Master the Art of Influence! 🎙️
What this session covered
This session was a conversation between the host and a single guest, a corporate leader with a background in organisational change and strategy execution in global roles, on the use of narrative to build alignment and carry organisations through change. The speaker's central proposition was that data informs while story transforms, and that the gaps between data points have to be stitched together by narrative if people are to act on them. She argued that people in organisations follow leaders less for the numbers they present than for the manner of presentation and the feeling it evokes, and that performance measures shift only when a leader makes clear why the work matters. Illustrations were drawn from streaming and technology companies, a dairy cooperative's advertising, a confectionery advertisement, and the clinical setting, where the speaker suggested the doctor who treats a patient as a person with a context rather than as a case number is the one the patient values.
Much of the discussion concerned where stories are found and how they are built. The speaker set out three sources — personal experience, the shared wins and struggles of a team, and cultural material such as film, mythology and the example of well-known public figures — and suggested the leaders she has been influenced by combine all three. She proposed a structure of character, conflict and conclusion; the host offered an alternative framing of challenge, action and result, and both treated the two as versions of the same arc. On resistance to change, the speaker argued that what people resist is not change but loss, and that the work of a story is to reframe the same unchanged facts from loss to gain. She returned repeatedly to the idea of a deliberately maintained "story bank": the telling may be improvised in the moment, but the watching for and collecting of stories is a conscious habit, and one that makes a leader a better observer of the people around them. Both participants noted that storytelling is not confined to those holding senior titles and operates between peers and between a supervisor and a team member; the speaker described a hospitality platform that replaces conventional team meetings with story circles in which participants from different functions each bring a memorable encounter, a mistake that taught them something and a win to share.
On pitfalls, the speaker identified over-polish as the first: a story that has been over-rehearsed becomes a presentation rather than a connection. The second was failure of situational judgement — matching the story to audience, place and cultural context, with the observation that a mature storyteller can carry material across cultures only after working out the bridge to the listener's own references. The third was leaders not educating themselves in the global contexts in which they now operate. She then noted that her final point contradicted her first: being underprepared is equally a failure, and the line between preparing a story and over-rehearsing it is a fine one. The intended effects she named were the building of trust, the establishment of empathy as a cultural attribute, and the breaking down of silos between people, teams and structures. Both participants discussed the value of a leader admitting a past misjudgement as a way of making a case for change, which the speaker linked to leaders showing vulnerability. The session closed with an exchange on shortening attention spans and on collecting one's own stories as a conscious practice, since experiences are rarely recalled on demand if they have not been gathered beforehand.
Key points raised
- The speaker argued that data informs while story transforms, and that narrative is what closes the gap between data points and action.
- Three sources of material were set out — personal experience, team experience, and cultural material including film, mythology and public figures — with the suggestion that effective leaders draw on all three.
- The speaker proposed a story structure of character, conflict and conclusion; the host offered challenge, action and result, and both treated these as the same arc expressed differently.
- It was argued that people resist not change itself but loss, and that a story's function is to reframe the same facts from loss to gain.
- The speaker advocated a deliberately maintained "story bank", holding that improvised telling depends on the prior conscious habit of observing and collecting stories.
- Three failure modes were named: over-rehearsal, which turns a story into a presentation rather than a connection; misjudging audience, place and cultural context; and being underprepared.
Session transcript
This transcript is auto-generated from the session recording and lightly edited for punctuation and readability; it may contain transcription errors. The video remains the authoritative record.
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Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you all to today's podcast on storytelling for influence, inspiring dreams and driving change. Today's session is diving deep into why narrative works and not just data, and narrative is the most powerful tool for organizational alignment and driving change. Our guest today, Singh, is perfectly positioned to guide us. She's an expert in organizational change and a corporate leader with 28 years of rich experience in global roles.
She currently serves as the vice president, global account executive at Wipro, focusing on strategy execution and complex turnaround. A renowned authority on leadership, she's also known for her TEDx mantra, work as worship. I welcome you, Kashana Singh, today. Thank you for joining us from North Carolina in the United States. I begin by asking you to tell us something on why storytelling works.
Sure. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be on the NISSMAT panel, both as an audience to listen to all the variety of topics you bring to the table. Thank you for doing that. And of course today's topic, which is extremely close to my heart, both from my role as a corporate leader or a corporate practitioner, but also as a practitioner of poetry.
