See a photo of Paul, his bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.
Q&A with Paul Smith, Question 2
Q: Can you share some of the highlights of researching Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire? Who were some of the most inspiring leaders?
A: After interviewing over 75 leaders from dozens of companies, I was pleasantly surprised that almost every one had a compelling story in them. Most needed help extracting it from the facts and crafting it into an effective narrative. But almost everyone had the rudiments of a great story in their head. Usually several. That was encouraging to me. I learned you don’t have to lead an especially colorful life to have great stories. You just need to have the good sense to fashion them into stories to tell.
I was also surprised that some of the most inspiring stories came from
people I didn’t expect. For example, today John Bryant is the CEO of Kellogg’s (pictured, with Sara Mathew). But he came up through the finance department, and previously served as chief financial officer. He got his MBA from the Wharton School, an ivy-league business school famous for it’s highly analytical curriculum and competitive student body — hardly the background one would associate with an empathetic storyteller. But just a few minutes into the interview, it was clear from his stories he was passionate about understanding the consumers his company serves, and is a caring manager of the employees he leads.
The CEO of Dun & Bradstreet, Sara Mathew, has a similar background, having served as its CFO. She’s intimidatingly bright, ambitious, and a demanding boss. But she readily shared a story of when she learned a hard lesson about her own shortcomings as a leader, how she overcame it, and how she openly shares that story with others so they can learn from it as well. That kind of selflessness is a refreshing in top management today.
One of the most inspiring stories I heard didn’t come from a senior executive at all. It came from Bev Keown, a 56-year-old administrative assistant at Procter & Gamble. She was born the daughter of a sharecropper in Seaton, Arkansas, in 1955, and suffered the torment and ridicule many African Americans endured in earlier times. But her experiences were as recent as the year 2002. Not until coming to P&G in 2005 did she find a working environment that accepted her for who she was and treated her no differently than anyone else.
Some of my other favorites came from a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch, a London-based internet company founder, and a cook at Pizza Hut. And I didn’t just find inspiring stories from business people. I found them from doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, engineers, and even a fashion model! It turns out storytelling works just about everywhere.