C-LEVEL PRESENCE
Welcome Letter & Pre-work
Dear Participant:
It is our pleasure to welcome you to the upcoming C-Level Presence program. We want to let
you know what to expect and how to prepare.
The primary aim of the program is to help each of you in your own process of honing and
developing personal presence, authority and confidence for:
1. Presenting ideas and information with power, and
2. Building customer and collegial relationships.
Our objective is that you, by the end of the workshop and drawing on your own innate
strengths, will be better positioned to command your customers’ and your colleagues’ trust by
developing a compelling and authentic way of being with people.
Lunches during the workshop are provided but are designated “working lunches” so please
plan accordingly and keep your schedule free. Also, it is important to dress business casual,
as part of the program includes exercises that require some physical exertion.
So that you get the most impact from the program we would like you to complete the pre-work
on the following pages.
Thank you for your attention to these details and I hope you enjoy the program!
Yours truly,
Sean Kavanagh
Ariel Group CEO
2
PRE-WORK
1. READING
Please read the first chapter of our book, Leadership Presence, and the article, “The Four
Truths of the Storyteller” by Peter Guber, attached to this document.
2. PRACTICE SITUATIONS
Select one communication challenge (from the three shown below) on which you will receive
coaching during the workshop.
•
Delivering a presentation: The first five minutes of a presentation which you are
currently preparing or have recently delivered for a client or internal group.
•
Facilitating a discussion/meeting: A situation in which you as a leader hope to
motivate or influence someone or a group of people.
•
Managing a one on one conversation: Choose a customer or internal relationship that
is unresolved or challenging.
3. QUESTIONNAIRE
Please answer the questions overleaf and bring your completed worksheets with you to the
workshop. We will be exploring your answers during the program.
2
3
QUESTIONNAIRE
PRESENCE AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS
1. What does the word presence mean to you?
2. Think of someone you know who has presence. What is it that they have or are doing
that projects presence?
3. What about your presence is working for you as a leader?
4. What is your greatest challenge related to your presence?
5. What are your strengths and challenges in your presentations? (This includes: formal
and informal presentations as well as large group, small group and one-on-one
interactions.)
3
4
RELATIONSHIP BUILDING SKILLS
1. Think of a relationship with a client or colleague that is working well. What is working
about that relationship? Why?
2. Think of a relationship with a client or colleague that is challenging. What is
challenging? Why?
4
Chapter 1: Presence: What Actors Have That Leaders Need
Presence: What Actors Have That Leaders Need
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts....
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, AS YOU LIKE IT
Great actors have it. Great political leaders have it too, as do great business executives. Laurence
Olivier. Meryl Streep. Marlon Brando. Katharine Hepburn. Martin Luther King, Jr. Eleanor
Roosevelt. John F. Kennedy. Gandhi. Winston Churchill. Alfred P. Sloan. Oprah Winfrey.
But it’s not limited to people in mighty positions. Your local pizza guy may have it. Your doctor
may have it. Your daughter’s piano teacher may have it too.
All these people-well known or not-are compelling individuals who attract your attention almost
effortlessly. They have something, a magnetism that pulls others to them.
When they enter the room, the energy level rises. You perk up, stop what you’re doing, and focus
on them. You expect something interesting to happen. It’s as though a spotlight shines on them.
What is it they have?
They have presence.
In the eyes of most people, it’s the ability to command the attention of others. Peter Brook, the
eminent English stage director, expressed it this way:
One actor can stand motionless on the stage and rivet our attention while another does not
interest us at all. What’s the difference?
What other words, besides presence, come to mind when you think of these people? Here are the
words we hear most often when we ask that question in our workshops: Inspiring. Motivating.
Commanding. Energized. Credible. Focused. Confident. Compelling. Kathy tells this story about
working with an aspiring actor:
In the mid-1980s I played Hypatia in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance
at the New Repertory Theatre. A young actor, playing a relatively minor role, had caught
my attention in rehearsals but I was completely unprepared for what happened on opening
night.
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
He stepped out on stage and simply seized the room. He was playing the part of the gunner
who popped up out of a Turkish bath where he had been hiding. Without saying a word, he
was absolutely hilarious. It felt like a full minute before he even opened his mouth and the
audience was absolutely riveted by him and when he finally delivered his line there was
another twenty-second round of laughter.
I remember the director, Larry Lane, commenting, “This guy really has what it takes to be a
big success.” It turns out Larry was right. The actor’s name was Oliver Platt and he went
on to make a name in films like Working Girl, Bulworth, and Indecent Proposal, as well as
on television, including an Emmy-nominated role on The West Wing.
Presence doesn’t have to be a billion-watt nuclear reactor. While some people, like Oliver Platt, can
“fill” an entire room or auditorium, the presence of others may not be so large. But it’s no less
genuine, for these people may be great conversationalists, or they may lead great meetings. Even
some actors who have great presence in an intimate medium like movies or television don’t have
that ability to fill an auditorium. And some great stage actors have trouble “pulling it back” for
television or a movie.
Still, whether their presence is large or more intimate, they have it, and when you look at them, it
may be with a pang of envy.
Does everyone want to be a billion-watt reactor? Most of us don’t seek to be center of attention all
the time. But when we join a group or enter a room, we want our arrival acknowledged. When we
speak, we want others to listen. When we offer an opinion, we want it treated with respect. We
want to be taken seriously. We want our existence to have weight and substance for others.
It’s the same thing, just not writ quite so large. We all want presence because no one wants to be
ignored.
What is presence?
A moment ago we said most people think of presence as the ability to command the attention of
others. But “commanding attention” is only one outcome of presence, not its essence or even its
most valuable outcome.