Over the past couple of years I've also learned various nuances of storytelling with regard to my grandson and a child. More than that, I've grown up, we all have grown up, I'm sure you would agree. We've all grown up listening to stories from our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, and sitting around the fire or sitting around the dining table. And I think you and me and many people are who we are because of the stories that were told to us and that we absorbed either consciously or unconsciously. So this topic is very important to me. Thank you for picking it up and thank you for having me.
Coming to your question on why storytelling works. Storytelling works because that's how the human brain is wired. The human brain is wired to make meaning. And you mentioned data, right? Data is informational. Data informs and the story transforms. So you have to stitch together the story around the data to fill the gaps or the synapses that exist between data points.
Even the biggest companies, let's take Netflix, right? We all spend our time or our entertainment watching Netflix these days. Guess what Netflix uses to make their boldest moves? Human narrative. Have you watched the movie called Elephant Whisperers on Netflix? If you haven't, you should. Let me tell you about it. Yeah, you must.
Well, so the Elephant Whisperers on paper is one of the most successful Netflix documentaries, but on paper, the data for the story didn't have the usual metrics that pointed that it will be a global hit. Okay. What is the story about? A rural couple in South India, an orphaned baby elephant, a small South Indian village as the setting, no flashy plot, no costumes, no algorithm friendly hooks, so to say, right? But the story was irresistible because guess what it had? It had compassion. It had healing. And it spoke about the interdependence between humans, animals and the natural world.
So what started as this quiet Indian documentary turned into an Academy Award winner and is still to date one of the most celebrated original Netflix movies worldwide. So coming back to you on why story matters, in this example data didn't do the judgment, data didn't predict it, the story did it, the story predicted it and the story carried it forward.
See, we always keep talking of the big idea, and in today's fast-paced business world, why is telling a good story more powerful than just showing data or facts?
Well, because like I said, let's talk about logic. You're basically saying logic versus emotion, right? So, what does emotion spark? The three M's. Motivation. Emotion is what motivates you or demotivates you, right? Emotion is about memory and emotion is about meaning. We think leadership is about logic, which is all of the facts that are listed in spreadsheets, how you forecast your financials, your strategic planning, right? But who do people follow? Do people in organizations follow this logic, or do they follow leaders not because of the numbers, not because of the facts that they are able to present, but because of how they present the facts and the feelings that they evoke?
Let me take another example. If you're not following the trajectory of Zoran Mandani, the New York candidate, you should. Let's take him as an example, right? He's a current leader. He's just turned the tables on the New York State Assembly elections. And guess why? He resonates with people. He didn't inspire people by saying, "Let me recite the policy lines, right? Let me make a technical argument." That's not what he did. If you watch how he reached out to people, he spoke, he took the data, right? He took their lived facts, but he narrated it back to them in the form of a story. Nobody analyzed his logic, but they felt it, right?
So let's take it back to organizations, to your point. We all know that organizations over many many years have survived and thrived on KPIs and KRAs, right, key performance indicators and key responsibility areas, and metrics and performance, and forecasts shouldn't be plus or minus 5% variation from the financials that have been projected. But when do those KPIs move? When do we start seeing organizations do better? That happens only and only when a leader helps them see why the work matters, why their contribution counts to the work and why are we doing this together. Why is the team working together? So it's the emotion and the stories that you tell around your data that gives it meaning.
And we've had many many organizations and many many leaders over the year where that did not happen. And what happened to that? I don't need to go into the details. Let's talk about Twitter. What happened with Elon Musk and the Twitter story, right? He missed the storytelling. He missed the emotional aspect. His data was all right, but he was only narrating the data back to people and he lost his people, right? And he lost his organizational presence. So in any company, just like in any community, data tells you the problem but the story makes people want to solve the problem together. That's why.
You're so right, because when a company is wanting to introduce a change or something, people generally resist the change.
Yeah. Exactly.
And you know, if you can sort of weave it into a story and inspire people to sort of move along with the change, I think it would make a lot of difference.
Yes. Let's take to that point. I want to keep going down the Netflix, to your point on change. So I hope you watch Netflix. Right. But it's turned around the whole business.
So it is now into the acquisition of another company.
Exactly. Right. So now Netflix, when they moved from the DVD business to streaming, employees — that was change, to your example of when organizations have changed — employees were very nervous. Why were they nervous? Would they lose their jobs? What happens with the stability of the organization? Is there relevance to streaming? So when people resist change, we say that all the time. What do they really resist, Paler? They don't resist change. They resist loss. And what a good story does is to reframe that change from loss to gain.
