108 | The Science of Storytelling & How It Works | Richard Newman

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

We just sort of approach business from that perspective of, I give you the data, the data says this, and therefore we act on it. But that's treating people like human doings, and we're not human doings, we are human beings. And so you have to engage people emotionally first, logically second.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. I always forget at the beginning of these podcasts, firstly, thank you for listening. Secondly, if you like listening and you're enjoying these podcasts and you're listening on Apple, please do take a couple of seconds to give us a rate and a little comment. It makes me feel good about myself largely because I'm very needy. Emotionally, but also it's great for our listings on Apple. That's probably the better reason to do it in fairness. So just if you have a couple of minutes and you can give us a little rating and a comment, I'd really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you as well to Workvivo, our friend and sponsor as usual. If internal communications is something that you're struggling with, particularly as we move deeper and deeper into hybrid working, then they are well worth a look, workvivo.com, and you'll hear a little bit more about them on. So, today's guest, I'm excited. I love storytelling and I know how powerful it can be. And actually, only 2 weeks ago, we were running some events for clients and part of that was launching their new values. And part of that was about leaders sharing stories about what the values meant to them. And the feedback that we heard from those who'd attended those events, it was about 1,600 people attended that series of events, was how powerful those stories were. And not those kind of hero stories that I did this and it was great and we had an amazing experience. The ones that really, really resonated with people were those kind of mea culpa stories. Those, I did this thing one time and I wasn't very proud of it. And what I learned was that maybe there was a better way to do things. And they were the stories that really chimed with people, really, really, I think really brought to life the values of that organization for people in a very, very real way. So it was very powerful to see. So for me, storytelling is is a very powerful medium for business leaders. However, I do think, and I've said this before, a little bit like employee engagement before it, I think storytelling has become a bit of a dirty word. And I think that we tend to see leaders casting their eyes to the heavens and going, "Oh God, not that again." So, I'm delighted to have today's speaker, Richard Newman, who's the CEO of BodyTalk, who are a UK-based consultancy that support leaders in this and other aligned areas, to talk through storytelling, why it's so important, and perhaps how we can make leaders a little bit better at it. So Richard, good morning.

Good morning, Scott. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Appreciate it.

No, you're welcome. You're very, very welcome. I'll tell you what, why don't we just kick off? We always do just with a very quick 60-second bio on Richard Newman, on what you do and what BodyTalk's all about.

Thanks. Yeah. So I'm the founder and CEO of BodyTalk, and I've been leading this company now for the last 22 years. And we've helped in that time about 120,000 people from all over the world. So, uh, before the pandemic, certainly every other day I'd be on a plane somewhere going to help people across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, America, Africa, and Australia, and working with people in person. And now, of course, doing a lot of work virtually to help people improve their communication skills. And for me, this has come from a deeply held need to improve my communication. So I grew up highly introverted, very shy, and I didn't realize until recently I'm high-functioning autistic. So communication was an area that I was challenged with, and so I I did a huge deep dive into communication, read over 200 books on the subject. I went to do quite an unusual thing. When most people went off to do university and do a degree, I went to live in India, lived in the foothills of the Himalayas with Tibetan monks in a Tibetan monastery there teaching English, which involved using body language and tone of voice to communicate with someone who didn't understand my language. I then studied acting for 3 years in London to learn more about stage presence, storytelling. How you can use your body language and voice to communicate an emotion with someone on stage, someone on screen, someone in the theater with you, and put all this together in the training work that we do and have really developed the science behind this, building on the science that was already there in the research around communication, but then publishing our own research, which we can then use to share with leaders all the way around the world to increase their influence, increase their impact, and make sure that they take their ideas and put them into action and make sure that people care about them. So that's what we're doing around the world today.

Brilliant, brilliant, exciting, and very much aligned with what we do in Aspire and Change, which is why it's been so great, you know, chatting to you. Right, let's focus. Let's double down on storytelling because storytelling has been bandied around an awful lot. As I said in the intro, it elicits eye rolls often from execs and managers. In fact, only the other day I was asked to change. I had storytelling in an agenda. And I was asked to change it to something else, not necessarily change the content, but just to change that word, which to me suggests that people don't see the benefit of it. So why do you think that is, and why do you believe that storytelling is so important when it comes to communications?

