Storytelling Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Elite Leadership Academy

January 29, 2020February 4, 2020

“Free Your Mind,” Matrix Style With Great Stories

As we learned in “The Matrix”, perception is not always reality. That is also true to when it comes to leadership. Leaders are only as good as their people perceive them to be.

In our Professional Leadership Training programs, we address the perception versus reality dichotomy with a peer assessment. Participants are usually surprised to see that what they considered to be their leadership attributes were not what their peers thought, both positively and negatively.

January 28, 2020February 9, 2020

Tales From the Leadership Front – Origin Stories

At the end of each chapter in my book Prescribing Leadership in Healthcare, I tell a personal “Tales from the Leadership Front” story to summarize the chapter content with insights from the leaders I’ve met.

In my travels I get to meet some great leaders and am thrilled when we discuss their leadership journey. I especially enjoy hearing their leadership origin story or what in their life made them into the leader they are today. A leader must be aware of their origin story to understand who they are as a leader and why they are leading. As Simon Sinek says, ‘knowing the why’ is critical to their success.

January 20, 2020January 21, 2020

Dr. Martin Luther King Was Also a Great Storyteller

We all recognize Dr. Martin Luther King as a great leader and a great orator, but did you know he was also a master storyteller?

In my university leadership classes, we regularly study Dr. King as a leader and I have listened to his speeches countless times. As I was working on the new Leadership Storytelling Master Class for our Professional Leadership Academy, I began reflecting on Dr. King’s accomplishments and his speeches. His accomplishments came to mind because I probably wouldn’t be doing the work I do without the strides he helped make. His speeches were great, but I wondered how they worked as stories. I was quite impressed with what I learned. For this exercise, I examined his March on Washington speech from 1963 (commonly referred to as the “I Have a Dream” speech). Here are some of the storytelling techniques he used and the lessons for leaders to use in their storytelling: