In her company’s blog, Creating Tomorrow (which is also the name of her company), Trina Roach relates this story she once heard:

When I first started out in advertising, I was told the story of the agency’s successful launch campaign for a major client’s new product. When the agency introduced the idea for the campaign to the client, the client was livid. It wasn’t what they expected, and it certainly wasn’t what they thought they needed for their product to be a success. The agency believed in their concept and stood behind their innovative idea 100 percent. Their middle ground? They agreed to develop a parallel campaign more in line with client expectations and to pay to put both campaigns into market research. The client agreed to abide by the research results, and launch the winning campaign. In the end, the agency version got the highest-ever research scores. It gave the client’s product a massive push into the market, became talk-of-the-town, and went on to win a creative prize in New York. Oh yea, in the end the client agreed to pick up the research costs.

Roach goes on to enumerate several types of stories used in leadership, some of which I was familiar with, some not. They include the “Who am I?” story, the “Why Am I here?” story, the “What do you want to know?” story, the “What are our core values?” story, and the crux of the story above, the “Where is out middle ground?” story. Here’s how Roach describes that kind of story:

Where is our middle ground? — As a leader you are sometimes called upon to bargain even when you strongly believe you are in the right. The challenge here is to let the other party see that you truly understand their perspective, while challenging them to give your method a try.