Yeah, so storytelling has been a buzzword in business for definitely the last 5 years, probably about the last 10 years. And the challenge that you have is that a lot of people just do not understand what it is. And so there is that eye rolling. In fact, I did an event in April of this year where, before that event, I was talking to them about, you know, what do you need? And they said, well, we've got lots of complex information that we need to share in a more compelling way. And I said, great, we'll come and teach you the science of storytelling. And much like you, they said to me, no, no, no, we can't talk about storytelling. We did an event 2 years ago about storytelling and it was awful. Therefore, we're never mentioning the word storytelling again. And I said, okay, tell me what it was that you were learning previously and I'll talk to you about why storytelling is important. And again, we got to the event event, we had to not call the session storytelling so that people would even come in the room and listen. I think we called it increasing your influence or influential communication, something like that. But the, the reason being that storytelling is not understood. So to give you an example, a few years ago I was at an event much like you were, you were mentioning, uh, where there was a panel on the stage of leaders, CEOs from different companies. And the host said, so storytelling's important in business. Uh, do you all use it in your businesses? And of course all the leaders said, yes. Oh yeah, we absolutely, we use this in our business. And so the host said to each of them, okay, how do you use it in yours? And the first person said, well, you know, what I like to do is, uh, is tell people about, you know, the things I did on the weekend and what I did earlier in my career. And that is not business storytelling. Uh, somebody else said, you know, I like to tell people about this and this and this, and explained the process of making a list. And a list is not storytelling. And it was only the third person up there who really actually understood what storytelling is, which is essentially, if you wanna get a good definition around it. It is sharing information with someone in the way that the brain wants to receive information through a framework that you can see that's been used for thousands of years by civilizations all around the world. Civilizations who never had contact with each other figured out that there is a way of sharing information in the way that the brain wants to receive that, such that people care about what you're saying, remember it, and take action on it. And that's what true storytelling is really about. So there's a lot of misunderstandings. And to put one further point behind that, uh, is that I was speaking to Rob Robert McKee, who I've interviewed a couple of times, and he's known as the godfather of storytelling in Hollywood. And he said that the funny thing with stories is that if somebody goes to— say they go out to watch an incredible orchestra playing a piece of music, they don't come away from that thinking, "I could be a composer now because I've listened to some music." But that's the attitude people tend to have around stories where they think, "Well, I've been told stories since I was a child and my mother or father or guardian would read me a story." So therefore, I know what stories are. All I have to do is say, "Once upon a time," or, "The other day I was doing this," and I have a story. And so, unfortunately, there's a lot of people moving in the wrong direction. There's also a lot of complexity that's put around this. If anyone has ever tried to teach you the 17 stages of the hero's journey and how you can use that in your next PowerPoint, I'm sorry, but it's just not going to work. You cannot, with every document that you use at work, every meeting, go through the belly of the whale and have the denial of the quest and the approach of the innermost cave. You can't do that. Daily in communication. So instead, what you need is a system that simplifies all of that, and you can genuinely use it in every email, phone call, conversation, meeting, presentation in a way that's easy for the leader to use and also easy for people to listen and to remember. So we really need to upgrade our concept of what storytelling is and how it can be used.

Yeah, brilliant. And so, so how do you believe that, that stories can help leaders to influence people in their teams and in their wider organizations?

