When taking over a new team you must tell these stories

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —December 1, 2013
Filed in Business storytelling, Leadership Posts

Taking over a new team

“They won’t care what you know until they know that you care” (a line attributed to many but my favourite is baseball coach Yogi Berra).

This week I received an email from a newly minted executive who was off to New Zealand to take up a new post. Let’s call her Sarah.

Sarah had attended one of our Storytelling for Leaders workshops and was keen to have a few stories to tell when she started her new role. In fact, she asked me what story should she tell.

Firstly, we all need to tell many stories, many small stories. There’s rarely a time when a single story is sufficient. These small stories add up to create a big picture. I wrote in praise of small stories back in March this year and I see their power every day.

But what small stories should you tell?

Stories that show you care

I’d start by sharing stories that illustrate why you care. Why is this new role important to you and why you care about the people you’re working with. And whenever an Australia takes an executive role in New Zealand (Americans in Canada are the same), as in this case with Sarah, why you care about New Zealand.

A simple strategy to show you care about New Zealand is to find and tell New Zealand stories. Listen to the stories from your New Zealand colleagues, especially from the NZ workplace, and tell them. Avoid telling stories from Australia. This simple act shows what’s important to you.

Stories that show what you value

Then I’d start telling stories about what you value as a leader. For example it might be things like having a go, great customer service or speaking up. Share stories that illustrate what these things mean and why they are important to you and the company.

And lastly, to help you connect, share stories of how you are like the people you are working with. That you have similar backgrounds, similar holidays, similar histories in the company. Of course, never, and I mean never, make anything up just because you think it will be received well.

I saw a wonderful example of a new executive share some stories to connect.

A couple of years ago Mark and I were running a workshop for a large insurance company. It was a one day event. Part way through the day we were told that the new CEO would like to talk to our participants who made up the top 100 leaders in the commercial division of the company. They hadn’t met the CEO yet.

The CEO arrived and started his talk with a story about his first job as a young man as a insurance adjuster for a commercial insurer in Yorkshire. It was terrific little tale. He was showing he was a little bit like them and showed why he cared about the insurance business.

Then he shared another story about being on the brink of a cash flow crisis in a previous company and now how he pores over the figures with his CFO. He was making it clear that he was a numbers guy and if you come to him with a proposal you’d better get the numbers right.

He was there for only about 15 minutes but he made a tremendous impact on everyone. Not to mention the excellent example of storytelling he left us to dissect when he left.

Learn how to influence, engage and inspire with stories. Find out about Anecdote’s Storytelling for Leaders

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

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