How To Use Stories To Inspire Your Team

If you work with a team (or any group of people you wish to follow you) take note, I’m going to talk through a specific method that you can use to galvanise not just their minds, but also their hearts.

If you’ve seen my blog on “How to create a self-managing team” the framework talks about three things.

It talks firstly having the mindset of being someone who cares, because really, being a leader is about giving. It’s about service.

The second is about having systems in place that are automated, that work without you, both human and technical.

The third thing is inspiration.

Following is a technique that you can use to create inspiration and motivation within others. One interesting thing I find is that too many people when they inspire they are all about words and not enough about stories.

The funny thing about stories is they’ve been around for thousands and thousands of years and stories are the natural unit of how we convey information, how we engage with information.

People tell stories in poems, they tell them in movies, and we can relate to stories because they’ve got a human in them just like us and we can see that human struggle.

This is the frame-work I use. This is based on Aristotle’s Three Act Structure, that ancient Greek dude that hasn’t been around for thousands of years but we still use his core structure.

There’s essentially three stages to a great story and I want you to use this with your team.

The three stages are basically… The Beginning, The Middle, and The End.

The beginning is called the “Setup”. The setup is about giving them as much information about the context as you can. Let’s say you’re telling a story about your team, “Three years ago we were in this place. We weren’t doing very well. Our results were this… And we had these particular challenges.”

The Middle then is about an action and reaction sequence and what this is designed to do is ratchet the tension up and down and that’s actually the thing that creates the emotional engagement. To give you an example it might be “You know what? We tried this solution, and it didn’t work. Because of these circumstances and this is what happened.” “And we had someone get in the way, and that meant we couldn’t do our work.” Whatever it is, you actually tell the story of the honest ups and downs.

Two things happen when you do that. You actually show them “You know what? I was there. I was part of the journey, and it was hard.” And people can relate to that, but they can also learn from what happened and what worked and what didn’t.

The third thing is the Resolution. The resolution is about the “So what?” It’s about the end. “What’s the whole point of this?” and really what it says is “We had some ups and downs and it leaves us in this predicament. It leaves us in this situation right now. And it leaves us with this opportunity” or “this core challenge”.

Too many leaders, when they want to capture the hearts of their team they’re too logical and they’re too rational and they explain the linear sequence of events and they don’t tell it in a way that engages people’s hearts as well as their minds.

If you want a way of really inspiring your people (like people do who want a self managing team) use this three act structure where you set up the context, you describe what you’ve tried in the action and reaction sequence, and then allow that to set up a resolution of your key opportunity or key challenge.

If this has been helpful, leave me a message down below.
How can you apply this story framework to the way that you communicate with your team?