So this is something that we're actually brought in to do quite often at an event where, let's say that there is an offsite, a leadership conference or a retreat. And I'm often brought in on the last day. And what I'll say to people is simply that, do you remember the last year's offsite? Do you remember the last year's conference where you got together and you had loads of great ideas and amazing insights and initiatives you're gonna put together? And do you remember how 3 months after last year's conference, you suddenly realized that none of those things were actually happening within the business? And there's either a groan or a roar of laughter from the room as they realize, "Oh my goodness, you're exactly right." And I said, "So this year, did you come up with lots of nice initiatives and ideas and things that you want to roll out and put into action?" And you can see them nodding around the room. And I say, "So shall we make sure that that doesn't happen again? Shall we make sure that there's some way in which people are going to understand what you've talked about here and put it into action?" Because that's what stories can help you you do. Because let's say that in any business, whether you're at an offsite or a conference, or if you've just got a new idea, a new concept, a new initiative, product, or service, you can get really excited about it because you understand it. You've helped create it. You were brought on board with it. If you then go and just share it with people and say, "You need to act on this," they don't really understand why. If you give them lists, you give them bullet points, you give them graphs, all you're doing is engaging the logical part of the brain. And the survival part of the brain and the emotional part are not taking part. They're not engaged, not interested, and have no idea why they should do it. So they might contextually understand, "Okay, I get what I'm supposed to be listening to and doing here, but I don't feel like I care. I don't think that I should change my priorities. I'm not going to remember." They leave the meeting and 2 weeks later, someone says, "Hey, what was that meeting about with Jim?" And they say, "I don't know. There's a lot of graphs in it, something about a new product. It's nothing really much to worry about." And nothing happens. So if you really want to understand how to make change,, in an organization, you have to understand the power of story. The power of story is a bit like Inception. If you've ever watched the movie Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio, if not, go and watch it. Uh, it's a great movie. But if you've, if you've watched it, then you know what they do is they go into someone's mind when they're asleep. They plant a story that then grows into something that transforms the way the person behaves every day. And that's what storytelling does. It goes deep into the mind, plants an idea that is there attached to the person feeling like this is important for my survival. This is emotionally, uh, passionate as an idea for me, and I understand what I should do and I start acting in that direction. And when someone 2 weeks later says, what was that meeting about? They can repeat the story. Just like if you go to the movies and you see a movie that you enjoy, and a year later somebody says to you, what was that movie about? Oh, let me tell you. And you can remember the best lines from the movie. You can remember what people said, the plot, the subplots, how it all came together. And that's a year later. But you can't often do that a day later when it comes to a presentation.

And of course, it's the power of that emotional side of the brain that makes us remember those things, isn't it? So, it's not about, as you say, the graphs and the spreadsheets and the bullet points and all that stuff. It's us getting a bit more emotionally engaged. But I'm not convinced that actually business is very good at emotional engagement.

Yeah, absolutely right. I talk to people about this a lot. I say to them, Have you heard about screen fatigue? There's a lot of people talking about the last couple of years since the pandemic, since the lockdown, people have gone home and done virtual working from a screen. There's been this big thing around screen fatigue. And so I'll often say to a group I'm working with, "Okay, raise a hand if you've heard the term or you felt a sense of screen fatigue these last couple of years." And they raise their hand. And I say, "Is it also true that some people who have complained about screen fatigue They, uh, they, they finish their week, a long week. It's a Friday afternoon. They close down their laptop. They can't bear to look at another screen after all the virtual meetings they've had. They then go into the living room, they turn on the TV, and they are binge-watching Netflix for the next 4 hours. How, how is that screen fatigue? It's not actually screen fatigue. So what, what's happening is, you know, whether it's on screen or in person in business, uh, as you said, Scott, people are engaging each other logically. And you go into a meeting, whether it's virtual or in person, and somebody shows you, uh, data graphs and bullet points, and it's just engaging the logical part of the mind. And you come out of there with cognitive fatigue. It's not screen fatigue, it's cognitive fatigue. Or you do need to be mindful of the brightness of your screens and how close you are, of course, but it's cognitive fatigue most of the time. And then people need to have 2 cups of coffee before they go into the next meeting to have even more cognitive fatigue because we just sort of approach business from that perspective of, I give you the data and the data says this, and therefore we act on it. But that's treating people like human doings.. And we're not human doings, we are human beings. And so you have to engage people emotionally first, logically second. A great book if people wanna get some reference and some science behind this, uh, there's a really good book by Daniel Kahneman, which is Thinking Fast and Slow. And he is a Nobel Prize winner in economics. So he really cares about numbers. He's not someone who's saying forget the numbers. He loves numbers, but he also understands how human beings behave when it comes to numbers. And what he essentially says in there, and there's many other good books and good research on this, is that the emotional part of the brain receives everything that's happening to you first before the logical mind responds. And it's a split second before, but essentially the emotional brain is dealing with your environment, dealing with any input that's coming in before it goes up to the logical mind. And if the emotional mind says there's nothing to be engaged with here, sends a note up to the logical mind, the logical mind immediately says, "Okay, we can disregard most of this information." 'Uh, so don't worry about it.' Whereas if the emotional mind says, 'I'm engaged, give me good information here, we need to remember this,' then suddenly you're much more likely to, to remember. And if it's a highly charged emotional event, the amygdala will suddenly sense this situation and send a release of dopamine flooding through the brain, or sends a trigger to release dopamine through the brain. And the dopamine is there to help you remember what happens next. So emotional engagement is not just sort of some nice fluffy 'got to make sure that people are smiling at work.' It is critical for the transfer of information.

