G'day leaders. In this podcast, we talk about storytelling and why great leaders use it
to engage and motivate people and inspire them to connect to purpose. Enjoy.
Why did it count backwards? Are they? We're now recording.
What? Hello, captain.
What do I say?
Come fly with me. Let's fly, let's fly.
What are we going to talk about?
I don't know. So leadership, life and everything else.
Yeah.
And we're live.
No, we're still recording.
Hey Michelle.
Hi Guy.
How you doing?
Good, good. Up bright and early on a Sunday morning.
Yes. You had a great idea this morning. We were getting a morning coffee and you suggested we do
a podcast on a particular topic.
Yes. Storytelling. We went and saw Bert Kreischer last night.
Yeah, the machine.
The machine. That's right. An amazing comedian. A packed house. It was awesome.
And one of the things that really came out was how he is such a great storyteller.
He's so gifted, isn't he?
He is. He's funny, very funny, but just the way he could weave stories in and take you on this
journey. And you thought that he was drunk and had no idea, but very, very skilled.
I think he probably was drunk.
Yeah, that's right. He's done it a number of times.
But very skilled.
Yeah, incredible, wasn't it? That he'd start a story and then go off on a tangent.
Tell another sub story, a little joke on the side. And then you come back to the main story
and you go, oh yeah, that's where we were.
That's right.
Yeah. We've got another favorite comedian who does that as well. Sarah Silverman.
Yes, yes she does.
She does it very differently, doesn't she?
She does. She actually says, oh, put a pin in it.
Yes, let's put a pin in that and we'll come back to it later.
Yeah.
Yeah, what a great gift it is to be able to tell stories.
Well, then we were discussing how with storytelling, how in your keynotes and training,
you tell a story.
And yours.
Yeah, and mine.
That's your keynotes.
Excuse me, and how then you're actually taking the room, the audience on a journey with you
and people can relate. So I've been very fortunate to sit in your keynote a couple of times
and there's not a dry eye in the room. They honestly, people are with you in the great times,
they're down with you in the ditches with the bad times and they really, really,
they're part of your journey. And one of the things I thought, oh, you're very,
when I first saw you, you're very gifted at storytelling.
Thank you very much.
But I realized when I saw the, and could feel in the room, and this was to thousands of people,
that that moment when it clicked and it clicked for me, what was happening was that whilst people
were seeing you and feeling you, they also then started to put themselves in.
They assimilate.
They did.
Yeah.
They did. And then we started thinking as we were getting our coffee this morning,
how great leaders also have that ability.
Yes. Yeah. It's like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.
Yeah. And then, and the opposite of that, there are leaders who don't have that ability.
Yeah.
And-
To get people on the journey with them.
Yeah. And just the disengagement of the employees and they're really, people have this,
they don't know the person, the leader necessarily, but they don't like them.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which is weird.
It is weird. I love storytelling and listening to great storytellers. And I said to you,
when we first met, you've got an amazing ability to tell stories.
Thank you.
Some of your stories are still blowing me away. And the world will get to read them and hear them
very soon. But the gift of being able to tell a story takes somebody on a journey. And I researched
a little bit of this many years ago, that when somebody's hearing a story, it engages much more
of their brain. So lots of areas of their brain light up when they're listening to a story,
because they have to create the pictures in their mind. They have to then start to assimilate,
like you said before, associate it to their own story. And that's why it's so much easier
to listen to a story than somebody just drawing on about facts. You've probably sat in somebody's
presentation where they've got PowerPoint slides or visuals, and they're just reading those visuals
to you, just throwing data at you, and you quickly get asleep.
Yeah. Oh, definitely. And you know that they've spent hours upon hours collating this,
and even spending money to have it professionally done, but they lose the audience.
Yep.
Because it's not personal.
Yeah. I used to do a lot of presentations at the end of conferences. And so I was asked to,
at one particular conference I went to, it was here in Sydney, and everyone just got up and read
bullet points to the audience for two days. And I was sitting in there because I wanted to know
what the other speakers were talking about. Like I have to say, they weren't professional speakers.