We prefer to think of presence in a different-and deeper-way. For us, presence is the ability to
connect authentically with the thoughts and feelings of others. Most people think you are born with
presence, or without it, or that circumstances lead you, if you’re lucky, to develop it at an early age.
And if the right circumstances never quite align? Well, too bad.
Fortunately, that’s not the case. Presence is the result of certain ongoing choices you make, actions
you take or fail to take. In fact, presence is a set of skills, both internal and external, that virtually
anyone can develop and improve.
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
However, when we say anyone can improve his or her presence, we don’t mean it’s an easy task. It
requires you to give up habitual patterns of behavior that you maintain because they make you feel
safe. Developing presence will require you to go places and do things that feel uncomfortable, at
least initially. Given that hurdle, we’re absolutely convinced anyone can develop his or her
presence.
The premise of this book is that presence can be developed and you will be a more effective leader
when you invest some time and energy toward that goal. Our purpose in writing it is to describe
how anyone, including you, can increase your presence.
We know people can develop presence because we have been helping leaders do it for over a
decade. Thousands of managers and leaders have gone through our workshops, or worked with us
in one-on-one coaching, and improved their ability to connect with others.
More than just skin deep
Let’s confront an assumption you may be making.
This is not a book about simply making a better impression. It’s not the behavioral counterpart of
Dress for Success.
Presence includes these things, and anyone working to develop more presence will pay attention to
them, because others pay attention to them, but true presence goes far beyond such superficialities.
Just because you’ve won the lead in a play or a leadership title at work doesn’t mean you
automatically hold any more sway over your audience or your people. It is your “performance,” in
both the theatrical and the organizational sense, that will grant you the authority the title or role
implies. The presence you bring to your role-how you show up, how you connect, how you speak,
listen, act-every move you make on the corporate or real stage, combine to create the impact you
have.
Presence comes from within. It begins with an inner state, which leads to a series of external
behaviors. Sure, you can put on the behaviors, but by themselves they’ll lack something essential.
They’ll be hollow noise and nothing else. We’ve all heard politicians say, “I feel your pain,” when
we know they’re simply saying what they think we want to hear. Compare that to Martin Luther
King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, which obviously sprang from his deeply held beliefs and
motivated a generation to overturn four hundred years of assumptions and behaviors.
Presence varies with each individual. In our workshops we never use a cookie-cutter approach;
rather, we help each person discover his or her own unique presence in all its richness and variety.
Learning from theater
The second reason we know presence can be developed is that there exists a whole group of people
who work diligently and successfully to develop it. That group of people is actors, and their
success, even their livelihood, depends on presence. They must excite us when they step onstage, or
they will fail. For the actor and performer, presence is not a happy accident of genetics or
upbringing; it’s the result of training and practice. We will draw heavily on the acting profession for
concrete principles, practices, and stories about the development of presence.
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
At this point you may be thinking what can “serious” business leaders or teachers or politicians or
government managers hope to learn from actors? Sure, they can learn how to speak better, to
project their voices, to stand up straight. But actors play for a living. They pretend to be other
people. What could they know about the “real” world that a lawyer or a Fortune 500 CEO doesn’t?
Think about the last time you were really moved by an actor in a live theatrical performance, a
movie, or even a television program. We mean really moved to feel something deeply, to
understand something more completely, to think about something from a new perspective or even,
perhaps, to change your mind about something. Now think about the last time you were truly
moved in the same way by a presentation made by a leader in your organization. We’re not saying
moved to tears but moved to understand a different point of view, be excited about a new
possibility, or be motivated to adapt and grow with changing times.
Of course the goal of the actor or the leader in these instances is the same-to connect with you in
some fundamental way. Unfortunately most people will say that this experience is much more rare
at the office than it is at the movies.
Which is exactly our point. The skills that actors use to move, convince, inspire, or entertain have
direct and powerful applications in the worlds of business, politics, education, and organizations in
general. They are not only useful for leadership, they are essential. Great leaders, like great actors,
must be confident, energetic, empathetic, inspirational, credible, and authentic.
That leaders and actors share some skills and characteristics should come as no surprise. Actors and
leaders face a common challenge. They must form connections, communicate effectively, and work
with others as a team. They must be prepared to play different roles, as the situation requires. They
must be prepared to influence and move people every day.
Just for the record, though, we need to say the analogy isn’t perfect. If you list the qualities and
skills needed by great leaders, there would be many items on the list that actors don’t need, such as
the ability to create a great vision of the future, skill in negotiating, the ability to plan and
coordinate, and the courage to make decisions that will change peoples’ lives.
All we’re saying is that leaders can learn many things from actors. We’re certainly not suggesting
that leaders be actors.
Authenticity
When people hear us define presence as connecting authentically with others, they say something
like: “I can understand how leaders might learn some things from actors. But how can we learn to
be more authentic from people who lie professionally? After all, isn’t that what acting is really
about at the end of the day? An actor steps onto a painted set and pretends to be someone else by
performing rehearsed actions and reciting words written by others. What could possibly be more
inauthentic?”
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
There are two answers to that question. Just as actors play a variety of roles, we all play roles, as
people and as leaders. How many roles do you play each day of your life? Manager, parent, spouse,
engineer (or some other profession), Scout leader, churchgoer, citizen. Do you behave differently in
each role? Are you therefore faking it? No, beneath all those roles is the same person: you. The
same can be said of actors.
That leads us to the second answer, which has to do with how actors do what they do. A century
ago, it was typical for actors to demonstrate emotion through exaggerated, stylized sets of gestures,
vocal intonations, and facial expressions. Look at some early silent movies, and note the back of
the wrist held to the forehead to indicate distress, or the furrowed brow and clenched fists to portray
anger.
