharpen your story-crafting skill. So continuously practice and adapt your storytelling in meetings, presentations, and conversation.
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