They were presenting on their area of expertise at this particular conference. But you could
just see the audience fighting really hard trying to stay awake. And it was so sad to see that
all these people were just doing what they thought a good presentation was. And that is just
here's some data, and I'm going to read it to you on a slide. And for two days, and at the end of
the two days, they gave me, I think I had 25 minutes, and we were sponsoring the conference,
the company I used to work with. And so I got up on the stage and I said, hey, all right, everyone,
I've got some slides for you. And I went click. And I showed a picture of a child coming down a
slide. And I went click, there's another slide. It was a water slide. Click, there's another slide.
That would be the last slide I show you. And I turned off the projector and I just jumped off
the stage and just walked amongst the audience and started to just tell them a story. And I wasn't
doing it to kind of dismiss the other presenters. Obviously, they've been asked to present on their
area of expertise and they just do what everyone else does. And that is they just simply read data
to their audience. But I wanted to show the audience that the best way to engage people is
through storytelling and to really get people to use their own brain rather than just listen to
your brain reading data. Well, how many times have you heard and thought a book is so much better
than the movie because your mind and how you create it, it's personal. Whereas the movie,
it's like, oh, actually, I prefer the book. Yes. It's very, very rare that a movie is better than
the book because when you read the book, like you say, you create your own pictures, you create
your own characters, you know exactly what they look like. And then they bring in somebody else
to replace your picture in your head. Yeah. Well, with leaders, I can imagine. And I will put in
the show notes where it is and I can't recall where I read this, but that employee engagement
leads directly to revenue, increased revenue, etc. And there's a magic number. So 75%. If employee
engagement is above 75%, that the increased revenue is huge. Like it's a marked difference.
So there's a strong relationship between those two metrics. There is. And it's again, the employee
engagement. And in Australia, again, I will find where I read this, but employee engagement in
Australia is often 66% and below. And I immediately came to mind was Qantas and Alan Joyce. So I think
he's the leader that people love to hate. And despite, you know, they're coming back post
pandemic with profits, people are actually united and engaged because he's potentially leaving.
Oh, okay. I didn't know that. And then I think back to some of the leaders I worked for that
were very autocratic. And, you know, there was, there was high amount, you'd never go to the crew
room because people love to hate on this particular leader and would go out of their way to go against
within the law and the rules, but go against what this leader was spruiking we needed to do. You
know, they'd want to spend extra money or they'd want to make things not as economical as what it
could. And that was because they were very autocratic and... Yeah. And they were just not
engaged. This particular leader, and I won't say his name, that comes to mind is he wasn't with the
people. And he, so there was no storytelling. We got the bullet points, we got the numbers. And often
in a way that put blame, so you immediately switched off. Okay. And you created this picture
in your mind that this person was up there and he was the, you know, almost in storytelling books
where he was the ogre. Yeah. And yeah, whereas then the next person who stepped into that role
really humanized and remind, reminds me actually of what Steve Jobs did and created this passionate
work environment and encouraged people to drop in, told stories about where he'd been prior.
And yeah, people were engaged. They loved him. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my mind's going million miles
an hour. I love this. So you're saying that staff engagement leads to greater revenue. I haven't read
this research. I'd love you to send me a copy when you get it. And your experiences with leaders who
tell stories and engage and bring you on a journey, the staff engagement goes up. Yes. You know,
people are just trying data and figures and we've got to reach these figures. Yeah. Yeah. So, and
I've noticed in your training, I don't think you have there, like you do 10 slides and there aren't
any words at all. I don't use any words. I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that. I do have some slides with
words on it, but yeah, every module that we run, my theory is that you have to engage people. You
have to get them interested in what it is you're about to teach them. You have to get them to be
able to assimilate and put it into context in their own life, their own career, their own situation,
tell a story, get them engaged and help them discover the information. So through storytelling.
So I love talking about leaders that I've met along the way. I talk about a particular leader
that I had a business partnership with Steve and I talk about how he was so approachable. And
the way I do it is I tell them a story about what it was like to walk into his office and how he
would violently push himself away from his chair and then he'd spin around and then he'd lean forward
and he'd look you in the eye and say, I don't have time for you right now, but I'll be ready in 10
minutes. Can you come back in 10 minutes? And you go, yeah, absolutely. No worries. And then he'd
spin back around violently and go back to his computer. And he was one of the most approachable
people because with his body language, he constantly told you that, hey, I've got time for you. But he
even did it when he didn't have time for you. Another leader that I ended up working with,
you walk into his office and he would sit there with his hands over his keyboard and you'd call
out his name and instead of turning around violently like Steve used to do and lean forward and say,
hey, how can I help you? This leader would just sit there with his hands over the keyboard and go,
yeah? And he wouldn't even look at you. So I love telling that story. So I didn't do it very well
just then, but I tell that story in a classroom and I can just see people's eyes going, oh,
I've done that. I keep typing away while people are talking to me or I'm on my phone while my
kids are talking to me and I'm not approachable. And so they walk away and quite often at the end
of the course, I'll say, hey, that story about your business partner who was really approachable,
that really resonated because I do that. But if I said to them, okay, here's a PowerPoint slide.
