By Dr Farah Sleiman

Steve Jobs once said : ”The world belongs to the storyteller”, I believe he forgot to complete the sentence by saying “If he tells the right story”. But what do stories have to do with business growth and why storytelling is one of the core competencies every entrepreneur and business executive should master to take his business to the next level?

On a corporate level , hundreds of stories are told every day at different levels of your organization:

• Your mission tells your customers the story of your purpose and what you are coming here to accomplish through your organization.
• Your value proposition tells the story of your product and how it will answer your customers’ needs through the different features it has (utility brand) or through the new kind of person it will make them become (lifestyle brand).
• Your internal communication with your employees tells the story of what kind of CEO you are and how much you value your team.

All these stories gathered together form your company’s narrative. In time, your narrative will determine your brand personality and your positioning in the mind of customers, investors, shareholders and employees.

If you are trying to grow your business even with the best product in the world , if you don’t have the right narrative , you will not be able to build a sustainable business or scale up.

Similarly if you are looking for funding from investors, even with the best business plan in the world if your narrative is inadequate , you will not get a single penny.

Effective narratives speaks to both the mind and the heart of the listener:

• They create a performance /expectation match (Mind)
• They incite an emotional response that makes the listener want to take a chance on testing the value proposition that is being presented to him (Heart)

This takes us to an ancient marketeer wisdom that says :

”The mind assesses but it is the heart that buys”.

Thus building effective narratives is essential for all the core functions in your business from customer acquisition, to investor relations to board management to leadership style.

Stories are told also on a personal level, in our constant effort to understand the world we tell ourselves stories everyday about who we are, why we do what we do, how good or bad our performance is and what will be the consequences of the choices we are making every minute.

These stories we tell ourselves are called self-narrative and psychologists believe these narratives determines our self-image, self-esteem, mood and level of happiness and how we respond to different people and events around us.

In the executive coaching sessions I offer to my clients , I spend a substantial amount of time examining these self-narratives and the general themes they revolve around and reframing them .To be a successful CEO , you need to be very mindful of your self-narratives as they will determine your level of energy, your leadership style and your capacity to bounce back from setbacks.

In this festive season where loved ones meet, it is the time more than ever to be mindful of the stories you tell yourself and others as they will determine the whole gathering’s dynamics and make the difference between beautiful Christmas memories and painful ones.

Margaret Thatcher once said :

“Watch your thoughts for they become words.

Watch your words for they become actions.

Watch your actions for they become habits.

Watch your habits for they become your character.

And watch your character for it becomes your destiny.”

I would like to wish everyone happy holidays and close this article by saying “Watch your stories for they become your reality and your reality will become your destiny”.

About the Author

Dr Farah Sleiman is an investment advisor, growth strategist, and executive coach. She is the CEO of Capital Growth Advisors, a management consulting boutique based out of Dubai UAE specialized in growth consulting and funding.

For more info about the portfolio of services offered by Capital Growth Advisors UAE, send us your queries on info@cga.ae

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