Yeah, there's actually a physiological reaction because if you're getting a little dopamine dump to cement that information, then actually the stories are triggering that happening. And without that, what you're saying is that there'll just be no memory of what was said or then recall. So, being able to actually action what has been agreed or has been said is very tough. As you said, back to your example about, well, what happened with all the actions that you took from last year's senior leadership team offsite?

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Million-dollar question. You've talked about kind of how you tell a story. You've talked about the 17 steps of the hero's journey, but you also talked about a system to make it simpler. So, somebody's— some— there is somebody listening to this podcast. I know there is from the tracking stats. What are they going to do tomorrow to go away and become better storytellers? How do you actually go about creating a really good story?

Great. Really good question, Scott. So, so let's go back to what you mentioned right at the beginning of this podcast. You said that you've just recently been to this event where people got up and told hero stories and they didn't resonate, whereas other people got up and told learning stories and they did resonate. So this is the single most important factor that any leader listening to this can take away to understand. You are not the hero of the story. Your company is not the hero. Your product is not the hero. Your service and your new initiative is not the hero of the story. If it is, the story fail. Critically, you are the mentor in the story, and the person listening to you is the hero. So just to break that down for a moment, uh, everything that you share, whether it's an email, document, meeting, presentation, a pitch of some kind, you need to think about it through the eyes of the person you're speaking to. So to, to get really simple on storytelling, a hero is someone who has challenges and has goals, and the story is about them moving away from their challenges towards those goals. That's the hero. Now, if you go into any meeting as hero and you say, hey everyone, I have a challenge, I have a goal, nobody's listening because they're all thinking, okay, well, I have challenges and I have goals as well, so I'm not interested in yours as well. Instead, if you go into every conversation, so think about the meetings you've got coming up, think about the phone calls you've got this week, and just remember, whoever you speak to is the hero of that conversation. They have challenges and they have goals. Even if you're speaking to your CEO and you've only been at the company for a year, the hero of that conversation is the CEO. They have challenges. Have challenges, they have goals. Your team has challenges, your team has goals. Your clients have challenges, your clients have goals. You want to speak about and make sure that you've structured all the information based on that understanding. Where are they now and what is causing them pain right now? And where would they like to be and what would be pleasurable about that better future? So when you go in, you're not there to say, I know that you have challenges and I can fix everything. Again, that's hero storytelling. And when you do that, you put them in the position of them thinking, Are you saying that I'm a victim of my story? Are you saying I'm the villain in my story? I don't like this. So again, you don't go in as the hero. They are the hero. You come in as the mentor. The mentor. Now, the mentor is the person who cares deeply about your challenges and cares deeply about your goals and will do whatever they can to guide you in that direction. So you don't have to be— the classic in storytelling around the mentor is the old white man with a long white beard. Like Dumbledore is a classic example, or Obi-Wan Kenobi. It's always old white man, long white beard. Uh, so you don't have to be that. You can be a 5-year-old child, you can be a graduate, you can be on an apprenticeship scheme, and you can still be the mentor because you care about the person's challenges, care about their goals, and you help guide them in that direction in whatever you can do. So always remember, you're the mentor. That's the first thing. The second thing you need to do is, when you think about how you're going to structure your information, is to go from survival to emotional to logical information. So, so what does that mean? The first thing that you want to think about, you're speaking to somebody, is just to think about what are their current challenges? What's keeping them awake at night? Is it, if it's in business, is it related to money issues? Is it related to time, resources, deadlines? Is it related to a deeper principle, a deeper value that they care about, such as work-life balance, integrity, reputation? Just think about what is their current challenge. And if you don't know, the first question you ask in that meeting is, once you've said hello and how are you and how was the weekend, you then say, look, I'd really like to understand, what are your current biggest challenges? And what's most important to you about those challenges? What is the biggest pain point in there? So you can understand that. And this suddenly makes the, uh, the survival part of the brain suddenly say, wow, this, this conversation's important. This person's actually interested in what really matters to me. So suddenly it goes to the top of their priority list. The mind starts to get awake. An example of this would be to say, um, let's say that you know your team and you could say, um, hi team, thanks so much for coming on this call with me today. Look, I understand when I spoke to you a couple of weeks ago that you are really concerned about this issue and you're also having this other challenge. And what you're concerned about is that on this project, we're spending so much money and time on this that we are running out of resources. And you, you're scared that this is going to damage your reputation for our department and the ramifications that could have for you. Instantly they're paying attention. They're like, okay, this, this sounds like something really important for me. So you've get engaged the survival mind. Then remember, you're being the mentor, they're the hero. Then you want to talk about, okay, well, 'Well, where do we want to be?' Most leaders at this point, they just jump in. They go, 'So here's my solution.' Again, you're being the hero, you're going logical, you get rejected. So I always say to people, you know, don't, don't sell your solution. You want to talk to people about a better future. So you go from survival mind to emotional mind, not to the logical mind. So in the emotional mind, you're then talking about, you know, where do we want to get to? Remember that they're the hero, you're the mentor. So you can say, 'What would be a better version of the future for for you. Given that we need to complete this project by the end of December, what does a great version of that look like? And why is that so important? What's, what's the most important thing that we could achieve there, if anything is possible? So it starts to light up their imagination, get their emotions going, and suddenly they are supercharged, ready to hear anything you have to share as a solution. And at that point, you then go into the logical mind and say, based on where you are now, where you want to be, let's talk about this potential solution that will give you what you need to go on that journey. Again, that's what the mentor does. They figure out where is the hero now, where do they want to be, what tools or wisdom do they need to go on that— oops— to go on that, uh, journey in order to get there. And then as the mentor, you then have permission to give them data, graphs, bullet points. But at this point, they're so emotionally engaged, they will remember when you share 17.6%, whereas previously they would have forgotten because it wouldn't have been important. So that's the journey that you want to be going in as the mentor. And you can do it in every email, meeting, phone call, conversation, just by going in path.