All right. When people come to you, you've got to look at them. You've got to get your hands off
the keyboard. And I just did it in a typical presentation style where you're just giving
people data. Each point coming with each click. It's not working. No. It's not working. Storytelling
is the best way to get information into people's brains.
It's really how you drive innovation and strategy in a business. Yeah. Well, even just letting the
staff, your fellow staff know what is it, why we do what we do. It's a purpose. Yeah. Yeah. The
backstory and yeah, for purpose. Yeah. Connecting people to purpose is, have we spoken? I don't
think we've spoken about that in a podcast yet. No, not yet. No, purpose is such an important
thing. You've probably seen Simon Sinek's Ted Talk on connecting people to the why. And I love
talking about Disneyland. At Disneyland, their purpose is making magic happen. In every moment,
your job is to make magic happen. And in the customer centricity workshop, we do this section
on purpose. And I say, okay, I want you to imagine you're a cleaner at Disneyland. Yeah. What is your
job? And everyone goes to clean the park and make it look beautiful. I said, okay. All right. And
then I tell them the story. I want you to imagine that you've taken your kid to Disneyland, right?
And they're in their happy place. Disneyland's number one on most kids' lists. And you give them
an ice cream. And ice cream is number two on their list. So you've given them an ice cream at
Disneyland, the magical place. And they're sitting there. How happy would they be? And people go,
oh, they'd be, you know, they'd be happy. Ecstatic. Yeah. Ecstatic. And I say, okay,
so I want you to imagine that that child's eating the ice cream and all of a sudden,
they drop it on the floor. What happens to the child? The child starts crying. So you can imagine
the child at Disneyland is standing there crying. Now you're a cleaner. You see that ice cream on
the ground. What do you do? And all the people go, well, you clean it up. I go, no, you don't.
Because at Disneyland, they're all connected to something bigger. That cleaner would run over to
the ice cream parlor and they'd say, code red, vanilla on the ground or whatever it is. And
they'd run back to the child. They'd get down to the child's level and in their best impersonation.
I can't do that very well. You've been wanting to do that though, haven't you?
I do. And then they'd give the child a new ice cream to put that smile back on their face. And
then they'd clean up the ice cream because at Disneyland, if you're a cleaner, your job is not
to clean the park. Your job is to make magic happen. Oh, by the way, you also clean up the park.
Yeah. And the way Disneyland do it, they do it very much through storytelling. It's all about
making magic happen and connecting people to purpose. So I think that ties in very well with
the storytelling that we're talking about today, that the leaders who can connect their organizations
to the purpose through storytelling are the most engaging. They're the ones that drive culture and
drive innovation and drive staff engagement like you were talking about before. Because
when you're connected to something that's bigger than what you do, connected to something bigger
than your role through engagement, that's where motivation and drive comes from.
Yeah. So this gift of storytelling, it comes naturally to some people, for example, you. I
love listening to your story. You, I just-
Thank you very much. But it's something we can learn, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. It's just a matter of getting out of your head and getting out of those bullet points.
Or becoming human and showing your human side.
Your frailties. Yeah. Yeah. And people, you know, no one's a robot. No one's a superhuman,
apart from you. But they're-
How am I a superhuman?
I just thought the same thing. But yeah, if you can show your vulnerability as a leader,
then you get people on board with you because they can connect. You're not a position, a role
higher than. You're a human as well. Yeah. That reminds me of something that they
do in the Navy SEALs to create team culture is to share vulnerability. Did you know that?
No, I didn't.
So the way they create a strong bond in their team and they're always moving towards psychological
safety is they get people to share where they failed after an action. So in after action review,
I think it's called an AAR, after action review. Every time you perform an action, you review it.
