Can someone who leads thousands of people to build a prosperous enterprise continue to be a leader in 2024 if they stay the same?
Or is it the beginning of the end for long, grand, and illustrious careers that were built before AI became the norm, Gen Z took over the workforce, and the laws of power shifted?
The answers are not easy, but the senior-most executives from one of the fastest growing banks in India, who are attending our workshop in a curtain-draped hotel ballroom in South Mumbai, have realised that they don’t really know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of their audience. We are doing an exercise—creating the profile of a person representative of some of their toughest audiences. They eventually decide on a professional archetype that they love-hate.
‘Know-it-all-and-wants-it-all’ is a star performer, fielding at least a few offers from competitors every month. They know they’re not easily replaceable. They prefer to take one international vacation and a few domestic vacations every year, do not have a lot of responsibilities so can afford to take risks, have a stronger sense of purpose and like work-life balance.
The leaders in the room are frustrated because ‘know-it-all-and-wants-it-all’ cannot be convinced to stay by most of the conventional strategies that they are aware of, or even influenced or swayed in their direction. But they also feel that if they find just the right narrative, it would be trustworthy enough that ‘know-it-all-and-wants-it-all’ would want to stay.
The challenge the leaders face is that they have little in common with their colleague. In this hypothetical, whatever emotional connection there was had been severed deeply during the pandemic. Opportunities to establish deep friendships are rare. And the threat of losing talent is real.
And this is not the only person they need to convince—to sustain current growth, to create an environment for innovation, maybe even to unlock new opportunities. Perhaps there are indifferent sales field officers who need validation and accolades but do not do enough to earn them. Or creative professionals who tend to overlook the business objectives. Or people who’ve already quietly quit and are on the lookout for other jobs. Even the customer is brimming with emotion—the father of an only son prefers to take an education loan from the bank he trusts, where he feels welcomed, understood and cared for.
These are all challenges that were discussed in the workshop. Examples of the many ways that leaders can find their audiences difficult to influence.
The solution to all of them, if you’re wondering, is the same.
In order to be seen as dependable, charismatic, and successful leaders, they have to tell stories that earn them trust. It is the one thing that technology, resources, and strategy cannot solve.
Not surprising, then, that fixing the trust deficit between managers and the managed is among the most crucial objectives of the 100 very-senior business executives from high-growth companies who’ve attended The Ken’s narrative workshops. Meeting the expectations of Gen Z and building a trust-based economy for Indian customers are also up there in the list.
Stuck between ambitious business goals and quiet quitting
“I lead a team of 35 people and 70–80% of the problems I face are communication problems,” said a business leader of a subsidiary of a listed Indian company. “Most people have myopic perspectives as they are focussed on what they have to achieve. So in the absence of proper context setting and inter-functional collaboration, it is impossible to develop a shared vision,” he added. He believes that if leaders are trained to listen, learn, and collaborate, see problems from each other’s perspective, and craft a distinct purpose, most day to day challenges would be automatically resolved.
Another leader told us that he was a straightforward person, good at “vanilla conversations about tasks”, but if he could learn how to structure crucial conversations in a way that avoided predictable tugs of war between stakeholders, he could unlock several new opportunities. Yet another leader wants to stop being seen as someone who gets things done, and instead, appear as a genuine and honest person who motivates his team every Monday.
They all want to find a way to transcend tactical transactions by using human emotion to build relationships. To speak their truth clearly, precisely, and to show their audiences that there is another way of working that has less resistance, more flow.
“We want our teams to buy-in, adopt, and use digital technology, for instance, because they can accomplish more in less time,” said one leader. “It should be simple, but change is not easy to realise when people don’t feel that it is in everyone’s best interest.”
There is a common vision that has emerged over the 20 Narrative Thinking Workshops that we have conducted, including in our pre-and post-workshop surveys, application enquiries, and interviews we’ve conducted over the last two years. It looks something like this.
When professionals listen to stories for the truth, empathise with their audience, and tell stories that earn audiences trust, they can align people around the purpose of the organisation, connect emotionally, and build brand loyalty.
Back in the real world, Indian leaders recognise the obstacles in realising this deceptively simple corporate eutopia.