Nice. And it's, I guess it's about bringing people on that journey, isn't it? And actually getting them starting in a good place. Cause I think that's probably what you were saying is that most meetings that we have is just simply running in and going, here's the solution. Here's the data. Let's get on with it.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. And when you dive straight into the solution, again, you also get objections from people because every problem has a thousand potential solutions. And so you'll often get people saying, no, that's, that's not, not, not any good. No, forget it. And they could, they could push your idea to one side. And this is a funny one I often check in with people on. I say, have you ever had your idea rejected? And then 15 minutes later, Bob on the other side of the boardroom table says, hey, I've got this idea, shares exactly the same idea as you. And suddenly everyone says, Bob, that's amazing. Wow. Why didn't anybody else say that? That's a fantastic idea. You should get a promotion. And you're sitting there thinking, but I just shared this 15 minutes ago. Like, what was wrong with it when I said it? And you know, there could be office politics at play, of course, but part of the reason that that happens is that you went in too soon. You went Went from problem to solution, which is what almost every leader in every organization does around the world. Problem, solution. They think, okay, you're a nail, I'm a hammer, and they bash you on the head. And it's not how we want to be treated. We, we, you're missing out the piece in between, which is exploring what will that solution actually lead to and describing the better future before you describe the path or the journey that takes you there.

Hmm. Okay. And why is, why do you think that approach is so powerful during times of say change? Because we know that generally people don't like change. We're not particularly programmed for change. We like the status quo. So how does this approach help leaders when they're going through change, as all organizations are all the time? And I think actually, when I talk to organizations about change, and you do too, often they're thinking about change as being with a big C, that this is a big dramatic organizational change. But of course, actually, the big changes are the little ones actually with the little c's that are little changes that are happening all the time. So how does this approach help people, help leaders through those times of change?