Then a pioneering Russian teacher of acting, Konstantin Stanislavsky, taught that a more accurate
and engaging approach would be for actors onstage to actually experience the emotions they were
portraying. Thus, to portray a character’s anger, for example, an actor should find real anger within
himself and express that in his performance. In short, he claimed that the emotion needed to be
authentic.
Actors worry about the authenticity, the “truth,” of a portrayal almost more than anything else. F.
Murray Abraham, a well-known stage actor, acting teacher, and winner of an Oscar for his
portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus, speaks of the actor’s search for truth:
What you have to do is find the truth, because that’s the essential element that is the middle
of all art. It’s the middle of acting, whether it’s for the camera or on the stage... It’s the
center of our lives... Once you capture the truth in your own terms, nothing can happen that
will bother you.
It’s a paradox of the theater that, in order to pretend, the actor must be real. That need requires the
actor to delve inside himself, because the only way an emotion can be authentic is if it comes from
within the actor. Actors, consequently, are probably more aware of authenticity than anyone else,
because they’ve studied it, and themselves, so carefully. Over the course of this book, we’ll
examine how actors approach this demanding part of their craft and what leaders can learn from
them. It’s a crucial part of presence.
Presence and Leadership Presence
Because it’s about connections between people, presence is useful for anyone who engages with
others. That’s virtually every one of us. Connecting authentically with the thoughts and feelings of
others can only improve and deepen our relationships. You don’t have to be a leader to enjoy the
benefits of presence.
But leaders, in particular, need presence, because at its core leadership is about the interaction, the
connection, the relationship between a leader and the people she leads. When we talk about
leadership, you may think first of those in organizations who have positions of formal authority-the
CEO, the director of marketing, the supervisor of customer service, and so on. The people in these
positions are leaders by definition. Maybe you’re one of them.
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
What we say about presence for leaders obviously applies to them. But when we talk about leaders,
we include anyone who tries to foster achievement and positive change in any group of people. It
can be a family, a PTA, a social club, a volunteer organization, a huge government agency, or giant
corporation. A leader is anyone who tries to move a group toward obtaining a particular result. You
don’t need a title to lead.
But with or without a title you do need presence.
Leadership is about results and outcomes, and so leaders want the hearts and minds of others
directed toward some purpose, some result desirable for the group or organization. Presence is the
fundamental way a leader can engage the full energies and dedication of others to a common end.
This use of presence we call Leadership Presence: the ability to connect authentically with the
thoughts and feelings of others, in order to motivate and inspire them toward a desired outcome.
The elements of Leadership Presence
Combining our years of theatrical and performance experience with what we’ve learned from
teaching presence to leaders of all kinds, we’ve developed a model of Leadership Presence. In that
model we break Leadership Presence down into four elements, each of which represents both a
state of mind and a way of behaving.
Here are the four elements of Leadership Presence: We call this the PRES model.
The PRES Model of Leadership Presence
P
stands for being Present, the ability to be completely in the moment, and flexible enough to
handle the unexpected.
R
stands for Reaching out, the ability to build relationships with others through empathy,
listening, and authentic connection.
E
stands for Expressiveness, the ability to express feelings and emotions appropriately by
using all available means-words, voice, body, face-to deliver one congruent message.
S
stands for Self-knowing, the ability to accept yourself, to be authentic, and to reflect your
values in your decisions and actions.
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
Leadership Presence is more than the sum of these elements. When we’re around someone with
Leadership Presence, we feel it and know it as one thing, not the accumulation of four related but
disparate skills.
Each element possesses both an interior and an exterior aspect. The interior aspect has to do with
the state of mind and heart from which each element springs, while the exterior aspect has to do
with the behavior that reflects and reveals the interior aspect. Focusing on the exterior and ignoring
the interior is like being courteous without caring. It may work for a short while, but its hollowness
soon becomes obvious.
The four elements are a convenient way to teach and learn Leadership Presence because each
builds on, and gains power from, the preceding element. They’re cumulative. Being Present is the
first step. Reaching Out and Expressiveness cannot work in practice unless you are fully present-in
the moment, focused, completely there. Being Present allows you to effectively reach out to others,
to really listen and to see things from their perspective. Expressiveness is certainly possible all by
itself. But unless it builds on a foundation of being present and Reaching Out, it will only lead
people to think of you as loud or flamboyant. To be Self-knowing, to know where you came from
and what you stand for, to be authentic, enables you to integrate all the previous elements of the
PRES model in your interactions with others.
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
The Benefits of Leadership Presence
The applications and benefits of Leadership Presence are widespread. Throughout large and small
organizations leaders need to move, influence, inspire, and motivate people to achieve goals.
Leadership Presence is a powerful tool for mobilizing and energizing people, sometimes toward
great achievement.
We have worked at the senior levels of Fortune 500 companies, in government, in nonprofits, in
education, and even in the prison system. The list of ways to apply the skill of Leadership Presence
grows with every client. Consider the following list.
•
Developing deeper and more trusting relationships with your clients
•
Inspiring your teammates to sprint to the finish on an important project
•
Persuading a reluctant recruit she has what it takes to charge up that hill
•
Convincing your investors to fund your next great idea
•
Inspiring a classroom of students to become lifelong learners
•
Encouraging your employees to hang in through tough times
•
Creating enthusiasm in your organization for a difficult change
•
Negotiating a complex contract that benefits all sides
•
Nurturing a corporate culture that engenders loyalty and retention
Do any of these tasks look familiar? Are they similar to the challenges that you face? Would your
ability to connect authentically with your audience help accomplish these things? In other words,
would Leadership Presence help? We think so.
