INNOVATION
Joseph Bradfield, PR and Communications Advisor at Sussex Innovation, explains why some of our most respected business leaders are often intuitive storytellers, and how you can learn to become one too
THE VALUE OF
TELLING STORIES The nature of a founder’s role involves being a person of many talents – even when they have a crack leadership team around them, it’s their job to ensure that all those moving parts are pulling in the same direction. Not only do they need to grasp the finer points of their company’s finances and operations, they’re also its public face. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate it
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properly, it’s very rare that it will get off the ground. As a figurehead for the business, you need to be the one doing the convincing – enabling your team to share one vision, and helping everyone from customers to partners and influencers understand why it deserves to be a reality. Human beings are social animals, we are hardwired to share stories. A well-structured narrative can hold
our attention, shape our opinion, and stick long in our memory. Social, political and religious movements throughout the ages have succeeded or failed because of this factor; a compelling foundational stor y and people who are adept at telling it. Successful businesses are no different, and in today’s attention-driven economy, the value of a powerful and incisive story has never been more apparent.