The fact doesn't change. The fact didn't change that Netflix was moving from DVDs to streaming. But the way the gentleman who led the organization at that time, Reed Hastings, he said to his team, "We are not in the DVD business. We are in the entertainment freedom business," and suddenly the whole narrative shifted, right. So like I said earlier, a simple way of telling the story — in this case this is the opening line of the story. We are not in the DVD business, we are in the entertainment freedom business, says Reed Hastings to his team, and suddenly there was the turnaround, and now you know Netflix is moving the way it is.
Now what happens to the movie hall owners and the people who stream movies there? They're going to get impacted, and what type of a story would they tell their employees and how would they turn around their business?
Yeah. So that's perfect, right? That's a great example. So first, before I get to the exact use case of the movie halls or the physical buildings, let's go to just one aspect of this that we need to understand, which is finding the right story.
Most important.
Where should a manager look, or where should a leader look, or where should an organization look to find the right story? And there's three places, but the most influential leaders mix all three. So there isn't an exact right or wrong, right? So there's personal stories. We just started by saying we grew up listening to stories about partition, right? We grew up listening to stories about the history of what changed the path of so many millions and millions of families, right? Those are personal stories.
The second type of the story is the team story, right? Shared wins and shared struggles. Let's take the women's cricket team as an example. What a story, right? But that's a story about them as a team. The most powerful aspect of that story is the story. So personal stories, the story of a team. And lastly, cultural stories. What does that mean? Right? That means leaning into the stories of movies. Right? I just told you the story of the Elephant Whisperers. Leaning into the stories of the movies, leaning into mythology. What did Krishna say through Arjun in Gita, right? That's the cultural storytelling, and also public figures. What do we learn from leaders like Ratan Tata? What did he teach us? So most leaders that I have personally been influenced by combine those three really well. Unfortunately, this isn't a subject. This isn't a class in most MBA programs, but it should be.
I think it should be, because combining the three elements that you're saying is a powerful way of motivating a team also, as well as bringing the change whenever required. Back to the armed forces that I served in. Motivating people was basically through storytelling and talking of the war heroes of the past, people who really sort of done wonders, and you talk of them and you inspire people and then you inspire them more to do more, and they willingly follow you when at the end of the day some of them would not be alive.
Exactly right. That's a great example. You've just given your own example. The example that I want to take is the storytelling of the organization Amul, which is India's iconic organization or dairy cooperative. There's two parts to it: one, their own story, and how they tell stories through their advertisements is a very good example. And again, like you and I said, we should propagate the fact that this should be part of our curriculum in management courses, or actually in all courses where people are going to work with people. Wherever people are going to work with people, storytelling is important.
Let's change the setting. And I'll come back to your question on movie halls, but let's change that setting to hospitals. Haven't hospitals evolved and changed over the years? The entire medical infrastructure has evolved. But who's the best doctor when you're laying on that hospital bed as a patient? It's that doctor that comes and treats you like a character in a story, not like a data point, who's right, patient 622 in a room and has the ABC issues, but understands your context, understands your background, understands your cultural orientation, your personal motivation and weaves his treatment around them. So I keep referring to it because there's no more critical change any organization can go through than a person going through a medical situation, and storytelling is critical there too.
What I feel is that storytelling is a part of a good leader.
Yeah.
In order to be an effective leader, in order to be a good motivator, in order to sort of lead your team well, storytelling is a part of the leadership method.
Yes. Yes. Which means you have to always be watching for stories, right? I call it —
And also make them relevant.
Exactly.
And the stories actually come out from the people who are listening to you also. You can do some preparation, but then when you're talking you can sort of take them on the fly actually.
100%. But you're hitting exactly, and that's why I said I need — you and I and leaders need to have our story banks. How that story comes out is contextual to that moment. That's called situational leadership, right? To your point, it could happen during that moment. The telling of the story could happen on the fly, but the act of watching for stories and creating a bank of stories is a conscious leadership attribute, right? And leaders who do that are the ones, because remember, Pavi, if you're capturing stories, why are you a good leader? Because that means you're a good observer. That means you'll also know — you said you had, in the army, right — you'll observe people around you, you'll know when somebody isn't fully there, right, when something is going on in their story, and you'll tap into it. So a good story banker is a good storyteller, is also a good observer.