It’s not hard to imagine all the relationships and situations where these abilities will be useful in
building consensus around common goals, making a work group into a real team, creating longterm relationships with customers, improving collaboration with colleagues, anywhere relationships
are critical to accomplishment.
Leadership Presence-More than just charisma
As we write this book, the notion of charisma has fallen into disfavor. Too many companies in
recent years have come to wrack and ruin, led by so-called charismatic leaders who have led their
organizations over the edge of the cliff, while making barrels of money for themselves in the
process.
Charisma itself is not necessarily the villain, but narcissistic charisma is. That’s the kind of
charisma that allows an individual to sway the masses and stir up followers while maintaining
emotional distance or even disdain for those followers. Charisma as an element of true Leadership
Presence can be a tool for good, as long as the other elements are also in place.
Leadership Presence combines power with humility. It’s about where you and those you lead want
to go and what all of you want to accomplish and how all of you can benefit from your work
together. It’s about relationships and connections between people. To use our PRES model again,
Leadership Presence is about:
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
•
Being Present-not pretentious.
•
Reaching Out-not looking down.
•
being Expressive-not impressive.
•
being Self-knowing-not self-absorbed.
We said a moment ago that self-knowing is what integrates the four elements of the PRES model
into one thing-Leadership Presence. Self-knowing is what separates Leadership Presence from selfcentered charisma. For Self-knowing involves knowing your values and living according to those
values. A leader can possess charisma and still have Leadership Presence. But for the narcissistic
charismatic leader, the chief value is “me,” and the problem is that followers inevitably discover
that value, causing the luster to wear off.
Achieving Leadership Presence is a Four-Act Drama
Because our experience has shown us that Leadership Presence is most easily learned around the
four elements, we have organized the rest of this book around them, in four acts. Each act contains
two chapters that cover the interior and exterior aspects of the element. The second chapter in each
act provides rules and practical advice to help you apply what you learned in the first chapter.
Act I: Being Present
Chapter 2 discusses the value of living in the moment, which is the state of mind that compels or
energizes Being Present. Chapter 3 then uses improvisational theater to explore flexibility, the key
feature of how you act when you’re fully present.
Act II: Reaching Out
Chapter 4 delves into empathy, the state of mind that drives Reaching Out, followed by Chapter 5
on making connections, which covers all the actions we can take to create a relationship with
another person.
Act III: Expressiveness
Chapter 6 talks about expressing emotion and focuses on a concept every actor and leader will
recognize-passionate purpose-which influences all the ways we express ourselves. Chapter 7 then
describes the way we communicate our passionate purpose by congruently using all means of
communication at our disposal.
Act IV: Self-knowing
Chapter 8 explores the heart of Self-knowing for a leader, which is the development of explicit
beliefs and values through self-reflection. Chapter 9 discusses authenticity, which is based on
accepting yourself and living your values.
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
Practices and Exercises
At the end of each chapter we include easy-to-use practices and exercises based on our actual work
training and coaching executives. These are the reference sections of the book, designed so readers
can learn and apply the principles we discuss in each chapter. Some of you may jump into these
right after each chapter, others may choose to return to them after digesting the entire book. We
encourage you to pick and choose from these sections depending on your personal preferences and
needs.
The practices are actions and behaviors that you can apply, on a daily basis, to your everyday life.
The exercises are to be done outside of work at a time you have set aside, in the same way you
might do physical exercises to stay fit. These activities, which come predominantly from our acting
training, are designed to maintain and strengthen your skills of Leadership Presence.
Notes
Chapter One:
(William Shakespeare) As You Like It. Act. II. Scene VII. Lines 139-142
(Peter Brook) Peter Brook, The Shifting Point (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), p. 232
(F. Murray Abraham) David Black, The Magic of Theater: Behind the Scenes With Today’s
Leading Actors (New York: Macmillan, 1993), p. 228
Reprinted from Leadership Presence by Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar by permission of
Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright (c) Belle Linda Halpern and
Kathy Lubar, 2003. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced
without permission.
Copyright © Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, 2003, All rights reserved
www.hbrreprints.org
The stories that move and
captivate people are those that
are true to the teller, the
audience, the moment, and
the mission.
The Four Truths of the
Storyteller
by Peter Guber
Reprint R0712C
The stories that move and captivate people are those that are true to
the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission.
The Four Truths of the
Storyteller
COPYRIGHT © 2007 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
by Peter Guber
I’m in the business of creating compelling stories. As a filmmaker, I need to understand how
stories touch audiences—why one story is an
instantly appealing box office success while
another fails miserably to connect. I’ve been
fortunate enough to work with some of the
world’s most talented storytellers—gifted directors, novelists, screenwriters, actors, and
other producers—and from them I’ve gleaned
insights into the alchemy of great stories.
Make no mistake, a hit movie is still an elusive
target, and I’ve had my share of flops. But experience has at least provided me with a clear
sense of the essential elements of a story and
how to tap into its power.
The power of storytelling is also central
to my work as a business executive and entrepreneur. Over the years, I’ve learned that
the ability to articulate your story or that of
your company is crucial in almost every phase
of enterprise management. It works all along
the business food chain: A great salesperson
knows how to tell a story in which the product is the hero. A successful line manager
harvard business review • december 2007
can rally the team to extraordinary efforts
through a story that shows how short-term
sacrifice leads to long-term success. An effective CEO uses an emotional narrative about
the company’s mission to attract investors
and partners, to set lofty goals, and to inspire
employees.
Sometimes, a well-crafted story can even
transform a seemingly hopeless situation into
an unexpected triumph.
In the mid-1980s at PolyGram, I produced a
television series called Oceanquest, which took
a team of expert divers and scientists around
the world—from Antarctica to Baja California
to Micronesia—to film their aquatic adventures. The cast included former Miss Universe
Shawn Weatherly, a novice who served as a
stand-in for the viewers at home.
