Managers talk numbers, but leaders tell stories

When Financial Accountant spoke with Gordie Smyth from Flower Accounting about business growth, he didn’t tell us how many square feet of office space he had leased, how many pounds he spent on staffing, or the percentage increase in brand awareness achieved by his marketing. Instead, Smyth told stories of months when revenue was less than £100, of lessons he learnt from being a manager of a football team, and of the days when accountants were invited to clients’ weddings.

The Q&A with Smyth was, strictly, about how he achieved business growth. But if you read it, you know it was more memorable than a list of figures or actions. In telling stories rather than stating facts, Smyth was ensuring a deeper level of connection with readers. According to research into the relationship between storytelling and leadership, he was ensuring people who came across his story experienced it and remembered it. And that skill, storytelling, is perhaps a key part of the growth of Flower Accounting.

“We’ve all listened to (and suffered through) long PowerPoint presentations made up of bullet points – bullet points that may be meaningful to the presenter, but lack the same punch for the audience,” wrote Lani Peterson from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, in a report called The Science Behind The Art of Storytelling.

Being boring makes an audience work harder – not just to stay awake, but to understand. And it increases the danger of misunderstanding, as the audience works to bring meaning to a checklist and, potentially, misinterprets and poorly remembers.

“Even if the presenter is animated, when we hear information being ticked off like this, the language-processing parts in our brain, known as Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, get to work, translating those bullet points into story form where we can find our own meaning. The problem with this, however, is that the story we come up with in our mind may not be the same one the speaker is intending to convey through data.”

When a speaker instead delivers information via the mechanism of a story, Peterson’s report and numerous other studies into storytelling say, the activity patterns in the listeners’ brains match those in the speakers’ brain.

This not only leads to a richer experience and deeper relationship with the information for the listener/reader, it also means the information is conveyed as the speaker intended.

What’s that got to do with accounting?

Now imagine a meeting with a client.

You’re discussing profits arising from particular customer groups and pointing at figures on a spreadsheet, or perhaps tables on a PowerPoint slide. You’re hoping to become a valued partner or adviser to the business by identifying potential opportunities that the numbers have revealed.

But, as Peterson describes above, if you are reciting numbers, the client is looking at those numbers and relating them to their own experiences, ideas and concerns. They’re identifying risks and opportunities independently, which may not align with those you have identified. That’s if they haven’t yet switched off completely.

In this situation, experts say, a leader would instead tell a story.

“A story at its root is a human transforming something, or a human being transformed,” says Ruth Milligan, executive communication coach and founder and managing partner of communication training business Articulation.

Milligan has been deeply involved in organising TEDx events. When speakers brought data and information to present during TEDx talks, but didn’t choose to communicate it through a story, she told them, “That’s really great – you must want me to forget what you’re about to say”.

And so, if an accountant has information to communicate to a client, as in the example above, perhaps they could instead tell the story of an individual customer in a specific socio-economic group. They might describe that customer’s lifestyle and their hopes and dreams, while describing the customer’s journey with the client’s business.

They could compare that individual to another in a different group, illustrating how and why the two are different and what that means for the client’s business. Or they could discuss the likely effects on an individual of a particular new product, a different marketing campaign, new opening hours.

The difference is that the client is now absorbed in a story, rather than trying to digest a page of numbers. They’re engaged and focussed, and they see the accountant as a provider of valuable information, rather than a spreadsheet expert.

Stories make listeners’ brains light up

Karen Eber, a leadership development consultant who was once responsible for shaping the culture in the 90,000-strong GE business, says in her work she has sometimes found that leaders “tend to be allergic to telling stories”.

“They’re not sure how to tell them, or they think they have to present data and that there’s just not room to tell a story,” she says.

But data presented within a story is a “power ballad”, Eber says. It connects information to individuals in a way that means their “entire brain starts to light up”.

Milligan agrees, saying the art of storytelling is how you differentiate a manager from a leader.

When people think of leadership, Milligan says, they often consider experience, education and values as the most important skills and traits. However, through her work and research, she has come up with a question to challenge that wisdom.

“When did storytelling fall off the list of required leadership skills?” Milligan says.

“Isn’t it the only thing that matters when you become a leader? The market difference between being one or not is authentic storytelling. It is the difference between managing and leading.”

And so, experts say, next time you consider opening a spreadsheet or presenting a PowerPoint during a meeting with a client, instead wrap the main messages in a story. According to storytelling research, it will make the meeting unforgettable.

If you’ve gotten this far without going back to check out Gordie Smyth’s Q&A, go on: One lesson I learnt the hard way: Gordie Smyth.