How to Tell Impact Stories: A Simple Formula
Need to tell an impact story for your project or program? Here’s a simple 4-part formula along with examples of when to use it.
if you want to tell a compelling impact story, Tell a story of change or transformation.
Stories of change and transformation take your audience on the journey from before to after. These stories grip your audience’s attention, inspire them and can even compel them to take action.
Any change or transformation story can be broken down into the following 4 parts:
Part 1 - Start
Part 2 - Decide
Part 3 - Learn
Part 4 - Transform
Using these 4 parts, you can quickly and consistently structure a story of change about yourself, your team, your customer or your organization.
One universal example I like to use to illustrate the use of this method - a method that I refer as the 4-Point Story Model - is the movie, The Lion King. In the move, the main character, Simba, goes through a transformation that can be mapped using the 4-Point Story Model.
Part 1 - The START
At the start – the main character exists in an unchanged state (zone of comfort or lack of awareness).
In the Lion King, this is when Simba is a cub protected by his father Mufasa.
02 DECIDE
Then something happens – It forces the main character to make a decision / to move away from the comfort zone / toward greater awareness.
In the Lion King – this is when Mufasa is killed by Scar and Simba runs away to live a carefree life
03 LEARN
But before they can get there – there’s a price to pay or a lesson to learn. Usually as a result of failure or setback.
Back home, Simba’s family suffers drought & starvation at the hands of the cruel leader Scar. The wise Rafiki reminds Simba of his responsibilities.
04 TRANSFORM
Finally the main character returns – a different & more expanded, mature or aware version of who they were at the start.
With his new friends by his side, Simba returns, defeats Scar. He becomes the new king and a father to his own lion cub.
When to use the 4-Point story MOdel
The 4-Point Story Model has been useful in a number of situations where I’ve needed to relay a story of how someone or something went through a process that resulted in significant or measurable change, aka, impact stories.
I often use the story model to help me bring more interest to storytelling scenarios where there’s a lot of context to be conveyed, and data alone won’t do. Below are a few examples of when I’ve used the model:
Team retrospectives, lessons learned
Leadership bio / team summary
Project start / update / closeout
Team member intro / exit
Performance assessments, 1:1 sessions
Product or service launch / new feature release
Strategic decision-making
Customer interviews
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How To Tell Your Leadership Story
I enter the room filled with energy and excitement. I’m here to celebrate my friend Michelle’s achievement of having been nominated for the 40 under 40 award from her alma mater.
I spot Michelle instantly. She is dressed in a pristine all-white suit, her makeup impeccable and her short-cropped hair adding an air of chic professionalism to her look. She is commanding the table that she’s sitting at. As I approach, I can see that the other nominees and guests are buzzing around her like fireflies to a light bulb.
Without a doubt, she is owning the room.
I grab a drink, then settle in to the seat next to Michelle so I can offer my congratulations and we can catch up before the evening’s official festivities begin.
We chat about things - life, work, our families - for a little bit, while enjoying our hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. After a few moments, Michelle confides in me…
“I still have to write a statement about myself to be officially considered for the award. It’s due in a few weeks and I’ve just been putting it off.”
“Oh? Why’s that?” I ask.
“I just don’t know what to say about myself. I mean, I feel like I haven’t really done anything. Especially compared to these other people,” she says, motioning to the other nominees in the room.
“They’re all so much younger than me. And I’m a nontraditional student. I’m not on campus. I’m a mom. I’m working. Like. what’s so special about that?”
I try not to choke on my hors d’oeuvre.
“Girl!?” I exclaim. “Are you serious?”
***
Why High-Achieving Black Women Have A Hard Time telling their stories
By any standard, Michelle is a high-achieving black woman. She immigrated to the US from Zimbabwe on her own in her early 20s and has since made a successful career for herself in accounting. She was recently promoted to a senior executive position in her firm and she’s recently earned her MBA. All of this while also holding the titles of wife and mom.
