This weekend was also a big one for sport, with the English team in action on the football, rugby and cricket fields. The script was similar in each, the doughty English outplayed by their technically superior opponents. The English football team have long played a brand of football that rarely quickens the pulse and against Brazil it was men against boys. In the rugby league the English team played manfully for the first 50 minutes before the inevitable Australian onslaught came and the thrashing duly delivered. The cricket team were equally crushed in todays 20/20 game against South Africa with few Englishmen showing any of the flair and verve on display by the South Africans. The rugby union team did at least manage a victory against Argentina but again the display lacked any flair or imagination with the team relying, as seems to be the case so often, on dull ten man rugby.

Amongst the various post mortems of these failures many possible explanations were given, but by far the most common was an overwhelming fear of failure, a fear of trying something different only to be ridiculed should it go wrong. And I wonder if its a part of the British spirit? Americans have the ‘American dream’ that seems to bestow a can do spirit amongst its people. Australians also seem to lack any of the insecurities that inflict us Brits.

It seems the same in the business world. I recently read a book about the incredible startup culture in Israel. I struggle to see anything remotely similar in Britain. Where are all the startups? Where are the people putting things on the line to craft something new and original? It’s surely not for a lack of brains or talent. Our universities are amongst the finest in the world yet there seems an almost embarrassment about success, a disdain for those that want to make the most of their lives.

Is it a forlorn hope that Britain unleashes the creativity within or are we a lost cause?

As regular readers of the blog will know I’m a fan of story telling in a wide range of contexts and I’ve been reading about how they can be used in a leadership context, especially when you’re trying to convince sceptics or change opinion.  The suggestion comes from Stephen Denning, a Stanford Business School professor.  He suggests that story telling in a leadership context should take three forms.

1. Gaining Attention

Your first story should aim to get the attention of your audience.  Negative stories often work well in this context but in general your story should be one of the following:

• Personalized
• Evoking an emotional response
• From a trustworthy source
• Concise

2. Eliciting desire for a different future

This is where positive stories come into their own because you get to tell how the future can be better.  At this stage listeners are usually bombarded with analysis and review of various options.  Denning suggests that these should be ignored in favour of a story.  It doesn’t have to be a big ol’ epic of a story, just one that elicits a positive response from the kind of change you’re hoping to evoke.

3. Reinforcing with reasons

What the change will be, the story of how the change will be implemented, the story of why the change will work.  All of these occur in the final section.

The basic jist being that decisions are more often made emotionally than rationally, so use stories to appeal to the heart rather than the head.