Paul Smith: Great leaders tell great stories

In this episode of Aim Higher, Skip interviews Paul Smith, one of the world’s leading experts in business storytelling. Paul was one of “Inc. Magazine’s” Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018. He’s a storytelling coach, and he shares with Skip some of the secrets from his new book, “The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell.” Paul explains that we don’t make most of our decisions entirely logically; we make them in our subconscious and then we rationalize them. To influence people, we need to reach them at both levels, and good storytelling does that. He and Skip talk through several of the most important stories that great leaders should master, including “Where We Came From” (A Founding Story), “Why We Can’t Stay Here” (A Case-for-Change) and “Why You Should Want to Work Here” (A Recruiting Story). In the end, Skip and Paul agree… storytelling is a critical skill for leaders, and if you want to be good at it you can’t just “wing it.” You need to learn from an expert, and masters of the art – like Paul and Skip – can help.