81 | Connecting Through Stories: How Effective Communication Transforms Cultures | Eoghan Tomás McDermott

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.

If you look for any level job, if you look at leaders, CXO level, if you cannot provide evidence, uh, i.e., a story of you being able to lead, inspire, motivate, you're not going to get the job. So we tell stories. What I would think is to get comfy doing a very simple, probably the most effective way, is saying it out practicing it, getting comfy with it.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Before we kick off, the usual thank yous to our friend and sponsor Workvivo. You will hear a little bit more about them later on in the podcast, assuming you last that long, which based on today's guest, I can guarantee you absolutely will. But before you get to that bit, you know, Workvivo, a brilliant platform if you're looking to engage your employees, and I think that's particularly important important and way more pertinent now as we move to hybrid working and making sure that you're sharing consistently information across the organization, whether people are in the office or at home. You can learn more about them at workvivo.com, or as I said, in a few minutes as part of the podcast. Today's guest is really interesting. We're going to cover a topic which I think alongside terms like employee engagement has become a bit of a dirty word, and that dirty word is storytelling. And for me, storytelling is so fundamentally important in organizations. The trouble is we've kind of rammed it down people's throats, and I don't think necessarily explained to them what it is. Or actually, maybe a bigger issue, we haven't actually assumed— sorry, we have assumed that they've got the skills and the capabilities and more importantly the confidence to be able to do it. We talk about leadership storytelling, telling. But then we look, and I'm working with a client at the moment who readily admits, you know, our leaders are where they are, our team leaders and our heads of divisions are where they are because they're technically really, really brilliant at what they do, not because they're good people people. And if you're not a good people person, the chances are you mightn't be a very good communicator either. And that's why storytelling for me is really important. We talk about aligning people to strategy, we talk about day-to-day operational comms, and if you're not able to tell a really good and compelling story, bringing people with you on that journey can be really, really hard. And that's why I'm really pleased today to have Eoin Tomas MacDiarmid, the Managing Director from the Communications Clinic, on the podcast, because we are going to talk about everything storytelling and what leaders can do to maybe get themselves into a bit of a better place when it comes to that skill. So, Eoin, good morning.

Good morning, Scott. How are you?

I am very well, thank you. I'm really, really well. Listen, let's kick off as I always do, just to get you warmed up, give listeners a sense of you. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, where you come from, and a little bit maybe about the Communications Clinic?

Sure. Well, I'm the managing director of the Communications Clinic. And what do we do? It's pretty much we do what it says on the tin. We have 3 areas to our business, which are distinct, but then in and of themselves interlinked. So one area is strategic communications, PR and story placement, and crisis management. Then we also have corporate training and coaching. And then we have a wing that looks at careers and job interview preparation. Essentially, though, across all of them, it is helping organizations and individuals tell their story, communicate effectively, achieve an objective, build better relationships. And whether that is with, for example, accountancy firms, law firms, tech firms, leaders in pharma, leaders in politics, they all really boil down to who you're talking to, where are their heads at, what do they care about, what's your objective, and what is the most effective, compelling way that you can communicate with them. I'm one of the founders of the Communications Clinic. So we started back in 2008. I started there as the head of careers, became the head of training, and took over as managing director 3 years ago. And today, I have the pleasure, obviously, of speaking with you. And to give you an example, this afternoon, I'm working with the largest search engine in the world and some of its people to prepare for a global conference that they have coming up to make their, again, speakers interesting, understandable, and memorable. And I think when we look at communications, whether that's one-to-one, one-to-few, one-to-many, that essentially our communication should be interesting to them. It should be understandable. And ultimately, it should be memorable. Because if it's not interesting, they're not going to be listening. If it's not understandable, it's obvious they're not going to get it. But then if it's not memorable, well, then what's the point? If we can't get the thing that we want people to know and understand, feel, or do to stick, that people will be able to recall it, well then has the communication been worthwhile at all? And I think when we're looking at the different channels of communication that we can use for internal comms and external comms, one of the criteria has to be the stickability to it. And that's why I believe stories can be an effective tool to achieving that.

