How stories can help them and their teams navigate a world in turmoil.
Human nature has not changed radically. The human faults that the great observers of human nature, like Shakespeare, pointed out centuries ago, are as relevant as ever. As a leader you can either read the latest leadership literature or you can go to the core of the observers of human nature. I’m in the latter camp, but that is a personal choice, there are many paths.
Ian Narev, CEO & MD, SEEK
A man sits on a beach, staring out to sea, weeping.
Behind him is paradise, beautiful food, shelter, a gorgeous woman, there is nothing he wants for materially – he has “made it.” He is a famous warrior, he’s won an “unwinnable” war, and he has goddesses throwing themselves at his feet.
You might say he is the manosphere’s “ideal man.”
– well, not quite…
This man is weeping. A deep, anguished grief pervades him
For all that he has, he is unhappy.
His soul wants something more.
He wants to go home.
Home isn’t just a place. Although it is. It is also connection, companionship.
And responsibility.
Odysseus has a choice:
- The woman on the island is a goddess offering him eternal life – and pleasure and companionship.
- Or he can choose domesticity, mortality, death.
He chooses the latter.
Odysseus wants to go home to a life that will end, to a wife who is ageing, to a role full of responsibility and chores. He chooses a life of meaning, for without death, there is no challenge.
Would you choose the same?
Would you face certain hardship for only a small chance of what you so deeply desire?
Why Stories?
I have already written about some parallels between the Odyssey and the world we face today. But now I want to look at how stories in general are an essential companion in times of change. For they are instruments through which we can explore such themes as:
- What guides you in times of trouble?
- Where do you turn when there are no easy answers?
- Do you, as Sisyphus does, get your head down and push harder?
- Or is it time for something else?
Why now?
There is no doubt we’re living through a huge amount of change: AI is changing the way we work and live; organisations are having to rethink how they operate; and many of the things we once took for granted are being torn apart. And for all that, there is no quick fix.
The 2027 Skills Horizon report by Sydney University, identifies a series of skills that a leader could focus on to help them steer through the next decade. Among these top skills they include:
- Leading Across Generations
- Humanities Thinking
- Cultivating Curiosity and
- Building Trust at Scale (what did the Oxford guy say about trust? It happens in the micro interactions?)
As AI penetrates our lives more quickly than any technology seen before, leaders will have to be more tech-savvy than they used to be. However, AI is still only a tool. The ability to work with people, cultivate multi-stakeholder communities, engage with complexity, and garner curiosity are also going to be essential for the leader wishing to manage the uncertainty and complexity of the future of work.
In order to do this, the report suggests leaders will need to step outside their everyday thinking and old patterns of leadership to embrace this challenge.
This is where story comes in.
No matter how ‘optimised your workflows’ or ‘enriched your data analysis’, there are some parts of what it means to be human that will continue to remain challenging for leaders:
- Making difficult decisions.
- Keeping people together.
- Dealing with loss.
- Finding hope when things go wrong.
There are no easy answers.
Yet, these are not new challenges. They are part of what it means to be human — whether that was 2,500 years ago or right now.
That is why stories continue.The medium may evolve:
Firesides => Books => TVs => TikTok
But the impact is the same – engagement; emotional connection; insight and the capacity to wonder or think differently. These are all the providence of stories. And they are needed now more than ever.
To be able to navigate the enormous changes afoot[1], leaders need to reevaluate how they operate. This is how stories do that:
Perspective Shift – Engagement – Imagination
For one, stories provide perspective.
Through metaphor, analogy and characterisation, a story takes a challenge and puts it in a different context. This allows us to be removed from it. It provides us with safety while presenting us with high-stakes problems. Think Men in Black, The Invite, Jaws… All different ways to bring into sharp relief questions about how we live. We get space from the action and dilemmas while being able to put ourselves in the protagonists shoes – “Would we have done that?” This allows us to observe, to imagine, to judge, and to test our hypothesis.
Paradoxically, stories also engage us.
Through emotion and wonder, we can find ourselves enthralled in the moment, separate from the humdrum of our lives. While on the one hand stories provide us with distance, they also allow us to participate in them. Done well, a story will have us emotionally and/or intellectually ‘inside’ the story, feeling what the character’s feel, marvelling at their actions and spurring them on to continue… We are with the story.
Finally, a well-told story can also be a mental form of co-creation.
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them,
Printing their proud hoofs in the receiving Earth.
William Shakepeare, Henry V
A good story triggers our imagination.
As vivid as a cinematic experience may be, a story reveals itself over time through plot, character and action. None of these can be displayed all at once, so we have to wait to see what happens. And so we fill in the blanks – “Did they really mean it when they said ‘I love you…’?” “Why didn’t they shut the door?” And so, we imagine. And this is part of the thrill of stories…
A Real Example
Take John Healey’s “Red Tie” Story this week:
It is not whether you agree with the politics
It is about creating engagement.
Situation => Problem => Resolution => Punch-line
It is Connection in Action. Watch it here.
Conclusion
Whether you are providing a perspective shift or creating a shared human experience, stories engage us in a uniquely human way – they fire our imaginations. And imagination is one thing AI doesn’t possess. And whether we are the teller or the listener, having our imaginations fired, will be an essential part of how we stay human in an increasingly tech-intermediated world. And a leader’s ability to do so, will set them apart as someone to follow.
If that sounds worth exploring, stay tuned, because I am going to be going a little deeper into the lessons from the Odyssey over the next month. You can expect a few more emails to hit your inbox. I aim to make them shorter, but worthy of your attention.
[1] The 2027 Skills Report identifies Five critical shifts in how the western world has orientated itself, leaving aside other global changes, that are rupturing the way we usually do business. They are shifts in:
- 1) Values – increased misalignment and rupture based on diverging values
- 2) Technology – shifting so fast it’s hard to know what to focus on
- 3) Accountability – movement toward businesses and tracing their impact to a whole new scope
- 4) Trust – shrinking circles of trust
- 5) Energy – sources of energy are needing to transform