Telling stories that stick: leaders as story-tellers
Story-telling is an essential skill for leaders.
I've just come across this, so thought it might be of use:
In their book Made To Stick, brothers Chip and Dan Heath point out that there are factors that make a story ‘sticky’; that make customers stick to it or keep coming back to it, or that make other stakeholders (investors, employees etc.) remember your story and possibly even be drawn to it.
The brothers make the case for six factors (in combination) making the difference between what's memorable and what isn't:
1. Simplicity (any idea over one is too many)
2. Unexpectedness (a surprise grabs our attention)
3. Concreteness (the more dimensions of details, the more hooks our minds use to create a memory)
4. Credibility (even untrue stories don't stick unless there's a hint of truth)
5. Incite Emotions in Listeners (we remember emotional experiences much more than anything else; we care more about individuals than groups; and we care about things that reflect our identities)
6. Combine Messages in Stories (information is more memorable and meaningful in a story form...not sure how this squares with 1., though, above - 'Simplicity' and 'any idea over one is one too many'').
SOURCE: Made To Stick: why some ideas stick and others don't
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Endings
For me, one of the important areas of storytelling is whether you should draw out the lesson / moral of the story or leave the audience to do that for you when using stories as a presentational tool.
 What do others think?
Peter
Explaining the moral of a story
I think it takes a lot of nerve to do the latter, Peter - leave the audience to the 'Aha!' moment themselves. But, it's preferable. As you know from your teaching and consulting, leading people to a conclusion and then letting them do the 'Aha!' moment, and looking at them innocently as if you had nothing to do with it, is far more powerful than 'giving' them an interpretation. Having said that...It's frustrating to think of how many people WON'T make the connection between the end of the story and how they should apply the principle to their leadership and work. So, I often chicken out and tell them...
David Rock and others who have researched what they grandly call 'the neuroscience of leadership' say they have discovered something - but parents and teachers have known it for ever: you can't tell people an answer. You have to let them discover it themselves. When someone reaches a conclusion themselves, after mulling over an 'input', the MRI scanners show something lighting up in the brain - the 'Aha! Now I get it!' moment - and you get epiphanies and that drives changes in behaviour. Real change, in that sense, comes from inside.