Yeah, so if change is going to be effective and lead to something better, then the important concept to keep in mind is that change involves short-term pain, and the outcome you can get is long-term gain. Short-term pain for long-term gain. But you have to get everybody to commit to the short-term pain of change. We don't like change. We are creatures of habits. We like to know where we are. We like comfort zones. We also have this little monkey mind that every human has, which essentially is saying to us, "Don't change anything because this is what you've done in your life up until now and you've survived. If you do anything different, you could die. So resist anything that's different. Just do what you've been doing up until now, then you'll be fine." And so, we don't like that idea of change. And so essentially, what you can do through storytelling is talk to people about the sense that there will be short-term pain and the long-term gain is going to be this. And the long-term gain needs to be so exciting, so utterly compelling that the short-term pain is worth it. So we are all willing to do something that is short-term pain for extraordinary long-term gain. So, you know, an example around this that maybe is a human example everyone can relate to— let's say that somebody is smoking and the change that is being suggested is to stop smoking. So of course, you know, that smoking can cause someone a pain in the moment, such as they're getting a bad cough, uh, and they are feeling agitated when they don't have cigarettes. The solution The solution: stop smoking. Well, that's all very well, but the person says, yes, but to do that is going to be extraordinarily painful in the short term as I get over the, uh, the habit that I have right now. Uh, that's gonna be painful. If you can create a future for them that is so utterly compelling, they will do anything to create that more vivid, more wonderful, more beautiful future. And you put it to them in such a way that their imagination is lit up, their emotions are involved, that they want that new identity, that new version of themselves, that new version of an organization. If we just spread that out away from smoking to any change. If people utterly believe in it, that is the future they want for themselves, for their team, for their family, for their community, for their organization. It's so bright, vivid, and they can see it, they can believe in it, then they will go through the short-term pain in order to get there. And so I think that's something that leaders really need to recognize is that change does create pain and you have to make sure that pain appears worth the effort, particularly when people have done things in the past. I often go into organizations, as I'm sure you do, Scott, where there is change fatigue, where they're like, okay, This is like the 6th new CEO that we've seen in the last 10 years, and we've gone through a change in the IT systems before, and that never did anything. So, to get past that change fatigue of there's no point in going through this pain because nothing will work, the future needs to be so compelling that it feels absolutely believable and worth the journey.

Yeah, it's really interesting because we're working with a couple of clients at the moment, and we've helped them to create corporate narratives. So, tying in what that compelling future looks like, painting a picture of that for people. If we can do all of this, if we can get through that pain, here's what the future could look like for all of us. Here's the part that you play in delivering that. And that for me is really compelling because unless people know, to your point, what it is we're shooting for, where it is we're going, why we should be going there, how that's linked back to our purpose, then actually I'll just leave. The monkey will just keep saying, look, don't bother changing. And we just won't bother changing. So, it's powerful stuff.

It's also worth knowing too, and you can sort of smile to yourself as a leader taking people through change, that part of storytelling that is seen from civilizations around the world for thousands of years is the denial of the quest. And so, when you announce change, you should expect it. So, people are in at the beginning of storytelling, they're in the ordinary world. Then there is a call to adventure done by a leader or mentor or somebody. And then the next part is the denial of the quest. That's a It's an important part of the process of going through this. And so, what needs to happen beyond the denial of the quest is to make sure that the quest feels so worthwhile that they go from denial into action. And one of the simplest ways to do this, and I talk about this in business storytelling a lot, is to make the next step that person makes so easy to make that they can't say no. So, if you say, "What I'd like you to do is for the next 12 years, commit $10 million a year in your budget to this, as well as 26 people working on it for 20 hours per week." They're gonna say, "That's ridiculous. I'm not gonna do that. It's huge." If you say to them, "Okay, if we have to go on this journey, all we really need to do is have a meeting with Margaret and Angela next Tuesday, just to start things off." There's no way of them saying no to that 'cause it's so simple. But once you start the journey, people are then compelled to keep on doing what they have already started doing. So, if you can make that first step simple, then people are already on that journey with you.

And what might that denial sound like? If a leader is trying to bring a team on a journey and they're hearing that, what types of things are they saying? Are you hearing?

