Great stories

Good stories tell you what emotion you should have and when.  They are commanding and prescriptive.  Go buy this product.  You'll feel happy when you read this book.  March this way.  That doesn't make them bad, and they are less memorable.  Why?  Because humans (whether they realize it or not) care about having their own emotions, that they think of, and this emotion was provided courtesy the U.S. Army, et. al.

Great stories compel you to have your own emotion that just happens to coincide with the emotion the storyteller intended you to have.  These stories are inviting and generative.  They invite us in and ask us to experience emotions of our own free will, that we then just have to share on the Internet or in-person or we'll explode.  So why do we do that  even though we have no financial interest in whatever we experienced?  All humans (wether they realize it or not), have a need to be vulnerable.  It's in our DNA.  And telling stories is a way we get to share an emotion we had, which is being vulnerable btw, with someone in a way that's comfortable for us.    We are so excited by the story that we literally cannot keep ourselves from sharing it with others.  So, sorry to break it to you and that last time you talked to your buddies at the bar about how great the Spiderman movie was....you were being vulnerable.  A couple of people figured this out 6000 years ago and now we have an entire advertising industry co-opting this premise.

Good leaders tell good stories.  Great leaders tell great stories.  Which stories are you practicing?