Only Truth can set everyone free
“As people go from one role to another and move up the hierarchy, there comes a time when functional understanding is great but their ability to move people with them is not automatically developed,” said the CEO of a Mumbai-based company. “These people are really good communicators. That is sorted. They are absolute stars in what they do. But it is important for them to articulate their purpose, share their views, and take the crowd along. Building and narrating their vision to both their superiors and subordinates using storytelling is important.”
Each emerging leader had specific blind spots we found during our interviews with them. Some tended to focus so much on the topline and bottomline that they forgot to impress upon their team why it mattered. One leader said that he takes a long time to explain the larger picture. How could he do it in a shorter time? On an organisational level, many of them didn’t have a playbook for scaling the values of the company as it grew—adding new colleagues, deepening trust with customers, and defining and redefining the company’s purpose for its stakeholders.
“We are hard-working and passionate but the way we communicate is boring, not memorable at all, even long drawn, and it sounds like an information or a data dump to our subordinates,” said a senior executive with over two decades of experience in large successful companies. “How can I be more engaging? More relatable? More interesting?”
Another leader was sceptical. Storytelling is blowing gas, he argued. When he used emotion to talk to his peers (especially in the finance department) instead of opening the excel sheet in a meeting, they felt manipulated, he said. There was a lot of merit in sticking to the age-old ways of data-driven decision-making instead of using stories, he argued. But he was also looking forward to seeing how The Ken taught him how to combine both—complex truthful data and emotion-based storytelling—to create a journalistic story, because he trusts what he’s read on The Ken over the past several years.
When I asked him if he would apply what he learned in the workshop, he smiled and admitted that he was convinced that audiences do keep stories close to their hearts, once their minds feel like they are hearing the truth. It’s a consensus that our survey results show:
Journalistic storytelling is rooted in facts, evidence, and reportage, and weaves effective narratives aimed at convincing diverse audiences. And these companies that had decided to train their leaders in this skill listed these following learning objectives:
- Get better at storytelling, which would allow their leaders to develop newer identities, purposes, and processes, with clearer goals in mind
- Manage different (and often diverging) stakeholders better by employing storytelling and audience-understanding techniques
- Develop their own articulation of key messages
- Weave in emotions confidently even while using data-driven arguments to present points
- Be more convincing with superiors, peers, and subordinates
- And lastly, become clearer about their own purpose
And above all, they wanted to learn how to stand out in extremely crowded and competitive spaces.
Here are some of the responses they shared with us after the workshop:
- “I think learning about audience understanding is the key”
- “Consumers are not your friends and they don’t need any reason to reject you. So the story about a product must be consumer-centric.”
- “It was an eye opener.”
- “The theory explained was very powerful and easy to put in practice.”
- “Creating credibility in a story was a great learning.”
- “It opened my mind to the concept of storytelling and the impact/difference it can make.”
- “I learned when to use storytelling. And that sometimes logic and data need to be effectively imbibed with it. A very well structured program.”
- “Structured storytelling and understanding of the audience is critical.”
- “The art of storytelling, connecting with the proposed audience better and getting into their shoes before a discussion. The workshop was a true eye-opener and we can definitely use the learnings every day.”
- “The learnings of the session will help my team and me to better craft product communication specifically towards new launches and drive adoption.”
- “Storytelling requires connecting with the audience, or else all effort goes into vain.”
- “The emotional connect. That resonated with me the most and imbibing it in my conversations and presentations will really help make a difference.”
- “Storytelling is a reality which can be used in today’s world which is filled with data.”
The Ken’s workshop uses an original curriculum drawn from nearly seven years of experience formulating its own distinct narrative techniques, and covers concepts, examples, mental models, and application techniques. What sets it apart is that the instructors are actual practitioners across three key domains—operating a high-growth business, writing narratives, and business journalism.
Further, before we conduct any workshop, we conduct several interviews to identify the needs, strengths, weaknesses, and imperatives of the participants. As a journalistic organisation that values original, first-hand reporting combined with skills to build products that our users love, we deeply understand how to ask questions that reveal stated and latent truths. We believe this will result in a curriculum that’s relevant and practical for everyone.
You can enrol.
Disclaimer: The Ken’s Learning team is not involved in editorial decisions and operates independently of its Editorial team.