Like many black women I know, Michelle has not just one, but many amazing and inspiring stories to tell about her life experiences and accomplishments. So why would she (and other high-achieving black women) have such a hard time putting something down on paper? A few contributing factors could be:
Humility as more feminine or culturally appropriate
Women of all cultures are often conditioned to downplay their achievements and not take up too much ‘air time’ with their stories or anecdotes.
Normalization of struggle, hustle, grind culture
Balancing work, parenting, school and marriage may seem like nothing special when everyone else around you is balancing at least that much if not more and making it look easy.
Thinking of achievements as story
A list of awards and achievements does not a story make. Rattling off a series of accomplishments is more suitable for a resume not a leadership story or personal bio. And chances are we’re more used to writing our resume than writing our story.
Because everybody else has a hard time with it too
I don’t think high-achieving black women have any more of a difficult time telling compelling leadership stories than anyone else, The fact is, most of us haven’t learned or practiced the storytelling skills needed to tell great leadership stories. So when we’re asked to do it, we freeze, panic or procrastinate until the last minute.
How to Tell Your Leadership Story
Focus on Your Vision
Decide what aspect of your leadership story you want to focus on. Is it your philosophy as a leader? Is it a specific obstacle or challenge you’ve overcome? Is it a biographical account of your leadership history? Once you’ve narrowed your focus, you’re ready to start constructing your story.
Understand Your Audience
Who are you telling your story to and what will they get out of it? The most important thing to remember when telling your leadership story is that you’re telling it for someone else’s benefit. The more you know about them, the better you’ll understand what they care about and how to bring that out in your story.
Define Your Main Character
As the main character of your leadership story, it is essential that you have a deep and accurate understanding of your own values, strengths and your challenges. These are the attributes you want to highlight in your story. They will help you earn your audience’s trust and build a meaningful connection with them.
The 4-Part Change Story
The most inspirational and memorable stories are usually stories that involve a significant transformation or change. To quickly structure an impactful leadership story, use the following 4-part change story format:
Start - “When I started out…”
Key story points: What were you like before the change? What did you not yet have, know or understand?
Decide - “I had to make a change…”
Key story points: What forced you to take action so you could have, know or understand more?
Learn - “That taught me a valuable lesson…”
Key story points: What mistakes did you make, what did you lose or learn?
Transform - “Which made me who I am today.”
Key story points: How were you changed? How does that change still influence you today?
That evening, I shared the tips above with Michelle, and let her know that the non-traditional parts of her story were what made her story so impressive. Her unique story of growth and change ended up being a perfect fit for the 4-part change story structure.
Tell Your Story.
Download My Free Storytelling Ebook
Don’t know what story to tell or how to tell it? Learn a simple method for telling compelling impact stories. Create a draft of your own signature story. Download Now.
the sacred bundle: unwrap your team’s backstory
Learn an indigenous storytelling technique to help you and your team reconnect and remember the moments that mattered most in your journey to ‘happily ever after’
While I was doing research for my paper on storytelling & school discipline, I came across a concept called ‘the sacred bundle’.
The sacred bundle is a reference to an indigenous American storytelling practice, where a tribe would place objects that represented key moments in the their history into a bundle.
from, ‘The Sacred Bundle: Unwrap Your Team’s Backstory’
The sacred bundle is a reference to an indigenous American storytelling practice, where a tribe would place objects that represented key moments in the their history into a bundle. This bundle was kept safe by 1 or 2 ‘keepers of the bundle’ - usually 1 male and 1 female from the tribe. The keepers of the sacred bundle had the responsibility of remembering a specific song or story that related to each object in the bundle. At certain tribal celebrations or gatherings, the keepers of the bundle would remove the objects and recount the stories to the rest of the tribe. This was done as a way to preserve and pass on the moments that defined the tribe’s culture and their shared histories and futures.