And also, you know, the storytelling needs to captivate your audience so that they listen to you. Sometimes when you are sort of driving a change, or in a corporate setting, people are listening to you, but they're not with you.
Yes. Yes. Totally. Listening and absorbing, right? Listening and being motivated to action are two different things. They listen to you because of your position of command.
They just sit there because they see that should they not be there, you know, you get after this. But then their involvement needs to actually start emerging in some form. And that's, I think, where good storytelling and binding people together with a story —
Exactly. Maybe it's a good time — I was personally going back to the story bank of it, right? So I was watching something recently, I don't know if it was on Netflix or some other streaming area, but this was a program about penguins. Okay. And it was a program about penguins and the fledging process. The fledging process — and I'll send the link to you. You must watch it. The fledging process is when hundreds of penguins at a particular time in the season come to the edge of the cliff, right? This cliff is nothing but ice. And they jump hundreds of feet into the ocean below. Okay? And this is when they are around six months old, when penguins turn around six months old.
It was a very powerful visual. So somebody who had captured that story had done a great job visually representing it. It captured my attention. But as I was watching it, I was watching that penguin, right? And so what they show is hundreds of penguins literally like almost in a line, like you led the army. It was almost like somebody's commanding them to stand in a line across that whole edge of the cliff, and they're all looking down and nobody's taking action, and then one penguin jumps, and guess what happens after that?
Everyone follows.
All other penguins start jumping. Oh my, it's like nature has it all there. We've forgotten that nature teaches us leadership, right? Leaders don't teach us leadership. So then I was taking that story and saying, what does that mean if I have to take that story to my team? The story to the team is that when one penguin leaps, others follow. That means courage is contagious, right? And doing things together creates momentum, right? Because the speed increased — like the first one jumped, then there was one, then there was another, and suddenly there were two jumping and there were four jumping, and the momentum of the process increased, right?
So to me, how I translate that story for my team is courage is contagious, right? So we as a team need to be courageous. We learn from each other, right? People rarely leap into change because, oh, the spreadsheet makes sense, and if we do this change in two years, we'll be increasing our profits by 40%. That's not going to drive people to believe in you, right? But if they see what they could do to influence others — because everybody wants to be an influencer, right? Not in the Instagram sense, but everybody wants to be an influencer. So they trust the leader who says, "I've been in those waters. We will be okay. Let's hold our hands, jump in, swim together, and let's trust the environment that it'll hold us up" — the water that the penguins trusted to hold them up. And once that trust was visible, they were all jumping with confidence. So just an example of how I would take a story and translate it to the team.
You know, one of the things that I think is very important also is the story must resonate with your audience.
Exactly.
So you know, the quality of your story must be at par with the intellect level of the audience that you're talking to.
I totally agree with you. Yes.
So yes, sometimes when you get it wrong, you know, if your pitch is too high and the audience is slightly different, they don't resonate with it, and so your story can go off color.
Absolutely. We've all sat in movies where we said, "Oh my god, what's going on?" You want to walk out of the movie hall or turn off the screen because it's not resonating with you. But the person who made the story and who's written the story and made the film — it resonated with him.
Correct. Correct.
So audience — 100%, audience is important, and that's why we say it in all our discussions, right, different strokes for different folks. The how is more important than the what. To your point, the story is the story. You need to use it in the right place and you need to use it in the right way.
Let's do a little this thing. How do you structure a story?
Yeah, great point. Yes, let's go to the structure of the story. I do want to close loop on your point about who you're telling the story to is important. I want to wrap — I've been watching Zoran Mandani really closely.
No, you — Zoran Mandani meeting Donald Trump, and I thought Donald Trump had changed his pitch.
Changed his pitch, right? But in his entire campaign Zoran Mandani did not make it about the data. He translated the data to the audience, to your point about you need to know your audience and who you're speaking to. So when he was speaking to mothers or women, he was talking about that you leave home at 5:00 p.m., right? A parent misses dinner, there's a student juggling responsibilities. So, he takes that number and converts it into his issues, which is the issues about transportation, right? Or housing and so on and so forth.
But to your point on what is the typical structure of a story, the way I like to look at it is basically three parts are very important to a story: character, conflict and conclusion. That's a typical arc, what they call as a story arc, right?
You know, I have a slight difference. You know, what I call is you need to have a challenge.
Yeah, true, yes.
Your storytelling has to be related to the challenge. The challenge must sort of convert itself into what is the action, what is the action required to sort of beat the challenge or what you should do, and what is the result.