Yeah, and look, you and I both know fine well that slide decks of ROI and EBITDA and spreadsheets and divisional objectives are not going to cut the mustard, are not interesting generally, are not understandable, and are not memorable. And actually, I was doing some work with a client recently, and I put up a slide and I just said, look, I'm going to just say it, strategy is boring. Your staff don't care about the strategy. What they care is what they can do to make the strategy happen. And you've got to be able to bring that to life for them. That isn't 35 pages of charts and spreadsheets. And for me, that's where storytelling is so, so important. And you're absolutely right, making it interesting, making it understanding, or sorry, making it understandable and making it memorable. So as I said, I think storytelling has become a bit of a dirty word. I think that we have shoved it down people's throats over the last number of years. I think it's given it a bad rap. Define for me what storytelling is for you. What does it mean and why is it so important? Why actually is it so important?

Well, firstly, to agree with you, it is or has become a bit of a dirty word. It's become a buzzword. I would view it It's a skill. I would view it as actually a rhetorical device and a skill to help people be effective communicators. I probably first encountered it as an isolated term, as in storytelling, help our people be better storytellers, when another large tech firm founded in 1975 asked me to do a session with them on storytelling about 8 years ago. Now, that organization were very data-heavy. It was a conceptual place. And they found that their people had an inability of engaging predominantly with external stakeholders, but even influence internally on their ideas, and that they identified that they were buried in the concept, buried in the data, and couldn't bring it to life. What we established was storytelling was going to be the thing to help them achieve that and to do that. And I would have argued— I, and I didn't want to argue it at that time— but I would have argued that the title of the course could have been Effective Communication. But they wanted to call it storytelling because to focus on the moving things from the conceptual to the real, from the general to the specific, and that's what stories allow you to do. So ultimately, Definitely, I would see it and define it as a rhetorical device, Scott. But ultimately, it fits in with communications of understanding the other, having an objective, and stories help you achieve that because they're memorable. And they are a great way to get people to remember them because it helps us process the information and it sticks in the long-term memory. We can talk theory all day, but for people to be able to picture something and remember it, we need the story. So to go back to your slide of strategy is boring, absolutely, because it's conceptual. It's detached, it isn't actually real. We have, I believe all of us have an internal so-what-o-meter. Why should I care? What does this mean to me? How does this impact me? And making things real and specific examples and stories can achieve that. So I think it's interesting if you look at human development, for example, and that we condense the timeline of human development down. And we condense that timeline down, the timeline where we've had essentially the same biological makeup that we have right now. And if you condense that timeline down to a whole 100 years, for example. For 97 of those 100 years, we couldn't write things down. We couldn't write things down. So I think that's interesting, though, because we have this distorted view of the timeline of human development. We were ultimately hunter-gatherers with basically the same makeup that we have now. So the idea, if you still look at that condensed timeline, that really it's only the last 3 years we have the ability to write stuff down. The majority of the time, we have been oral communicators, oral storytellers, which means we pass on information via stories. So if you look at every single religion, for example, every single religion has worked out the way to pass on their message, to pass on their meaning, to pass on their morals, is to attach a story to it. Because stories are interesting, they're understandable, they're memorable, they work. So if you, if you take Christianity— as I said, you can take any religion, but in this take we'll stick with Christianity and the story of the Good Samaritan— people will remember it. The man walking down the road, somebody's beaten up in front of him, he stops, he helps him, he brings him to the inn. The purpose of that story though. It isn't so that people, when they're walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, know what to do. It's so that we remember the wider message, the moral to it, which is ultimately to be nice and to be kind to people. That was told 2,000 years ago, if not longer. But the purpose of the story is still remembered. And there's tons of them, from the Prodigal Son, the Aesop's Fables, basic bedtime stories for kids. We see them all the time. And that's why I think what you're always hunting for, whether it is engaging with somebody one-to-one, or a leader doing a town hall, or even going thrown into a pitch. It's trying to move the conceptual to the real, and story should be woven in through that.