Organizational consultant Peg Neuhauser extended the concept of the sacred bundle into teams and organizations, and posed the idea that, much like a tribe, teams and organizations have key moments that define their history. She posited that there are 6 organizational sacred bundle stories that every organization has:
How We Started
Our People
Why We Do What We Do
What We Learned in Failure
How We Succeeded
How We Will Change the World
I was so inspired by this idea of sacred bundle stories, that I decided to use them for a year-end retrospective with my product team at Ford. I asked each member of the team to share an object or image that represented each sacred bundle story. Later, we gathered as a team and took turns letting each team member share their object or image and explain what it meant to them.
The exercise was so well received, that I also decided to use it for my own year end review for 2022. I shared my own sacred bundle objects and stories on Instagram.
The 6 Sacred Bundle Stories of a Team
1. How We Started
2. Our People
3. Why We Do What We Do
4. What We Learned in Failure
5. How We Succeeded
6. How We Will Change the World
Why Use Sacred Bundle Stories?
The sacred bundle exercise made for a much-needed alternative to the typical year-end review or retrospective. Instead of only focusing on what tasks we completed or what I personally achieved, the sacred bundle stories allowed me and my team to look back at the moments that had the most meaning for us over the past year.
By sharing them with each other, we were all able to get deeper insight and understanding to what those moments meant to the the people we work with every day. We went deeper in our conversations than we had in our other team-building sessions or our quarterly OKR reviews - we shifted the focus to our journey together, how far we’d come and most importantly… how much we had all changed and grown. It was also a great way to honor and say farewell to a couple of members who were transitioning out of the team onto new projects.
The Importance of Backstory
Understanding what brought the main character to this point is really a pre-requisite for writing stories that will engage your audience. Before we can emotionally invest in the main character and her journey, we need to understand where she’s been, why she makes the choices she does, what happened before that has shaped her into the person we see today.
The same is true when you’re preparing to write the next chapter of your personal story or your team’s story. You want to re-engage with and celebrate how far you’ve come, you also want to be sure that you won’t forget the lessons you learned so that you don’t run the risk of repeating them again. There’s also the need to re-center on your values and remind yourself what has the most meaning to you - this is how you will avoid getting distracted or caught up in trivialities as you continue to journey towards ‘happily ever after’.
storytelling is a core leadership skill (audio)
Why leaders who develop the skill of telling good, strategic stories have an advantage in career and business.
Audio transcript:
Storytelling is a key, but I think often overlooked domain of leadership. Managers give directives, leaders tell stories. And I think the difference in giving directives and telling stories is that giving directives is something that is not participative.
The people that you are giving a directive or instructions or objectives or whatever that you're giving that to are receivers. They receive their instructions and they carry them out and they report back to you and tell, tell you, what they did and you tell them how good they did or how good they are.
And it creates this hierarchy. It doesn't lead to a relationship of equity between the leader and the follower. And I think some people think, ‘Well, there's not supposed to be equity there. I'm the leader. I'm higher up. They're supposed to look up to me. I'm supposed to be better or higher or more powerful or on a different level than them,’ which is true organizationally, but I think all real leaders recognize that their leadership is not based on the title or the position they hold in the organization.
The organization's titles and positions are specific to that organization only. And a leader is a leader no matter where she is. So if you're a leader in an organization by title, this doesn't mean that as soon as you leave that building and that title is not there on you anymore, that you stop thinking, behaving, and performing like a leader. That's very unlikely for someone who is truly a leader versus someone who just holds a title. So leaders know that the primary way that they influence is through relationship. And there are a number of ways to exist in a relationship with others. I think a lot of us think of it purely as this idea of networking. Like I go into a room and I press the flesh. I amass a whole bunch of people, then I call them and I have coffees and I go on golf dates with them. This is what we think of when we're, when we usually think of like networking or relationship building in terms of career or work or business.
But relationships are built on all kinds of interactions, and storytelling I think is one of the first ways we learn to build relationship with others.