So whatever it is, they go out into theater, they do whatever they do. But when they come back,
they're encouraged to share vulnerability. And so if I share my vulnerability with you,
and then you share your vulnerability with me, the trust between us goes up and we're creating a
connection. And I've seen leaders do this very, very well in their storytelling. So when they're
engaging their organization at a conference or they're talking to a team, they tell a story,
they bring out some vulnerability, they show how they fail, they showed what they learned,
and then how they improved and went forward. And you can just see that sort of style of
communicating changes people. It changes people because you're now a human being to me,
I've assimilated with your story because I've brought in my own past, and now I'm connected
with you and I trust you. But that the opposite where they just stand up and say, okay, these are
the quarterly figures we're going to hit this week and just throwing data and expectations at
people. It just doesn't work, does it? No, no, that's right. Guy, I know in your courses,
part of your leadership training workshops that you hold, you actually teach the art of storytelling
to leaders to get that engagement from employees and to build that team culture. Yeah, we do it
as part of some of the bigger leadership programs that we run over six, seven months. And we also
have a standalone workshop that we run, so the gift of storytelling. I used to do it in just
a presentation skills course. It was a module in that and then everyone got so much out of it.
And I thought, well, that's really the gift of presenting is not just standing up there with a
bunch of slides talking about bullet points, but it's telling the story. So, yeah, years ago,
I started to teach the gift of storytelling. And I called it the gift of storytelling because it's
a gift to your audience. If you're sitting in an audience and the speaker is telling a story,
it is a gift because you're not sitting there going, oh, when's this going to end? You're not
wanting it to end. A great story. This all started many, many years ago. So I saw one of the most
gifted speakers and his name's not coming to me at the moment. It'll pop into my head. But he
he started Kentucky Tours and I saw his presentation and it was one of the best
keynotes that I've ever seen. So I had spent all day running a workshop. At the end of the day,
I was extremely tired. I was exhausted. We'd had a lot of fun during the day. And then I had a
couple of hours before I was going to go and watch this keynote. His name will come back to me in a
second. I've gone over to North Sydney where I'm going to watch him talk. And John, John, John,
John Anderson, John Anderson. Sorry, I knew it was going to pop into my head. Now he, sorry, sorry,
I'll go back. So I spent a whole day training. I'm exhausted. It's the end of the day. And so I went
and had dinner just at a pub. I've got a counter tea and I've got a big schnitzel. And so I'm sitting
there eating schnitzel and chips and filling up. So now not only am I tired from the day, I'm tired
from a big meal. And I'm thinking that was a bit silly because I'm about to go and watch somebody
speak and I'm going to be very tired in the audience. And then the mate that I was with said,
hey, how about we have a beer? And I went, all right. So I had a beer as well. So I've spent a
whole day on my feet training. I've had a huge meal and I've had a beer. That's the ingredients
for a sleep for me. Anyway, so I went into this room, sat down and John comes out, the founder of
Contiki to us. And he started this story. And I was captivated. Now I was quite young. It was early
on in my career. I was just captivated by the way he told his story. So we'd be moving around the
stage telling the story. But then every now and then he would step out of his story. It was almost
like he had this path on the stage that he would walk while he was telling you the story. Come on
a journey with me. He was kind of saying with his body language, but then he'd step out of the story,
come to the front of the stage, look at the audience as if, well, I'm not telling a story
at the moment. And he'd deliver a valuable piece of business advice. And then he'd pause
while we absorbed it. And then he'd go back on his little walking path. And then we went here
and then we went there. And he did this for an hour on stage telling you the story of Contiki
and how it started. I don't think I even blinked. I was wide awake. I had the ingredients of sleep,
a big day, a can of tea and a beer. And John held my attention for an hour. And I went home that
night and I thought to myself, I'm a speaker, but I want to be as good as him. And so I think he was
one of the first people that I really observed had the gift, the absolute gift of not just telling a
story, but weaving in business messages. And it's such a powerful thing for your audience,
because I looked around the room at one stage because I'm thinking, is everyone else is engaged
as me? And I looked around and everyone was wide eyed and smiling and laughing. It's like he reached
into our brains, turned a switch on and took us for a journey, took us on a ride. And I'm getting
goose bumps right now explaining it to you. Because it was one of those moments in my life, I thought,
that's a master craftsman in this area of speaking and taking people on a journey. So I could imagine
if you worked in Contiki with John, you would have felt the same because he was such a gifted
storyteller. So I then started to weave that into a lot of my courses. And then the feedback was
amazing. Oh, I really enjoyed that. And people would come back to me and say, yeah, I told a
story and I had everyone's attention and the feedback I got was fantastic. And so I decided,
no, that needs to be a standalone course. And anyway, that was a long story to tell you about
storytelling and why I teach it. Because John Anderson, many, many years ago, he showed me
what a true craftsman, a true storyteller can do with an audience and taking people on a journey.