Yeah, I love that. It's a great example of the Bible and Christianity and those stories. And, you know, the one that I always tend to use is, is the Aboriginals of Australia who've been around for 50,000 years, the world's oldest tribe, and they've never written anything down. And, you know, anybody that's read about them or knows about them will know about the Dreamtime, will know about the stories. And, and that's how they've communicated where to find water, how to catch food, the best time to do, you plant crops, the best places to plant crops, the best way to cross a desert, the best time of the year to do that. And all of that is through story that's been handed down from generation to generation to generation. So I wonder, from your perspective, Owen, thinking about this in a, maybe in a corporate context, what do you think a really good story comprises? What makes a really good story?

Well, specificity in and of itself is crucial. And I know I've cited the parables. And so to make a little bit of a step change, if I quote Stalin now as an An example, Stalin said 50,000 men dying in a war is a statistic. A little girl drowning in a pond is a tragedy. So that idea of trying to move things from the kind of the general big number data into a specific is a useful thing for us to consider and to look at. So you would see it, for example, again, in behavior change advertising. Rather than simply giving us the data, people give us the story. So for example, around anti-smoking, we now know that 1 in 2 people who smoke will die of a smoking-related disease. The HSE and the anti-smoking attached the story of Gerry Collins, the former Dublin footballer who smoked for his entire life and then who ultimately, unfortunately, died of a smoking-related disease. That use of this— the data married with the specific is very powerful. So that's an element of what needs to be within the story. Also, those stories need to have a little bit of detail. To make something into a story, people need to be able to see it, to view it, to get an appreciation of it. So to— To take a very simple example of describing a table, there is a difference between saying somebody walked into a room and there was a surface there. There's a difference between saying somebody walked into the room and there was a table there. There's a difference of saying somebody walked into the room and there was a brown table there. But there's even a difference saying somebody walked into the room and there was a dark mahogany table there with a coffee stain in the right corner of it. It is those little bits of detail that you're trying to give so that people can picture it. So specificity bits of detail. But also, Scott McInnes, in relation to structure, thinking about the structure of it, a good structure for a story can often be the before and after. That stories can sometimes have 3 steps to it: the before, the catalyst for change, and the after. So what was it like when you started? What made it challenging? Then what happened to change it? And then was it happily ever after, for example? So they don't often and they aren't often chronological. They don't tend to be, this happened, this happened, this happened. People will process the story if they get the before, the catalyst, and the after. So to give you an example of it, like take Leicester winning the Premiership in 2015. When we tell the story of Leicester winning that, the story isn't told result by result, 1-1 against United, 2-1 versus City. It tends to go was, it was really unlikely that there was gonna be success. Leicester had just been promoted. 19 of the 20 pundits in a magazine had said that they were gonna lose. To come last and be relegated. They had lost 3 or 4 of their major players. They hired a coach who had just been sacked by a Greek club and hadn't been at the top of the game for a decade. This was very unlikely they were going to do anything. Then what happened? Well, they got the tactics right. They had a goal-scoring machine. They all did really well as a team. And what was the result? They won the Premier League, got into the Champions League. There was a structure. There was a before, a catalyst, and a change. So that tends to be some of the elements, specificity, 3 bits of detail: a before, catalyst for change, and after. But there's tons of different types of stories, and we can get into them, from rapid fire to case study to specific hypothetical to personal story. But at its core, I would argue the leader or the communicator needs to know who they're talking to, needs to know what they want to achieve, and then needs to see, how am I using a story to help me achieve that? Hi, I'm Kleana from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from. For more, see workvivo.com.

Yeah, and you know what, the Stalin example is a great example because what it does is immediately it tugs on our heartstrings. A little girl drowning. Oh my God. Because soldiers go to war and 50,000, I can't even picture what 50,000 soldiers dying even looks like. But in my mind's eye, I've got a horrible picture of a little girl drowning in a pond. That tugs my heartstrings, it tugs my emotions, which is really powerful. That image is something that I can relate to, I can get my arms around, and that makes the story so much more powerful, doesn't it?