So the denial often sounds like, um, this will never work, we can't afford it, we don't have the time, I don't believe you. And so when I'm building out a story with people, I always say, look, before you get too far in this story, you need to make sure that people have evidence, that they understand how the current situation is costing them time, money, and impacting their personal values, and how the future will improve, uh, things around time, money, and their personal values, as well as giving them evidence that possible. Once you've done that, virtually every objection disappears. So denial of the quest, not often around resources, money, time, I don't believe you, there's no way that we can. And so once you deal with those in your story, then you overcome at least 80% of objections that come up.

And you're nipping them in the bud early. And I think the other thing that springs to mind for me is that the one thing that we can often miss is that whole, what's in it for me?

Yeah.

So actually getting down to the nitty-gritty of, for the people in this organization, for you, Richard, and the rest of the team, this means that we will be able to X, Y, and Z, and making it really personal. Because that's when I believe people start to get really connected, particularly to change, because they're going, well, okay, well, I'm going to get a pay rise, I'm going to get a chance to play with new tech, I'm going to get a chance to really bring our purpose to life and do something really good in society, I'm going to get a chance to whatever it is. That's really powerful.

Yeah, and important to know as well that if you do have someone who is a strong objector on your team or in your company somewhere, And understand that for them, the what's in it for me piece could be different to the person sitting next to them at the desk next to them. So it's always important to figure out for this person, what do they hold most dear? What are their personal values and principles? What's most at stake for them? And sometimes worthwhile having a one-to-one conversation with them to talk about what are their current challenges? What, what better future would they love to have? And how does this help them on that path in some way? Because then they can tie it into their own hero's journey. They see themselves as the hero going through that, and they feel that they'll be supported and it's going to align for them. So yeah, critical to make sure that people feel that it connects to their story, not just that it's the company's story or the company's values, or it's going to be great for the bottom line of that sort of thing. They need to feel that it's connected to their story too.

Yeah, brilliant. Great for the bottom line. Jesus. We've heard that a million times. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Of course, we, we've spoken to now about words and about the words that leaders can use. But of course, words often need to match our body language when we're telling stories, right? And I think one of the things that you spoke about when we had our little pre-brief chat was this whole idea, I think I took it down correctly, of nonverbal leakage. Yeah. Which it's a term that paints a picture in words really in your brain. What is the importance of matching what people see and hear when it comes to storytelling?

So yeah, this is something that I really studied and started to understand early on in my career. So I mentioned earlier that I lived with Tibetan monks for 6 months teaching them English, and something that I learned there is that the only way to get them to understand me, given that they didn't understand English, the only way to help them learn English from me was that I had to make sure my body language, tone of voice, and words were all in complete alignment. Because if my body language was going one way and my words were going another way, they didn't understand what I was saying. So if I was trying to teach them the word excited. If I didn't look excited and I didn't sound excited, I could have been saying pineapple. They had no idea what I was saying. And so I had to have everything in total congruency. Now move that into, you know, business setting. Of course, people understand logically what the words are that you're saying, but if you don't have congruency, then it doesn't emotionally engage them. And in fact, that it can lead to a lack of trust with a leader. So, you know, if you think about authenticity, it's been talked about so much over the last 10 years, at least within business. We want authentic leaders and people go, yeah, I am. I am authentic, I'm not lying. That's not enough. You have to make sure that you are physically and vocally expressing the words true to the emotion that you're saying. So to give an example, I so often go to an event where sometimes I'm on early on in the schedule and normally the CEO gets up first, then maybe the CFO gets up and then it's me. And what I'll see with either the CEO or CFO, one of them stands up and says, yeah, hi everyone, really glad to be here today. Really excited about this event. Lots of positive things going to happen and it's going to be amazing. Gonna have amazing year coming up. And, and you think, well, just tell your face that you think this is exciting because what the people in the room see, particularly if you have an in-person event, you fly everybody in, pay thousands of pounds on flights and hotels and coffee breaks and all these things. They then see somebody who looks like they don't believe in the business. They see someone who looks maybe fearful of being on stage cuz maybe they are scared of public speaking, or they see someone with a poker face and they think, well, what was the point in being face to face? You could have just emailed me. And I would've believed what you're saying more so. So whether you're on screen, uh, where the camera is pretty close, so people are, are effectively closer to you than they would be necessarily in person, or if you're in person, you have to make sure your body language and voice match the meaning of the words. Because if the body language goes one way and the words go the other way, people respond to and believe the body language. So they might leave that meeting going, why is the CFO so worried? Why do you think he's so deeply concerned? Is it because there's gonna be cutbacks? I've heard there's gonna be cutbacks. And suddenly they leave demotivated rather than motivated. Mm-hmm. So you have to get them moving. In the same direction.