As children we hear stories. Maybe an elder in our family is telling us stories, or maybe we're getting read a bedtime story, or maybe in school we have story time, but what we start to understand as kids is these are one of the few times when adults, the people who are bigger than us, come down to our level and actually engage with us, and ask us where we want to go next. Or have us say, Well, what happened next? Or, Well, why'd they do that? We're in a conversation in a more equitable level than we've probably ever been with an adult in our lives.
And this is the relationship that stories allow us to build between and among each other. And as leaders, it's kind of that same idea of if you're living in the leadership stratosphere all the time. Storytelling is this activity that allows you to sit down and look eye to eye at everyone across your organization and engage in an act of co-creation with them.
So you may be telling a story, but if you've really learned how to be a strategic storyteller, you recognize that every story you tell is not a story about you per se, even if it is, it's a story that's about the person who's receiving it. The point of you telling the story is so that the person receiving it can identify themselves in this story and then see themselves as the hero by the time you're finished telling it. You're telling stories to your people so that they can see, 'Oh. This is an achievable idea, or this is a relatable experience. Or if this person has been through it and I can identify with them, then I can possibly identify with this story and see myself going through it as well.'
I think this is why, for me, storytelling is such a core discipline of leadership. It's also a wonderful way of knowledge transfer. And I think another part of leadership or what leaders are maybe not always consciously thinking of, but definitely unconsciously leaders are always concerned with legacy.
'What am I leaving behind that represents me even though I'm no longer here?' And stories are one of those things that are wonderful ways to transmit legacy. And I think those two benefits or those two outcomes of really good and really strategic leadership storytelling: the ability to build equitable relationships and the ability to transmit or transfer leadership legacy; I think storytelling really is so powerful, , in accomplishing those two objectives or delivering those two benefit. And it's highly accessible. It is accessible to anyone in an organization who sees themself as a leader and wants to build relationships and leave legacy.
New Year, New Story!
Goals motivate. But stories inspire and transform. So why are we not using stories instead of goals when it comes to New Year’s planning?
New year, new me!
It’s a phrase we hear a lot at the start of a new calendar year. What it means: we’re ready to summon the newest and best version of ourselves to begin the year ahead. The funny thing is, the ‘new me’ that we think of, aka, the evolved self, is usually revealed at the end of a journey, not at the start of one.
So, I think the more fitting proclamation would be: New year, new story!
Your story is the process of transformation, aka, the journey, that brings about the new you.
Goals motivate us. Goals give us something to strive for. An accomplishment to go after. But stories inspire us. Stories give us something to live by. Stories transform us and provide meaning.
So, why are we not writing stories at the start of a new year instead of goals?
The good news is: When it comes to planning your year, or your life, you can write pretty much whatever story you like...
... as long as you know how.
Ready to Write your Story?
Want a peek at how I use stories for New Year’s goal-setting? Click below to learn more about my 4-step process.
How I Use Stories for Personal Goal-Setting and Life Planning
How I Use Stories for Personal Goal-Setting and Life Planning
Has your goal-setting approach failed you? Do you find yourself losing sight of your goals as life seems to have its own plans? You might want to try this story-based approach instead.
I don’t know about you, but goals haven’t been working for me lately.
To be honest, goals haven’t been working for me… ever.
In the past, my personal goal-setting pattern has looked something like:
set a goal that’s ‘SMART’
Start down the path of pursuing the goal
Get some early wins and feel extremely motivated by my own commitment and initial action,
Then… life starts happening. Work gets crazy, or I have trouble in one of my primary relationships. Or, maybe my ‘shiny object syndrome’ kicks in and a new more exciting or more urgent goal pops up. I start losing momentum, promising myself that I’m going to get back on track. But weeks pass, maybe months, and I may completely forget about the original goal or decide that it wasn’t really that important to begin with.
So, this year, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of starting with goals (aka, the trees), I decided to start with a story (aka, the forest).
I’m a big picture thinker, so context and the larger story are always important to me. When solving problems at work, I usually start by getting an understanding of the systems, people, and structures surrounding the problem or challenge, because that’s… what a good consultant does.
So why not take the same approach for my personal life?
