Season 2, Episode 29. The Art of Storytelling with Gabrielle Dolan
In this episode, Gabrielle Dolan joins us to talk about authentic leadership and how you can connect with customers and engage employees through magnetic storytelling.
Gabrielle Dolan is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker and educator on real communication and business storytelling. Her clients include the Obama Foundation, Telstra, EY, Accenture VISA, Australia Post, National Australia Bank, Amazon, and Vodafone just to name drop a few.
Gabrielle is the best-selling author of six books including Real Communication: How to be you and lead true, a finalist in the Australian Business Leadership Book Awards 2019. Bringing humanity to the way business people communicate isn’t just a career, it’s a calling. Her dedication to the industry was recognized when Gabrielle was awarded the 2020 Communicator of the Year by the International Association of Business Communicators Asia Pacific region.
[00:16] How Authentic Leadership Makes Leaders More Effective
- Introducing Gabrielle Dolan
- What is authentic leadership?
- Being true to your values and leading with alignment and consistency that is true to who you are
- Are leaders enabled in the workplace to truly bring their whole selves to work?
[03:39] Storytelling in Leadership
- How storytelling can be very powerful in a business setting
- When you communicate a business message through a personal story, people engage with it more readily. Sharing your personal story helps bring your authentic self to work which ties into leading authentically
- What if you’re not a natural storyteller?
- As humans, while we are natural storytellers, not all of us are good at it
- Be succinct
- Keep your story within two minutes
- Story framework:
- Get really clear on your one single message
- Have a clear beginning, middle, and end
- Common mistakes people make
- Too many messages in one story
- Only sharing business-related stories
- Solution: Use personal stories to relate to business
[10:31] The 5 Stories That Companies Should Consider Sharing
- Creation stories
- How the company started or how a product started and why we are doing this
- Culture stories
- Stories around your values or the company’s values
- Customer stories
- Stories that make the customers the hero and not just client testimonials
- Community stories
- Cool things that your employees are doing in the community
- Challenge stories
- Hardships and difficulties the company has faced and how it responded
[14:26] How Telling Stories Creates Loyalty
- Creating attraction
- Immediate connection and attraction is very difficult to pull away from
- Changing your perception of a brand
- A good story told can not only change the way you see a brand but influence future buying habits
[19:14] Final Thoughts
- Facts and figures merely inform people, while stories influence people. Think about what stories you can share that will emotionally tap into humans
- Connect with Gabrielle (Links Below)
Key Quotes:
“I’ll be excited when authentic leadership is just leadership.” - Natalie Born
“You either exercise leadership, or you don't exercise leadership. It's got nothing to do with your title and calling yourself a leader.” - Gabrielle Dolan
“When you communicate a business message through a personal story, what happens is people engage with it more readily and then they understand and remember the message. When you're sharing a personal story, you start to bring your authentic self to work.” - Gabrielle Dolan
“Whether we're leading a team, talking to a potential customer, or engaging stakeholders, do they understand our message, and can they remember it? And if they had to, could they retell it to other people? A story will do that whereas facts, figures, and statistics won’t. Now, you still need all the data, but the story actually influences people.” - Gabrielle Dolan
“In business, we try to communicate through logic, facts, and figures. And of course, you need the facts and figures, but all logic does is inform people. It doesn't influence people. And so you've got to think about what stories you can share that will tap into emotion because as humans, we're emotional beings.” - Gabrielle Dolan
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Gabrielle
Website: https://wwwgabrielledolan.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielledolan/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GabrielleDolan1/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabrielledolan.1/
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