One of the planned segments critical to the
success of the series was to explore the forbidden waters of Havana harbor, where galleons
and pirate ships had carried treasure since
the sixteenth century. There was only one
problem: Neither the U.S. government nor the
page 1
The Four Truths of the Storyteller
Peter Guber (petergmandalay@
gmail.com) has been the top executive
at several multinational entertainment companies, including Sony Pictures, PolyGram, and Columbia
Pictures, and has produced such movies as Rain Man, Batman, and The Color
Purple. He is currently the chair and
CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group
in Los Angeles, the host of the weekly
film-industry talk show Shootout on
AMC, and a professor at the UCLA
School of Theater, Film & Television.
Communist regime of Fidel Castro wanted a
team of Americans filming there.
Pleading that our mission was purely scientific and peaceful, we managed, with support from former secretaries of state Henry
Kissinger and Alexander Haig, to get permission from the U.S. State Department. But
the go-ahead from the Cuban government
for underwater filming proved more elusive.
Gambling that we could win approval, we
sailed to Cuba, set up our equipment in Marina Hemingway, and filmed a few surface
shots in various locations as we waited for
word from the regime. Millions of dollars in
sunk costs hung in the balance.
A local official finally turned up with a surprise announcement: Fidel Castro had taken a
personal interest in our project and would be
visiting the harbor. (Castro, we learned, was an
environmental advocate and scuba enthusiast.)
“May we use this visit to ask for permission
to film in the harbor?” we asked.
The official shrugged. “El Presidente will be
here for ten minutes only,” he replied. “But
you are certainly free to tell your story. Just
remember, no autographs and no gifts.”
Of course, we’d already provided all sorts of
information about our project to the Cuban
government’s Washington office. But it was
soulless data with no emotion, life, or drama.
No wonder our request had elicited a perfunctory “no.” I was determined not to make
the same mistake again.
Castro (or Cool Breeze, as we’d privately
code-named him) arrived, his entourage in
tow. To make his experience interactive, we’d
arranged a display of our most elaborate
equipment on the deck of our main ship—
underwater vehicles, diving suits, high-tech
cameras. Cool Breeze was suitably impressed
by it all—though he seemed most taken by
the friendly welcome from Ms. Weatherly,
still wearing her bathing suit from that day’s
filming.
The ice broken, I began telling the story of
Havana harbor and its centuries at the heart
of world commerce, diplomacy, intrigue, and
war. The central motivation for early explorers of the New World had been the quest for
treasure. As the focal point of Spain’s trading
empire and the strategic “key to the Gulf of
Mexico,” Havana had been integral to this
quest, its port the shipping center through
which the gold of the Americas flowed on
harvard business review • december 2007
its way to the Spanish royal court. Pirates,
privateers, spies, and rival imperial forces—
including Britain’s Royal Navy—had plied its
waters, seeking booty, probing for military
and economic secrets, and vying for influence.
I explained how we would use the latest technology to bring Cuba’s history to television
viewers worldwide.
As I spoke, I watched Castro toy with the
equipment and listen with growing interest
to the story of Havana harbor’s past. Finally,
breaking the bureaucrat’s rule, I presented the
Cuban leader with a giant tooth (seven inches
long, five inches wide) from a megalodon, a
prehistoric shark that had once prowled Havana’s waters.
The upshot? Castro spent four hours visiting with our film crew, and he gave us permission to film anywhere in the harbor we
wanted. We captured hours of compelling
television footage. My impromptu story—
and Havana’s story—won the day. “The seas
belong to all humankind,” I reminded Castro,
“and so does history. You are the steward of
Havana’s history, and it is up to you to share
it with the world.”
This experience led me—not for the first
time and certainly not for the last—to try to
gather some basic truths about how storytelling can be used to get people’s help carrying
out your goals and ultimately to inspire business success. Stories can, of course, take many
forms, from old-fashioned words on a page
to movies laden with digital special effects.
In this article I’ll restrict myself primarily to
stories like the one I used with Castro: oral
narratives in which a single teller addresses
one or more listeners. Whether the audience
is a handful of colleagues or clients at lunch
or 10,000 convention-goers listening to a formal address, the secrets of a great story are
largely the same.
The Leader as Storyteller
As part of my continuing effort to unlock
these secrets, I recently persuaded a diverse
group of leaders and storytelling experts from
the worlds of business, education, and entertainment to come together over a meal and
exchange their insights about storytelling.
One beautiful spring evening, we gathered at
my home in Los Angeles. With a feast laid out
on a great low table and the city lights twinkling in the hills below us, we luxuriated in a
page 2
The Four Truths of the Storyteller
For the leader,
storytelling is action
oriented—a force for
turning dreams into
goals and then into
results.
cascade of ideas. As the wine flowed, so did
the jokes, stories, and observations drawn
from the centuries’ worth of life experience in
that room. And as varied as our backgrounds
were, I found that we kept returning to one
theme: the crucial importance of truth as an
attribute of both the powerful story and the
effective storyteller.
Before I go further, let me clear up two misconceptions about storytelling that many
businesspeople have.
First, many think it is purely about entertainment. But the use of the story not only to
delight but to instruct and lead has long been
a part of human culture. We can trace it back
thousands of years to the days of the shaman
around the tribal fire. It was he who recorded
the oral history of the tribe, encoding its beliefs, values, and rules in the tales of its great
heroes, of its triumphs and tragedies. The lifeor-death lessons necessary to perpetuate the
community’s survival were woven into these
stories: “We don’t go hunting in the Great
Wood—not since that terrible day when three
of our bravest were killed there by unknown
beasts. Here’s how it happened…”
Storytelling plays a similar role today. It
is one of the world’s most powerful tools for
achieving astonishing results. For the
leader, storytelling is action oriented—a
force for turning dreams into goals and
then into results.
