Guide to Civic Leadership Blogging (2005 U.K. edition)
How to use weblogs as an effective local leadership tool
Why do we go to more movies than lectures and seminars? Stories. Who are the best lecturers? Those who fill their presentations with stories. Storytelling as an organisational and leadership strategy is currently undergoing a bit of a boom. Magazine articles, books, worskshops and whole conferences are now devoted to the subject. Why?
“Leadership is essentially a task of persuasion — of winning people’s minds and hearts. Typically it proceeds inductively by argument from one or more examples towards a more general conclusion about the goals and assumptions we should adopt towards the matter in question. Storytelling is thus inherently suited to the task of leadership.” – From The Leader’ s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative, by Stephen Denning.
We all have a knack for telling stories in an informal social setting. "Hey, guess what happened to me today?" we say to our family members and friends. Listen to the conversations at parties and you'll hear a constant stream of storytelling. So the idea is to use storytelling in your blog in much the same way that you use it in informal social settings – but towards a leadership or management goal. See Denning's A Storytelling Catalogue (p. 10 in the PDF of Chapter 1):
- Sparking action
- Communicating who you are
- Communicating who the company is – branding
- Transmitting values
- Fostering collaboration
- Taming the grapevine
- Sharing knowledge
- Leading people into the future
Denning says it's a myth that "The effective use of storytelling in organisations involves crafting and performing a 'well- made story,' with a hero or heroine, a plot, a turning point and a resolution." There are levels of complexities to stories and certain elements need to be included, depending on your purpose. But even the smallest incident is more compelling reading when framed with a short, simple story, for example:
- "I ran into a citizen in the hallway yesterday and she asked…"
- "My colleague, [name/link] handed me the latest issue of [periodical/link] this morning and suggested I read the article on…."
- "On my way home from work last night, I passed the park where…"
Most leadership storytelling strategies are focused on the why and how of oral, performance-oriented storytelling where tone, voice inflection and gestures come into play. That makes sense whenever there's a face-to-face audience available, or if the storytelling is to be broadcast.
But written storytelling via a weblog can be an effective, alternative delivery method. And it has some advantages over oral storytelling:
- Your audience-of-many is always available
- A blog post (via its PermaLink) can get easily passed around via the web and email
- The PermaLink of the blog post never dies. If your story turns out to have longlasting impact, it's web address can be linked to indefinitely
Weblog storytelling tips:
- The real names of people involved can help to make the story. Include them, with their permission.Frame your story with time/date, such as “yesterday…” “earlier this morning…” “last Tuesday…”
- Describe the place, or at least name it. If you don't have the time or skill to "set the scene," it can help to use a photo.
- There's hardly a blog post that can't include some elements of storytelling. Imagine yourself talking to a colleague or friend about what it is you're blogging and then bring that tone to your post.