Leading By Playing It SAFE

The best initiatives tell a story — from a sales pitch, to a product or service, to an entire organization. Famous brands turn stories into lore. Successful individuals turn them into biographies that depict extraordinary people who surpass impossible circumstances.

Stories can be told everywhere, anytime. We do it with our LinkedIn profiles and posts, with our CVs, and when we introduce ourselves. We also do it with our daily actions, knowingly or unknowingly— an aspect I’d like to explore below by answering the following two questions:

• What does storytelling have to do with leadership?
• How exactly can one Play it SAFE?

Storytelling and Leadership

Businesses love the art of storytelling so much that it will never go out of style. Stories convey purpose. They spark curiosity, make emotional connections, and facilitate a stronger engagement with our audiences. They ensure a more efficient, organic transfer of information and ultimately persuade us to take action. We are used to hearing stories and we even expect it. In fact, boredom is often caused by either the lack of a good narrative or a poorly-structured one.

Great business leaders employ storytelling successfully in their initiatives. They recognize the fact that it is particularly important in sales, recruitment, onboarding, career growth, and transitions. That it plays a crucial role in change management and in making a positive impact within the organizations they serve.

Playing it SAFE

In leadership, success is achieved by improving ourselves, our teams, and our organizations. For that, we identify areas in which we can make a positive impact. We build plans. We get people onboard. We deliver our changes, then measure and confirm the desired effect. Rinse and repeat.

However, the question we’re looking to answer is — How do we choose our next project? How do we plan for our next win? This is where storytelling comes in.

To maximize our positive impact, our next mission should be:

• Scalable, since we can’t go only after small wins. We can’t attempt to chase only big wins either, as the feedback loop can be too large. A good alternative is to select one or more areas of focus and work incrementally on delivering increasingly bigger wins. An immediate effect of this approach is that we’ll become the owners of our entire areas of focus — ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’
• Acceptable by our target audience. It would be bad to chase a goal just to discover that its deliverables yield limited value or that there simply isn’t any capacity/appetite for their implementation at that particular moment in time. As part of our selection process, we must confirm that what we’re trying to achieve will be the right thing at the right time. Only then we can call it a win.
• Fluent. Flowing from one state to the next in the spirit of Continuous Improvement and helping us build a compelling narrative. The incremental nature of our endeavors will also help with engagement and adoption.
• Enduring. We shouldn’t aim to score a win that’s going to be reverted or significantly altered in a very short timeframe — especially if we are going to be making the modification. Backtracking tends to be extremely unproductive. As part of the Return On Investment analysis, we must consider our initiative’s durability.

Conclusions

The essence of leading by playing it SAFE is being highly successful in making a continuous and positive impact within an organization by employing the proven art of storytelling.

Each initiative should have a narrative that traces the positive impact we have made within our teams or organizations over a period of time via a succession of incremental deliverables. A story crafted with great attention to detail and executed without imperfections. Consistently, continuously. In precise alignment with our mission, in solid relationships with our audiences, and with genuine ownership to ensure that our vision moves forward even after we’ve moved on.