Second, many people assume that storytelling is somehow in conflict with authenticity. The great storyteller, in this view, is a
spinner of yarns that amuse without being
rooted in truth. The image of Hollywood as
“Tinseltown”—a land of make-believe and
suspended disbelief that allows us to escape
reality, even manipulates us into doing so—
reinforces this notion. But great storytelling
does not conflict with truth. In the business
world and elsewhere, it is always built on the
integrity of the story and its teller. Hence the
emphasis on truth as its touchstone in our
dinner symposium.
Reflecting on the lessons and ideas from
our conclave, I’ve distilled four kinds of truth
found in an effective story.
Truth to the Teller
Authenticity, as noted above, is a crucial quality of the storyteller. He must be congruent
with his story—his tongue, feet, and wallet
harvard business review • december 2007
must move in the same direction. The consummate modern shaman knows his own
deepest values and reveals them in his story
with honesty and candor.
Jim Sinegal, cofounder and CEO of Costco,
tells a business story that embodies the values
he’s helped build into his company. Back in
1996, he often recounts, Costco was doing a
brisk business in Calvin Klein jeans priced at
$29.99. When a smart buyer got a better deal
on a new batch of the jeans, company guidelines calling for a strict limit on price markups
dictated a lower price of $22.99. Costco could
have stuck to the original price and dropped
seven extra dollars a pair straight into its own
pocket. But Sinegal insisted on passing the
savings on to customers, because he saw the
company’s focus on customer value as the key
to its success. The story continues to be told in
Costco’s hallways today. It vividly conveys a
message about the company’s values—one
that resonates, in part, because it’s aligned
with the personality of its author. Sinegal
answers his own phone, draws an annual
salary of just $350,000 (a fraction of what
most big-company CEOs earn), and has
signed an employment contract that’s only
one page long—all of which means less cost
for customers to absorb.
At the storytelling dinner I held, Oscarwinning screenwriter Ron Bass put it this way,
drawing a parallel to the world of politics:
“When I pitch a story, I have to sell myself—
who I am. The same is true of every leader,
in business or any other field. Take Barack
Obama. His story is all about who he is. And
everything about him is part of it, down to his
physical presence: the eye contact, the hand
on the shoulder, the sound of his voice.”
Being true to yourself also involves showing and sharing emotion. The spirit that motivates most great storytellers is “I want you to
feel what I feel,” and the effective narrative is
designed to make this happen. That’s how the
information is bound to the experience and
rendered unforgettable.
But sharing emotion isn’t easy. As Teri
Schwartz, the dean of Loyola Marymount
University’s film and television school,
pointed out, “It demands generosity on the
part of the storyteller.” Why? Because it often
requires being vulnerable—a challenge for
many leaders, managers, salespeople, and entrepreneurs. By willingly exposing anxieties,
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The Four Truths of the Storyteller
fears, and shortcomings, the storyteller allows
the audience to identify with her and therefore brings listeners to a place of understanding and catharsis, and ultimately spurs action.
When I told the story of Havana harbor to
Castro—standing on the deck of a ship
strewn with expensive equipment that we’d
essentially brought there on spec, trusting in
my ability to win the confidence of Cuba’s
all-powerful ruler—both my vulnerability
and my enthusiastic commitment to the risky
project were on full display.
Here is the challenge for the business storyteller: He must enter the hearts of his listeners,
where their emotions live, even as the information he seeks to convey rents space in their
brains. Our minds are relatively open, but we
guard our hearts with zeal, knowing their
power to move us. So although the mind may
be part of your target, the heart is the bull’seye. To reach it, the visionary manager crafting
his story must first display his own open heart.
Although the mind may
be part of your target, the
heart is the bull’s-eye.
Truth to the Audience
There’s always an implicit contract between
the storyteller and his audience. It includes a
promise that the listeners’ expectations, once
aroused, will be fulfilled. Listeners give the
storyteller their time, with the understanding
that he will spend it wisely for them. For most
businesspeople, time is the scarcest resource;
the storyteller who doesn’t respect that will
pay dearly. Fulfilling this promise is what I
mean by “truth to the audience.”
To meet the terms of this contract—and
ideally even overdeliver on it—the great storyteller takes time to understand what his
listeners know about, care about, and want
to hear. Then he crafts the essential elements
of the story so that they elegantly resonate
with those needs, starting where the listeners
are and bringing them along on a satisfying
emotional journey.
This journey, resulting in an altered psychological state on the part of the listener,
is the essence of storytelling. Listeners must
remain curious and in suspense—wondering
what’s going to happen to them next—while
trusting that it is safe to give themselves over
to the journey and that the destination will
be worthwhile.
Truth to the audience has a number of
practical implications for the craft of storytelling.
harvard business review • december 2007
First, you’ll want to try your story out on
people who aren’t already converts, to get a
realistic sense of how your real audience
might respond. Ron Bass finds this strategy
useful: “In effect,” he says, “I have my own
story development company. It consists of
three or four young women who represent
my ‘marketing department.’ I bounce everything off them—every new idea, scene, plot
twist, character development, big speech. I
study their reactions and then, even more
important, study my reaction to them. I don’t
necessarily follow their advice. What I must
follow is my own deepest instinct, and this is
best revealed to me as I see how I respond to
the feelings and thoughts of other people.”
Business leaders too need to be in touch
with their listeners—not slavish or patronizing,
but receptive—in order to know how to lead
them. Getting your story right for your listeners means working past a series of culs-de-sac
and speed bumps to find the best path.