It does. Now, if Stalin was being strategic with his communications, he could have said, "Well, 50,000 people, that's the amount of people who would be in the Aviva if it was a full house. Can you imagine all of those people wiped off the face of the earth?" But still, the specificity of the child and the pond is very visceral, it's very powerful. You'll remember back at the Syria war, in crisis when the young boy was found dead on the beach. That had a particularly impact, a particularly strong impact on people, where they said, this is shocking and horrific, having had thousands and thousands of people displaced from their homes, probably hundreds if not thousands of people dying leading up to that. But it was the visceral, specific example that achieved it. Now, again, I'm not suggesting that leaders in organizations need to go that emotive. But there's always opportunities for us to give stories, to give examples, to get it specific, that can have a connection with people. So to give you an example, like, I was working with the leader of a pharma organization who wanted to, at a town hall, inspire their staff that the work that they were doing was making a real difference. Now, they had all of the data about uptake of their drug, impact on patients who took it on, success rates. They had a whole ton of data, which was great because, again, the data had an element of substance behind it. But where they then were able to move to were specific examples of people in villages where the disease was particularly prevalent and the difference that it made to their lives. So that idea of marrying the data with an example, I think, is very powerful. And that's something that we— and I think is a fair pushback in storytelling, that people just say, "Ah, it's just telling stories." Whereas what I strive for is that you have the combination of data and story, which again, makes the whole thing far more credible.

Yeah. And a story that I've told in this podcast 100 times, so apologies listeners, if you've heard this 100 times before, a client we work I work with, they're an injection molding company. They have people who basically take plastic parts off the end of a machine and put them in a box. And that could be their job for an entire day. So how do you motivate those people to want to do their very best every single day? Well, one of the things that they make is a small part for a defib. And actually my wife's uncle, 2 weeks ago, had a massive heart attack in Scotland, in Glasgow, and was dead for 20 minutes. They had a defib there, they managed to bring him back, and he was brought to the ambulance, brought to the hospital, and he's now fine, thankfully. The story, the linkage there for those people taking those plastic parts isn't that you're taking plastic parts off a machine and putting them in a box, but it's that ultimately the plastic part that you've made could save somebody's life. Or if it's made badly, mightn't save somebody's life, it might result in somebody losing a life. So that link, I think, to people is really powerful. It's when we can link that data to things that happen with people. Your smoking example is a great example. Your Stalin example is a great example. The Leicester example is a great example. It's about people linking with people, and that's really powerful.

Oh, totally. There's a few things for that. The story is fantastic. And there's an element to it of— I'm reminded by, and this is important for leaders, a line by the writer Somerset Maugham, who said writers, and I would argue communicators, he said the writer's job was to make old things feel new and new things feel familiar. So I think that's really crucial for leaders, particularly at things like town halls or where they're communicating. That actually if the message is the same, we have to find ways of being able to make it feel new, illustrate it in a new way so people aren't going, oh, here's person X, they're going to just tell us— that actually that idea of citing different examples and different successes I think is hugely important. But also then, if you are presenting or communicating a new concept or a new initiative, how do we make this thing that's new, how do we make it familiar? How do we make it real? And again, examples are very useful for that. But also, Scott, I think on your example on defib and the piece of rubber that went with it. That idea of being able to connect it to a human, or even just giving us the outcome, the vision, this is what this is achieving, is hugely valuable. I think leaders are key to doing that. So there's an apocryphal story, for instance, of people building a cathedral. And the person walks through the building site and speaks to different builders. And the first builder that they go to, they ask them what they're doing. And they said, I'm laying bricks. They go to the second builder and say, say, what are you doing? They said, I'm building a wall. And they go to the third builder and say, what are you doing? He says, I'm building a cathedral. I would argue what leaders need to be doing is making sure that everybody on that site knew that they were building a cathedral, or saving lives, or helping have defibrillators that save lives, or making drugs that have a huge impact on individuals' lives. And that's where the stories cut through the data. And I think the data, though, is still important to make it stand up. But the story is the cut through.

