Storytelling for Leadership: Using Shared History to Motivate Change as a Leader

In 17th Century London, going to the market on weekends was “a thing.” Everyone in town showed up to browse. If you brought your kids, they ran amok among the food stands. And if you brought your cows—as many folks apparently did—occasionally they’d wander into a store.

And thus, as legend goes, was born the phrase “bull in a china shop.” 

Four hundred years later, we use “bull in a china shop” to describe a person who’s acting aggressively when a situation requires delicacy. In business, I often hear the phrase used to describe leaders who take over a team and start making changes without worrying about smashing things that are precious to the people who are already there.

The reality, though, is that most leaders don’t want to be plate smashers. 

Usually the situation is more like the scene in the animated film Ferdinand, where, like the wandering cows of old London, a gentle bull (Ferdinand) finds himself on tiptoes in a literal china shop. He’s not out to smash anything, but every little thing he touches could break. In the film, Ferdinand twists and tiptoes and catches cups and bowls before they can hit the ground.

He’s doing his best to be delicate in an impossible situation:

Ferdinand

If you’re a leader with a mandate to create change—whether you’re coming into a team fresh, or if you’ve been the team’s leader for some time—you’re in the china shop. 

And like Ferdinand the bull, no matter how careful you are, you’re going to bump into something that’s precious to someone.

The good news is we humans have a powerful tool at our disposal in these situations—one that’s been deployed throughout history when leaders have needed to motivate people to do hard things.

The power of storytelling to motivate change as a leader

Not long ago, I had to get my company on board with a significant pivot. We, the executives, had decided to shift from one business model to another. It was a new vision, and it would be a lot of work. Just about everybody would be focusing on very different things than before. It was crucial that they be motivated to work hard (and smart!) in this new direction.

As the boss who had to “sell” the change, I was going to be the bull in the china shop. 

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), I’d been in this situation at a previous startup where the executive who had to “sell” the pivot to our team had blown it. They’d decided on taking a so-called “strong and confident” approach of leading with the business case for the change and saying, essentially, “Get on board, or get off the ship.”

via GIPHY

A lot of important crew members got off that ship. 

The bull (now that we’re fully mixing metaphors here) just smashed its way through the shop. I was complicit in the smashing, as I hadn’t spoken up with any better ideas on how to approach the change. But clearly, the “get it over with” approach stunk.

The good news is, in the many years since, I’ve been able to help teams at various companies to not make the mistake we did. The key is not to think of the china shop task in the binary way that most leaders lean toward: Either let’s be slow and delicate with the change, or let’s get this messy thing over quickly.

The key is to think of it this way: What if, instead of smashing the china—or even of trying to tiptoe through the china shop—you could pack up the china? What if you could set it aside and make space for The New? And what if you could do that as a team?

How you do that is through storytelling.

Storytelling helps leaders get buy-in

When I had to sell the big pivot at my company (the more recent time around), my partners and I didn’t lead with the arguments for the business. We first got our team together and recounted the story of our team’s journey. 

We started at the beginning. We shared old photos and screenshots from our early days. We went through what we’d all been through together, step by step: the key events that kicked off our journey; how people joined up; events we’d traveled to; awards we’d won; hard decisions we’d made; successes we’d shared; failures we’d gotten through together.

The meeting was a celebration of our shared story. We laughed and winced and reminisced. And all of that became context for the next part of our story: where we needed to go next.

Yes, we were moving on from the comfortable past. But we also were making peace with that.

This packing up of the china is a ritual I’ve seen at the most dramatic of times, such as companies who’ve been acquired. In an acquisition, employees always worry about things being different. It’s worked out best when their leaders have assured them that yes, things will be different, and that’s okay because this is the next chapter in a story where we’ve succeeded navigated change over and over together.

I’ve also seen this ritual in micro. Whenever leaders need to introduce small changes—say, altering a sales approach, or kicking off a new version of a product—I always recommend they first recount the history of how the team got to here. After that, frame up the change as part of the same story of how the team will get to there. (This has now become a habit for me just about any time I’m introducing something new to a team; I don’t always recap the long version of the story, but I almost never jump into what’s next without talking about what came before.)

The reality is that some people will not stay on board our team’s ship forever. Times change and teams change. However, taking on challenges is a universally satisfying experience. Most of us do want to be part of things that are new and different and challenging, if we can get over the fear and uncertainty that comes with entering unfamiliar territory. 

Storytelling can help us to make peace with that—even to get fired up about that. 

And it can remind us that we’re not forging ahead alone.