Second, you’ll need to identify your audience’s emotional needs and meet them with
integrity. It’s not enough to get the facts
right—you’ve got to get the emotional arc
right as well. Every storyteller is in the
expectations-management business and must
take responsibility for leading listeners effectively through the story experience, incorporating both surprise and fulfillment. At the
end of the story, listeners should think, “We
never expected that—but somehow, it makes
perfect sense.” Thus, a great story is never
fully predictable through foresight—but it’s
projectable through hindsight.
Third, you’ll want to tell your story in an
interactive fashion, so people will feel they’ve
participated in shaping the story experience.
This requires a willingness to surrender ownership of the story. The storyteller must recognize that the story is bigger than she is and
must enlist her audience’s help.
This can mean, as screenwriter Chad
Hodge pointed out during our dinner, “helping people to see themselves as the hero of
the story,” whether the plot involves beating
the bad guys or achieving some great business
objective. “Everyone wants to be a star, or at
least to feel that the story is talking to or
about him personally,” Hodge said. Business
leaders need to tap into this drive by using
storytelling to place their listeners at the center
of the action. As Hodge advised: “Encourage
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The Four Truths of the Storyteller
your people to join your journey, your quest,
and reach the goal that lies at its end.” Recall,
for example, how I shone a spotlight on the
chain of history of Havana’s great harbor and
placed Castro at the center of the story, as the
harbor’s current steward.
LMU’s Teri Schwartz picked up on Hodge’s
idea: “Make the ‘I’ in your story become ‘we,’
so the whole tribe or community can come together and unite behind your experience and
the idea it embodies.”
Consider how Sallie Krawcheck—formerly
the CEO of Smith Barney and now, in her
early forties, the youthful chair and CEO
of Citigroup’s Global Wealth Management
division—connects with people who might be
intimidated by her reputation for brilliance
and her rapid rise to the top of the financial
services industry. She often tells her life story
in a way that anyone can identify with, recalling how she felt like an outcast at her all-girls
school as a teenager—with glasses, braces,
and corrective shoes—and how that prepared
her for the rigors of her professional life. She
has said in the business press that “there was
nothing they could do to me at Salomon
Brothers in the ’80s that was worse than the
seventh grade.”
When you hear Krawcheck describe her
journey in these terms, you know exactly how
she feels. You can’t help rooting for her—and
if you’re a member of her team at Citigroup,
you’re ready to follow her wherever she leads.
Perhaps of equal import, business leaders
must recognize that how the audience physically responds to the storyteller is an integral
part of the story and its telling. Communal
emotional response—hoots of laughter,
shrieks of fear, gasps of dismay, cries of
anger—is a binding force that the storyteller
must learn how to orchestrate through appeals to the senses and the emotions.
Nowhere is this more apparent than at the
story’s ending. Getting the audience to cheer,
rise, and vocalize in response to a dramatic,
rousing conclusion creates positive emotional contagion, produces a strong emotional
takeaway, and fuels the call to action by the
business leader. The ending of a great narrative is the first thing the audience remembers.
The litmus test for a good story is not
whether listeners walk away happy or sad.
Rather, it’s whether the ending is emotionally
fulfilling, an experience worth owning, a
harvard business review • december 2007
great “aha!”—not just sticky fingers and a few
uneaten kernels of popcorn.
Orchestrate emotional responses effectively,
and you actually transfer proprietorship of the
story to the listener, making him an advocate
who will power the viral marketing of your
message.
Truth to the Moment
A great storyteller never tells a story the same
way twice. Instead, she sees what is unique in
each storytelling experience and responds
fully to what is demanded. A story involving
your company should sound different each
time. Whether you tell it to 2,000 customers at
a convention, 500 salespeople at a marketing
meeting, ten stock analysts in a conference
call, or three CEOs over drinks, you should tailor it to the situation. The context of the telling is always a part of the story. In the case of
my pitch to Castro, the story had to seem
spontaneous, a natural response to the inspiring historic setting of Marina Hemingway
(itself named after one of the twentieth century’s great storytellers). And it did, though
the information had been gathered in advance. Its organization and delivery were in
essence the “premiere” of this particular story.
There is a paradox here. Great storytellers
prepare obsessively. They think about, rethink, work, and rework their stories. As Scott
Adelson, an investment banker who uses storytelling to help clients raise capital in public
markets, said at our dinner: “Sheer repetition
and the practice it brings is one key to great
storytelling. When we help companies sell
themselves to Wall Street, we often see the
CEO and his team present their story 10, 20,
30 times. And usually each telling is better
and more compelling than the one before.”
At the same time, the great storyteller is
flexible enough to drop the script and improvise when the situation calls for it. Actually,
intensive preparation and improvising are
two sides of the same coin. If you know your
story well, you can riff on it without losing
the thread or the focus.
At the storytelling dinner, scientist and science fiction writer Gentry Lee told us about
appearing on a public panel about alien abductions. The other three members of the
panel were two people who claimed they’d
been taken by aliens, and John Mack, the
late Harvard psychiatrist who believed in and
page 5
The Four Truths of the Storyteller
As a modern shaman,
the visionary business
leader taps into the
human yearning to be
part of a worthy cause.
researched such stories. As you might expect,
the two abductees had colorful, vivid, fascinating stories to tell. The listeners were literally standing on their feet, clapping and
cheering. Mack poured fuel on the fire by
testifying that these stories could be confirmed by many others he’d studied.
Lee had prepared, from a scientist’s perspective, a detailed response to the abduction
stories, showing how the power of the imagination can conjure up fantasies that look,
feel, and appear compellingly real. But he
could see that the frenzied audience was in
no mood to absorb his lengthy presentation.