Yeah, so I think both of us are saying the same thing, it's just in a different way. So there's challenge, there's action and there's result that a good story should have. How you structure the story is by taking the characters, by taking the place, and then making the conflict into a conclusion, which is the action. Let's actually — I want to take another Netflix example here, sir, for challenge, action and result. Have you watched the series The Crown? If not — again, I have.
You have? Yes. Okay. Wonderful. So, The Crown — what was the challenge? The monarchy is losing relevance. Okay. That's the challenge in that story. What's the action? The action the storytellers took was humanizing the queen's struggles, right? They shifted the story from the monarchy to the personal aspect of the queen as the action. And what was the result? It created a global audience empathy and it also led to a cultural revival.
Absolutely right. Now let's move over to storytelling for impact.
Yeah. You know, and what is the impact that you're requiring, what you're wanting to create by telling a story? There can be multiple, but I'll tell you what I keep in mind when everyone on the team is encouraged to tell stories. And one thing I want to clarify, because all the time we've been saying leaders, right — it feels like the storytelling responsibility is only with this leader, or leaders who have a certain title. But storytelling is a team activity. It isn't just a leadership activity.
You know, you can have a team leader of a small team on the work floor also.
Exactly.
And you can have a storytelling between the worker and the team leader also.
Exactly. Exactly. And you could have storytelling among peers as well, right? You and I are telling stories here today. Peers could be sitting together and influencing each other as well.
So that's how you drive the best out of what you know. You need to be talking to others and seeing that whatever you do, whatever we're talking today, benefits somebody who's listening.
Correct. So you said what's the impact — storytelling for impact. I'll again always like to take an example, because we are talking about storytelling, right? It has to be about examples. But before I go there, there are three things that should impact anything we do. We should see, what are the outcomes we want out of what we are doing? So if you are telling a story, you need to watch for three things. Have you increased trust in that situation, right? That doesn't mean trust is low, but trust is also a bank you keep building on. We are creating that trust.
Correct.
So that's impact number one that should happen out of the storytelling. Two, you're creating a culture of empathy, right? Because when you start taking, like we said earlier, the personal story, the cultural story or the iconic stories that are there, you start creating empathy as a cultural attribute, and most organizations that do well are empathetic organizations. Lastly, my third impact is always you break down the silos, right? Whether it's between people, between teams, between structures. I think we had a discussion once about root cause, right? How do you go to the root cause of things? What do you do when you do root cause? It is all storytelling. You start unpacking the story, right? And then that changes the way you look at things, look at that same problem. So those are the three things, and then I'll give you an example, but I think you're trying to —
You know, what I wanted to say is sometimes when you relate a personal story about how you conducted yourself or what decisions you took in the past which were not good, and you say that you learned from — you took a decision in a particular circumstance and it did not turn out right and you don't want to repeat the same mistakes, so hence we will make a change. Now that kind of a thing resonates with people.
Yes. Yes. 100, 200% — personal. We said personal story.
You're admitting to a fault and you say you realize that there's been a fault and you need to sort of change it.
Yes. Yes. That's a great point that goes back to being a vulnerable leader, right? The first step of being a vulnerable leader, to your point, is to share your own examples of, whether fault or failure, whatever word we want to use — fault, failure, mistake, whatever that was — but you share your story and you talk about what you learned from that, and what therefore others take away, what they can learn from that. I totally agree with that example.
And one of the things that I would like to say is that by storytelling we need to be able to drive the team together.
Yes. Yes.
If you can get the people together and fall in line to sort of achieve the objective, I think that would make a very good story.
Yeah. Like we just said, it breaks down the silos, right? You come together, you start marching towards one goal, one direction. And then also, we all know that the goalpost is always changing. So the story needs to keep evolving. It's not a one-time storytelling. It's not a one-time activity. It's a continuous activity.
That is why the politicians do very well, because they keep changing narrative regularly and they get the pulse of the people, and around the pulse —
They adjust based on what's going on, right? And sometimes we wonder, it doesn't sit well with us, and that's when they're not following the principles we said. You can't force your story on people. You need to understand the context for the story. Mandani's storytelling resonated with people and he won.
Exactly. And when the politician's storytelling doesn't resonate with the people, he loses.
Correct. Correct. Exactly. Let's go back maybe to your point on impact. I like to share this example, which is Airbnb, right? Another organization that has grown and broken standard norms, right, in their structural, in their contextual way that they've structured the organization. So the principle that Airbnb follows very deeply is that people don't open their homes to strangers. People open their homes to stories.