Yeah. And of course, we all know the JFK and NASA story of the janitor. I'm helping to put a man on the moon. Similar idea. And that idea, and I think for me, I would term that an organization or a leader within an organization linking and labeling what is it we're doing and linking and labeling that to the job that's being done and doing that in a way which is we're building a cathedral or we're putting a man on the moon. That's part of their job. But as I said at the top, it's really hard sometimes because people end up in leadership positions not because they're good people people, but often because they're good technical people. So is everyone a good storyteller, do you think?

No, I don't think everybody is, but I think everybody could be. I think you can understand how to be a good communicator. And that's why I think you see, we can use both terms, storytelling and communication, but I think a core competence or core a leader is to be an effective communicator. The idea of being able to impart information in an accessible way, the ability to inspire people to go a bit further, the ability to motivate people, the ability to give us that vision and an idea of what we're all here to do, I think is a key element. I think that's developable. There are people who are naturally articulate or who fall naturally into that, but I think that's certainly a core competence that leaders must have, in my view. Then you marry that to storytelling. I would argue if you're a very good communicator, you will have storytelling as a device or as a tool in your toolkit, where you know where you can use story and you know where story can be effective. So to bring it back again a couple of thousand years ago, Cicero, the Roman orator, said that the perfect speaker had the perfect combination of 3 things: had substance, had technique, and had passion.

Passion.

Now, if you look at that, I think leaders should be people of substance. They should have substance to what we communicate. That's where, in all settings, things like data come in. But then you have to have the technique. One of those techniques is storytelling, that idea of making it real. And then Cicero's element on passion, I'm not sure, was it a correct translation? How I translate it, Scott, is what he really meant was around delivery. Do you have the capacity of delivering your message appropriately? Now, he did have a rider with passion, which was passion was dependent on subject, setting, and audience. That idea of being able to flex appropriately to what you're talking about, to where you're talking, and to who you're talking to, I think is worthwhile for all of us as communicators to consider. But that idea, do we have substance to what we're saying? Then do we have the capacity to make it interesting, understandable, and memorable? Stories are a way of doing that. And then can we appropriately deliver it for the audience that we're talking to at the that time.

I love that. That's brilliant. So, let's build on that a little bit. And let's think about, so if I take you back to your starting in the organization, in the comms clinic, and starting in that training role, and you're thinking about now when you're going into leaders and you're going into organizations, how can leaders be better leaders? What are some of the practical things that you— I'm asking you to lift the skirt here a little bit, Eoin. Just lift it a little and give us a few hints and tips on on what leaders can be doing to really start to bring this to life? What can they do?

Well, I think there's a few things. If you were to look at it in its most fundamental, I think it is worth leaders really having an appreciation of where they're going. What is the objective? Whether that is organizationally or what is it that they're trying to achieve with their vision. On a very basic level, I think organizations look to their leaders to have a sense of that person has got it. Whether that's the person leading the project, they've got it, or that person leading the organization, they've got that. So I think that idea of, I know where we're going, and I have a capacity to communicate that, that's important. Also, I would spend an awful lot of time helping my leaders and helping the organizations that I work with understanding their different audiences, understanding the motivators, the things that the audience are engaged by, what they care about. So earlier on, Scott, you talked about the difficulty with strategy and people buying into strategy. I'd see that as a really big barrier that organizations, or some organizations that I would work with, face. For instance, there was a multinational that we were working with whose headquarters was in Germany. The guys in Germany couldn't understand why the strategy wasn't cascading down throughout the Irish organization. But it was very clear ultimately that the board in Ireland got it. Even the senior management, exco minus one or exco, got it. It was when it went down to everybody else, they didn't get it, partly because nobody was able then to communicate what does this mean for them. So I think that's where, if you look at the leaders I work with, it tends to be around what are we trying to achieve, where are we going, and then they'll Do we have the ability of flexing that message to the specific person or people that you're talking to? I think that's really where it becomes. Then for it to be comfortable, you give them the suite of different stories that they can tell. You know, some people feel, oh, it has to be a personal anecdote. It doesn't. It can be a case study. It could be another department where it worked. It could be the personal story. But there's those different types of examples then, or different types of stories that you're trying to give leaders for leaders to have in their toolkit. The rapid-fire, the case study, specific hypotheticals, for example.