Amazing. Amazing. And I, you know, one thing that I always think with leaders again, and it goes back to the very top of the conversation that we were having, Richard, around this becoming a bit of a dirty word. And I do storytelling already, or we tried that and it didn't work. I think that people can still feel a little bit queasy about telling stories. They think it's a bit childish or they think it's a bit done or a bit yesteryear or a bit Leadership 101. How can they get over that?

Yeah, so I think that the key to this is to start small, start in an environment that feels safe to you, don't make a huge deal out of it, and start to do it every day. So I think about this as, you know, when I used to play tennis, that if I was to just learn how to do a forehand and then immediately go into a championship match, my forehand is going to fall to pieces. It's not going to be very good. So what the teacher would say is, okay, this is how forehand works. Now go into the car park. And in the car park, there was this big wall and there was a line painted on the wall the the same height as a tennis net. And he said, go and hit 200 forehands in the car park. And when you can do 200 in a row, come back and we'll work on the backhand. So I'd say the same is true around stories is to think about this not as, okay, one day when I get invited to do a TED Talk or one day when I'm speaking at the company conference, I'll bring out that story that everybody seems to like. Forget it. You've gotta do it daily and just understand that you can practice this with virtually every email conversation meeting that you have. And so the, the concept of storytelling needs to become like second nature to you. So it's not about telling that story about what you did once 20 years ago that where you came across a bear in the woods and everybody thought it was fun. It's about understanding the structure of information. And so I would say if you wanna get over the, the concern about it, use it in your next meeting. Just think, what do I need to share? What action do I need people to take when they leave the meeting? And you start off by understanding you are the mentor, they're the hero. Start off by understanding, okay, let me talk about their current current concerns? What are their future goals? What is the journey that we need to go on? Take them through that journey and give them a first step they can take on the journey. And be doing that repeatedly such that when you get up at a company conference, you think, I, I'm going to use storytelling here. And even use storytelling to the point where people don't even know that it's a story. So I often do this for people where I was doing this last week and this guy came up to me in the afternoon and he said, now I'm really impressed because I can see what you're doing. Because what I did was I was teaching them the storytelling storytelling framework. And as far as they were concerned, I hadn't used any stories. And about halfway through the day, I said, you know this framework that I'm teaching you? I've been using this story framework since we started today's meeting. Let me just talk you through how I did that and sort of reveal, you know, behind the magician's curtain. This is what I've been doing. So for their minds, I wasn't saying, once upon a time I did this, in my younger years I did this. I wasn't doing that. I was using the framework of storytelling, going through survival mind, emotional mind, logical mind, go taking them on a journey, and then revealing how I had done that in a way that, that doesn't feel like you're having to tell stories or reveal a lot of things about your life. You're just giving information in the way that the brain wants to receive it.

Brilliant. Uh, Richard, we could talk about this for hours, uh, literally probably hours, but unfortunately we have come to the end of our time today. Um, listen, before we go, um, if people want to find out more about you or about BodyTalk, where, where can they go?

So if, if you want to find out more, if you go to ukbodytalk.com, uh, on our website there's a resources page. We've got lots of videos on there, we've got loads of articles on there as well, and you can sign up for the newsletter. So if you sign up for the newsletter, then twice a month we'll send you out videos, articles, some with me, some with experts that we're interviewing from all over the world, some from our team, and that can keep you inspired and start to embed that idea of storytelling and other communication skills for you and for your teams.

Brilliant stuff, Richard. It's been a joy chatting to you. Thanks so much for taking the time.

You're welcome. Thanks, Scott.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.