It's such a fantastic skill. I remember one tip you gave me, one of many, is that when you are
telling a story, and especially when it's your own story, your whole body, your whole, and I'm sure
it's a chemical thing as well, you can see yourself in that story. So there's this fear of speaking,
this, it kind of dissolves because you're telling your story like you would your friends.
And it makes it more personable. So rather than having to remember, you know, introduction, body
conclusion, which was at school, you know, you get up and do public speaking, because it is your
story. And you're seeing that the real in your mind of what your story is, you don't have problems
remembering it, you don't have problems telling it. And that whole anxiety thing dissipates,
it may not disappear, but it dissipates. Yeah. And I say, just get out of the way of the
information. It's not about you up there. It's about the story. It's about the information that's
coming through you. So you're just the conduit, the vehicle. So that's actually how I describe
my job. A lot of people say, Oh, what do you do? And I say, I'm the conduit of other people's
wisdom. And they go, what? Well, I'm just passing on wisdom that I've collected from other amazing
people that from other experiences like John, the Contiki founder. And so yeah, if you're speaking
and you can just get into the story, see the story in your mind, tell your audience that story,
they then see it in their mind. And you're just together on this journey, this wonderful journey.
It's like, it's why we go to the movies. We love stories. And if you think about human history,
we've passed our knowledge through storytelling forever. We sit around campfires, we tell stories
and myths and quests and, and we engage people through story. Could you imagine if Og and whatever
the other caveman's name is? I've only got one name for a caveman. Ivan. Oh, Og and Ivan. David.
David. No, I think now we need Og and I don't know, Olaf. I don't know. But imagine them sitting
around a fire and one of them grabs, grabs a, you know, a, a piece of cardboard and says, okay,
first bullet point. It just wouldn't have worked, would it? Human, I think we would have died off
as a species. But telling stories has been a gift that we've passed down from generation to
generation. But regrettably, we, we all of a sudden started to throw bullet points on a slide and,
and thought that that was the best way to tell stories. But that's just lazy, isn't it? It is.
It is. Yeah. Yeah. No, get out of, get out of your slides, people, get out of your slides and get
into a story. It's a much more engaging way to, to take people on a journey and leaders who do this.
So yeah, I love what you were saying, the gift of storytelling. So maybe looking at it like that,
they, they, your employees, your, your fellow staff, your colleagues,
very fortunate to experience the gift that you have of telling them your story.
I will bounce that back to you. You have a real gift of telling your stories and we will tell
it for you on this podcast, but your, your book is going to come out soon. And I love, love hearing
your stories. Nothing like a bit of pressure to get that happening. Yeah. Well, the world needs to
hear your stories, Michelle. There's a lot to learn from those stories. And I, I said to you,
when we first met, you have a real gift for storytelling and I'll keep repeating that until
the world hears your stories. Thank you, Guy. Yeah. So that was fun. That was fun. Yeah. Okay. So,
and I will post up that on the notes where, yes, where that information came from. Yep. Cool. Okay.
So how do we finish this off? More dogs, more dogs, definitely. The world would be a better place
when there's more dogs. Yes. And more coffee needed. More coffee needed. Bollinger, we still
haven't heard from you. What's going on? We, we're waiting for our sponsor to contact us. They don't
know they're our sponsor yet, but we are waiting for Bollinger to get in touch. Yeah. How else do
we finish this off? And well, to find you and New Memory. Yep. Newmemory.com.au. That's where
we've got all the information about our courses and michellehuntington.com for keynote speaking
and guynewman.com.au for speaking as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I can't wait for after this podcast,
it's this episode. Yeah. We have an amazing interview with a leader that we will publish as well.
Yes, we will, Patty. That was a great, great, great interview, great chat. Yeah. He's an inspiring
man. All right. You have a great week. You too. Take care. Bye.
And who's gonna listen to this? Maybe our mums. Thanks mum.