So you would literally provide, you would recommend providing leaders with, here are some, we don't expect you to invent your own stories, here are some stories that perhaps you could use and maybe make your own.

Well, I facilitate them in their thinking to get those stories. I don't put words in people's mouth because they have the words themselves. What I tell them is if it's good or if it's bad or if it's going to land. Like to give you an example, I worked with a leader in the civil service who was discussing the benefits of blended working. If you take that as an example, and they applied what I would call the rapid fire around that, and that was where they were saying, okay, blended working is brilliant. It allows people to have a better work-life balance. Let's take the 24-year-old clerical officer. That clerical officer no longer needs to commute 2 hours. They can now live in Cavan. They can work in Cavan, and they can help their parents on the farm in the evening and after work. That's really quick fire, but it's illustrative. You're getting, okay, there's an example of it. But then you can also have,— as I said, the case study— where that might be a little bit longer. Whereas working with another organization who were arguing the case for a housing-first approach as a solution to homelessness. And they were going, OK, will this work? And what they said, well, let's take the Finnish example, for instance. They apply a housing-first model. And if you look at Finland in the late '80s, they had 19,000 homeless people. But they introduced this model. And that model means, for example, that somebody who's been homeless for 2 years, that person could be 24 years of age, has drug issues, has alcohol dependency issues, that person's worried about whether they can hold down a job, let alone get a job. And what that model aims to do is actually put that person in a home first, in a house first, get them in their home, and then you wrap the supports around them rather than trying to get them ready for a house. Now, that's worked in Finland. And they have now, compared to the 19,000 people homeless in the '80s, they have less than 4,000 people homeless. Now, you can say, well, there's another example, a case study. But I try and drag these out of people where you're saying, OK, can you give me what you're talking about? Can you make this real? And I'll stop talking in a second, Scott, but even to give you another example, myself and the colleagues were working with a law firm around the idea of zero-hour contracts. And this law firm were arguing that around the concept— first of all, wanted to explain the concept of zero-hour contracts, but then talk about the woes of them to a lay audience. And they were going around in circles talking in legalese for ages trying to explain it. It was very conceptual. And eventually said, look, will you talk us through who's somebody on a zero-hours contract? Just give me an example. And then they landed on John. And John is 30. John has 2 kids, a boy and a girl. They're 4 and 6. John works behind the till at your local supermarket. But when John goes to work next Monday, he doesn't know if he's going to get 8 hours of work or if he's going to get 40 hours of work because he's on a zero-hours contract. So what does that mean for John? It means he can't plan. He can't plan for anything. He can't plan for his kids going to school. He can't plan for a holiday. He can't plan for that guy doesn't have any certainty of cash flow, so he can't plan. That's what zero contracts do. And that's the woe and danger of them. And then you go, right, now I got you. I understand that. That's what we need to look for. Now, I didn't give them that story. I just said, give me an example of that. Give me— make this real for me. And then you see that makes it, brings it to life. So we have that in all of us. It is just having the confidence to try it and to do it and then to practice it.

Or to have somebody pull it out of you. And I was similarly running workshops last week for a client up the north. And I said, "What is it makes you proud of the work that you do?" And somebody stuck their hand up and said, I give them a couple of minutes to think about it. And then somebody stuck their hand up and said, "You know what? The work that we do puts money in people's pockets, which allows them to put presents under their Christmas tree." Yeah, there you go.

That's powerful. Yeah.

I just went, "That's amazing. What an amazing..." It's such an emotive time of year. Anyway. But what an amazing picture to put in somebody's head. You know, we help put presents under Christmas trees.

Amazing.

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, purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Let me pick you up on something you just said there. Um, I don't put words in people's mouths, and of course you don't, and that's great. And actually, it's about pulling the words out of them and using their words and playing them back to them and saying, you know, so you've just said this, that sounded like this, is that what you meant? Yes, it is. But of course, this whole idea— another word, you know, along with engagement and storytelling, I think another word that's gotten a bit of a bad rap recently is this whole authenticity, particularly around leadership. I do believe it is fundamentally important alongside communications, and actually a really important part of being a really solid communicator is authenticity. There will be some people, and I'm sure you've met them— you don't have to name them because we don't want to get sued— I'm sure there will be, I'm sure there are people that will never be that person, will never be a great storyteller, just aren't wired that way. So do you just not bother trying to bring them on that journey, trying to make them better? Does it feel that it might, if you do, be inauthentic? And if so, how do you get around that?