Instead, he decided to avoid a war of dueling
stories by simply using a single startling observation to deflate the abductees’ tales. All
he said was this:
“My friend Carl Sagan used to say, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’
Well, we’ve heard some wonderful stories today, and they make extraordinary claims. I
would just point out the following: Hundreds
of people who believe they’ve been abducted
by aliens have told stories like the ones we’ve
just heard. And yet, despite all these hundreds of supposed abductions, not a single
souvenir has ever been brought back—not a
single tool or document or drinking glass or
so much as a thimble! Given the total absence
of any physical evidence, can we really believe
these extraordinary claims?”
This simple, unadorned statement—improvised on the spot to startle the audience into
a fresh way of thinking—completely transformed the situation. Most of the throng
changed from true believers to thoughtful
skeptics in just a few moments.
For the well-trained storyteller, spontaneity
and economy can be elegant and powerful.
Truth to the Mission
A great storyteller is devoted to a cause beyond self. That mission is embodied in his stories, which capture and express values that he
believes in and wants others to adopt as their
own. Thus, the story itself must offer a value
proposition that is worthy of its audience.
The mission may be on a national or even
global scale: To land a man on the moon and
return him safely to Earth. To win the Cold
War and bring freedom to millions of people
around the world. To reverse global warming
and save the planet.
harvard business review • december 2007
Or the cause may be more modest but still
important, at least to the storyteller and his
audience: To turn around a company that is
floundering and save hundreds of jobs. To
bring a great new service to market and improve the lives of customers.
In any case, the job of the teller is to capture his mission in a story that evokes powerful emotions and thereby wins the assent and
support of his listeners. Everything he does
must serve that mission.
This explains the passion that great storytellers exude. They infuse their stories with
meaning because they really believe in the
mission. I truly believed that our program on
the history of Havana harbor was important:
We had shown up to do something that was
bigger than the swirl of temporary political
bargaining between our countries, and we
had bet the farm on the journey.
When truth to the mission conflicts with
truth to the audience, truth to the mission
should win out. The leader who knows his listeners is able to gain their trust and spend
that currency wisely in pursuit of the mission.
But this doesn’t mean telling people exactly
what they want to hear. That’s pandering and,
as Hollywood has learned, a formula for a mediocre story. Indeed, sometimes you need to
do just the opposite. At our dinner party,
Colin Callender, president of HBO Films,
noted that several of HBO’s most acclaimed
productions are ones that audience pretesting
marked as losers.
Even in today’s cynical, self-centered age,
people are desperate to believe in something
bigger than themselves. The storyteller plays a
vital role by providing them with a mission
they can believe in and devote themselves to.
As a modern shaman, the visionary business
leader taps into the human yearning to be part
of a worthy cause. A leader who wants to use
the power of storytelling must remember this
and begin with a cause that deserves devotion.
One of today’s most creative business leaders
is Muhammad Yunus, founder of Bangladesh’s
Grameen Bank and pioneer of the microcredit movement, which advocates providing
small loans to the poor. When he addresses
would-be partners to solicit support for microcredit, he tells some version of this story:
“It was a village woman named Sufiya
Begum who taught me the true nature of poverty in Bangladesh. Like many village women,
page 6
The Four Truths of the Storyteller
Sufiya lived with her husband and small
children in a crumbling mud hut with a leaky
thatched roof. To provide food for her family,
Sufiya worked all day in her muddy yard
making bamboo stools. Yet somehow her
hard work was unable to lift her family out
of poverty. Why?”
(Of course, “Why?” is a rhetorical question.
But posing it to the listeners engages their
curiosity and makes them eager to hear the
answer, which they trust Yunus to supply.)
“Like many others in the village, Sufiya relied on the local moneylender to provide the
cash she needed to buy the bamboo for her
stools. But the moneylender would give her
this money only on the condition that he
would have the exclusive right to buy all she
produced at a price he would decide. What’s
more, the interest rate he charged was incredibly high, ranging from 10% per week to as
much as 10% per day.
“Sufiya was not alone. I made a list of the
victims of this moneylending business in the
village of Jobra. When I was done, I had the
names of 42 victims who had borrowed a
total of 856 taka—the equivalent of less than
$27 at the time. What a lesson this was for me,
an economics professor!
“I offered $27 from my own pocket to get
these victims out of the moneylenders’
clutches. The excitement that was created
among the people by this small action got me
further involved. If I could make so many
people so happy with such a tiny amount of
money, why not do more?
“That has been my mission ever since.”
When Yunus tells this story of the origins of
microcredit, his listeners—including bankers,
harvard business review • december 2007
CEOs, and high government officials—are
moved. They are riding the emotional arc of
Yunus’s tale, which culminated in 2006 with
the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize jointly
to Yunus and Grameen Bank. When he concludes his story by asking his listeners to help
bring affordable credit to every poor person in
the world, he almost always receives a standing ovation—along with a flood of pledges.
The Unchanging Heart of
Storytelling
Story forms have evolved continually since
the days of the shaman. Literary genres from
epic poetry to drama to the novel use stories
as political or social calls to action. Technological breakthroughs—movable type, movies,
radio, television, the internet—have provided new ways of recording, presenting,
and disseminating stories. But it isn’t special
effects or the 0’s and 1’s of the digital revolution that matter most—it’s the oohs and aahs
that the storyteller evokes from an audience.
State-of-the-art technology is a great tool for
capturing and transmitting words, images,
and ideas, but the power of storytelling resides most fundamentally in “state-of-theheart” technology.
At the end of the day, words and ideas presented in a way that engages listeners’ emotions are what carry stories. It is this oral
tradition that lies at the center of our ability
to motivate, sell, inspire, engage, and lead.
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