More Random and Less Rational
As leaders, we would do well to remember that life is more random than we think and our response to it is less rational than we think.
Navigating Perspectives: A Leader’s Guide to Effective Storytelling
Almost all good stories, whether shared by a leader or a professional storyteller, share a common attribute. They always share the perspective or the world view of a characters. Another common thread among all good stories is that they have simple storylines about complex characters or situations. As leaders, when we are sharing stories, we need to keep in mind the perspective are we telling the story (ours or the audience or someone else) from and be consistent with it. It is easier said than done and that is why we need to consistently practice this skill at every opportunity […]
Why do Stories Work the Way they Do
In the past few days, I have written about the importance and power of stories and how important telling stories can be for leaders. Today, let’s explore why stories work. What is it about stories that make them such great transport for ideas and help shift states. For us to understand why stories work, we need to first understand how our brain works. There are two important properties of brain that are relevant for us in understanding why stories work. Brains are pattern matching machines Every single waking moment, our brains get a deluge of information that it needs to […]
The Most Important Stories we Tell
The most important stories we tell are those that we tell to ourselves and about ourselves. The collection of these stories then become our operating system. The operating system of a computer or our mobile phone puts the limitations that all the other applications or programs that we run on that computer need to follow and adhere to. Similarly, our stories create the limitations under which we end up operating. It doesn’t matter what these stories are. They create the boundary conditions under which we end up operating. So, we need to constantly relook at the stories we tell ourselves […]
Metaphors and Leadership
One of the responsibilities of a leader is to simplify complexity in a way that everyone can relate and make sense. One of the best ways to do is by the use of metaphors. Metaphors are used to explaining something (new and unknown) by comparing it with something else (common and known). We generally use a lot of metaphors in our day to day conversations. Some of become cliches and enter the collective consciousness of a generation if not more. While we can continue to use such metaphors, when they make sense, the true power of metaphors are realised when […]