I suppose it depends on what our definition— not to parse it— on what our definition is around authenticity. That idea where you're saying, look, they're clearly making that story up, or that never happened, or this is completely— not them. Whereas you see, I think all of us should be striving to make difficult concepts accessible. I think that's a fundamental part of it. So I think we should be trying to make the communication that we are providing memorable. So that idea of should we do it, I think we should. So I've worked with accountants who you might say, well, they are very conceptual, data-driven people who have the ability of providing stories and examples of what they do. They and I think that idea of keeping yourself off stage is a good principle for leaders as well, because we don't want to be kind of this idea that you're this ego who just tells stories about how successful you are. I think you can, again, for instance, if you want to talk about why the people in this organization are so successful, being able to talk about Pat, who works in manufacturing, or Mary, who works in accounts, all of that is, again, storytelling, and that can be very authentic. I think what can be difficult for people is doing it in a way in a way that they themselves feel comfortable. "I never tell a story. I'm not that type of person." I would say, "Well, tough. You should become that person. You should be again." Obviously, applying all of the good stuff that you have talked about, Scott, throughout the podcast that you've had and some of the things that we've mentioned here. But even that idea of saying it out loud, of hearing yourself say it, of practicing it, of walking through it out loud before you ever need to tell the story in real life, it can be hugely beneficial. I think verbal preparation is the most effective way of preparing for communications. I find it interesting, for instance, that people go into verbal present or verbal communications, whether that's a pitch, a presentation, a job interview, a media interview, that they go into it without having prepared verbally. We don't tend to go into other actions by not practicing the action. A musician doesn't go on stage not having practiced the tune. So I think, again, for people to feel comfortable telling stories, a very great way of doing it is practicing it out loud. I think it was Churchill said, "Some of my best off-the-cuff remarks took me weeks to prepare." There is that idea of it. There's a story I remember reading about Lyndon Johnson, for example. Before Lyndon Johnson was vice president, in fact, before he was president and vice president, he was leader of the Senate. And apparently, he was at his best in that role. And he was phenomenally effective one-to-one, incredibly influential. And he could change people's vote in his one-to-one. And his staff told a story, and Johnson was on the phone to a guy called Senator Humphrey from Minnesota. And he was on the phone to him, Lyndon Johnson was on the phone trying to get Humphrey to change his mind in a vote. And his staff were listening to him in the next room. And he could hear Johnson telling stories about growing up in the Hill Country in Texas and how tough it was and how this vote was going to change the lives of the poor people in areas like that in Texas. And he was threatening Humphrey, cajoling him, asking him to change his vote. And after about 40 minutes, Johnson shouts out to his staff and he says, I'm ready now, will you put Senator editor Humphrey threw to me on the phone. And the staff then realized he hadn't been on the phone at all to him, that he had simply had the phone to his ear talking out his stories. Now, when the actual conversation might have happened, it would have gone in a different order. It would have gone in a different flow. But he would have said that out loud. He would have been familiar with it. And that's why I think if you come back to authenticity, I don't think it is that the audience feel that it is all inauthentic. I sometimes feel that the presenter or the communicator themselves feels inauthentic. Because it's something new, it's something different, it is something that they haven't done before. And a way that can make that very helpful is simply practicing it out loud. But you see, we tell stories all the time. Like job interviews, you don't get a job if you can't tell a story. If you look for any level job, if we look at leaders, CXO level, if you cannot provide evidence, i.e., a story of you being able to lead, inspire, motivate, you're not going to get the job. So we tell stories. What I would think is to get comfy doing a very simple, but probably the most effective way is saying it out loud, practicing it, and getting comfy with it.

Brilliant. And I think it does give you that confidence when you hear yourself saying the words out loud. I remember I had to do at my granny's funeral, I had to do a bit of a speech at the funeral. And I remember thinking to myself, I should probably get a couple of people and just do this so that I know I can do it, but also so I can hear myself say the words. And particularly when they're difficult words, I think having said them out loud is really powerful. I think it settles the speaker as well. And once they've heard themselves say the words once, saying them the next time feels way more natural. And I think back to that authenticity thing, comes across as more authentic.

Oh, absolutely. And it gives you comfort. You know where you're going. It's a little like having driven a car journey before, you know just how you're going to get there. But I was working with a group yesterday in Trinity College, and one of the guys said, "I tend to get I get tired towards the end of my presentations. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. Why does it happen? He couldn't tell. But actually, through the discussion, what we found was he actually never ran through the presentation in full. So the comparison I gave to him or the analogy I gave to him, it was a little like what he was doing, the race he was running was going to be a 10K, but he was only ever practicing for 5Ks. And that when he hit K number 7 or 8, he was exhausted. And there was a touch of that again with our presentations. If you want to do it really well and do it really well throughout with fluency, comfort with the language, comfort with the stories, energy throughout, it's best to practice it from start to finish, not just once, a couple of times.

Yeah, definitely. So conscious of time, last question. We've been throwing around this idea of leaders, in inverted commas, a good bit through the last 35 minutes or so. So I wonder, in your experience or from your professional perspective, is it about every leader in an organization being a good storyteller? Or is it about the more senior people, the CXO-level people, to use your term, in the organization need to be better storytellers? Is there a place in an organization where storytelling is more fundamentally important, do you think?

I think it's fundamental at all levels that people would have it in their arsenal, so to speak. So if somebody is going in for a graduate interview, for instance, they need to be able to tell a story of where they were good in a team or where they were able to manage conflict. If you then progress up through the different levels that we find ourselves in, whether that is talking about a project that we're working on, talking about a product that we have, pitching for business for a work with a client, or trying to inspire people, I think if you look at all of those different interactions, Scott, a story or an example or a specific needs to be woven in there. And you see, that's why I think if you you look at it, I think for somebody to be defined as a leader, they have to be good at leader. Because I wonder, well, can you be defined as a leader if you're bad? Because leader for me is a very positive word. And core to that is that you have the competence of communication, of being able to impart a message in and get people to feel the way you want them to feel, or do the things you want them to do, or remember the things that you want them to remember. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be a brilliant a brilliant orator. A brilliant orator and brilliant communicator are not the same thing. And that's something that I think is worth people remembering. Yes, of course, being fluent and being very articulate is very nice to have. But if you go back to the Cicero triad of substance, technique, and passion, I think actually he had ordered them in the most important. You have to have the substance, then you have to have the technique, and then you have to have the excellent delivery. But I think people can be brilliant brilliant leaders at all levels. And it is that notion that you just don't need to have a title to make you a leader. And I think that is important for us to remember. And core within that is communication skills. And then I would argue core within communication skills is our ability to make things real, to make things accessible through story, through example, through anecdote, through case study, for instance.

Brilliant. And I think that is a brilliant place to leave the conversation. Eoin Tomas MacDiarmid, thanks so much for having me on, for having me on, for being on this podcast even. Where do people, if they want to find out more about you and what you do, what's the best way to get in touch?

Well, I'd love to connect with people on LinkedIn. People will find me there at Owen Thomas McDermott, and then they can find me on my company's website, communicationsclinic.ie. That's communicationsclinic.ie without the the.

Great stuff. And for those of you outside this beautiful Emerald Isle that both Owen and I live on, it's E-O-G-H-A-N if you're searching him up on LinkedIn.

Yes, indeed.

Yes, my— listen, my kids' names still throw my family to this day. We still get Christmas cards. My daughter turned 16 yesterday. We still get Christmas cards to Scott, Jeannette, and family because they haven't got a clue. They haven't got a clue. Listen, we'll leave it there. Owen, thanks a million for your time today. Really useful insights, really, really good practical advice as well. So brilliant, brilliant session. Thank you so much.

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.