True. Yes.
Right. They are inviting you not because you are a person who's going to pay them an X rent for five number of days, but because — and the way you look at an Airbnb booking, the Airbnb website — the owner of the home is telling their story as well, right, through the home. So guess how Airbnb holds their team meetings? In what is called story circles. They don't call it a team meeting. They call it a story circle. Okay. And what happens in the story circle — to your point, you just said it brings teams together. So whether it's engineers or designers or customer service associates or the owners of the homes, they come together in these story circles, and everybody is supposed to come prepared with three things, right? A memory telling them about a memorable host or a guest, a mistake that taught them something and a win that they want to share. That's the agenda. There's no other agenda. That's the only agenda that people come to the table to those story circles with.
It's a wonderful way of doing things, isn't it?
Yeah. So, what's the impact of that? Now there are no titles, because you're all sitting in a circle, right? So titles have dissolved. You're playing your role. Two, teams become human, not functional, right? Because whether you're an engineer or a designer, you could have a story about a guest, you could have a failure or a mistake like you said, and you could have a win you want to share. So it becomes human instead of, oh, this is the engineering department, this is the customer service department, right? It breaks down that silo. And lastly, creativity becomes collective, meaning coming out of that, they take their lessons learned and they translate it into an action plan.
And everybody agrees to it.
And then there's consensus, right? Which is one of the biggest challenges in organizations as well.
Absolutely. Now, let's talk of something else. Let's talk of what is the number one mistake leaders make when trying to use stories to influence others.
Yes. Being too polished. You mentioned vulnerability, right? When you try and construct — even this conversation, right, we let it flow, we let it go into thought processes. If we had come to the table with saying this is how we'll begin, these are the questions — you changed the way you flowed your questions based on how we were having a conversation. So being too polished, in my view, is the biggest pitfall leaders make. What I mean by that is that when a story becomes over-rehearsed, it becomes a presentation, not a connection.
Yeah, I think people like to sort of generally talk of things rather than being presented with. I think that is the game changer that one should try and follow in all corporates also.
Correct. Because people want connection, people want you to be real, right? People don't want to be spoken to, and what ends up happening — I've seen slides, sir, where there are stories written on the slide, but you're not coming across as an honest storyteller, and that changes the game.
You know, going back into the armed forces, whenever we have these war heroes, people who've been decorated for years, you talk of what they have done in the past, how they did it. It sort of resonates with the people and they want to aspire to do the same. I think that is what is required in today's world, and even in the corporate circles, if we talk of let's say Ratan Tata's leadership style or whatever, I think he was an institution by himself, and even today people sort of refer to Ratan Tata's legacy.
Yes. I'll tell you, I work with Wipro today, right, and you have Azim Premji, who's an iconic leader who founded the organization. We have — and everybody knows this, right — we have very critical focus on ethics and integrity. But when we do those sessions, right, whether with leaders, whether with global leaders, regional leaders or teams, guess what happens in that? There are no slides. People come and tell Azim Premji stories, right, Rishad Premji's stories, and then every leader translates that aspect in their own stories. But those sessions happen almost like the story circle that I was talking about for Airbnb. So to your point, yes, you tell the stories about leaders, and that's how it's more impactful.
So we've gone on to the other question. What is the number one mistake leaders make when trying to use stories to influence others?
Well, I just said being too polished, being too rehearsed.
That's only one point. Any other fact?
Well, that's the number one mistake. You said number one. So, number one is —
Let's talk about number two and number three also.
So, number one is being too polished and being too rehearsed, because that becomes a presentation and not a connection, right? Number two is situational. So, we said it during the discussion. What is the story you're going to tell in what situation? Meaning situation means audience, place and context. Place also matters. Geography. I can't go to Eastern Europe and tell a cultural story about the Mahabharata.
Absolutely. You know, it's got to relate to the people and the geography.
Right. So, cultural orientation and situational to me is very important.
I'd like to make a point here also. You know, whenever you see multinationals making advertisements, in every country they have a local celebrity sort of being on the advertisement. It is not somebody from a third country coming into their country.
Exactly. However, let me translate that to my third. You said three, right? The third is leaders not educating themselves about the global context. So I could be — my roots may be in the eastern culture, but if I'm leading global — because all of us today in the corporate world, sir, are leading global teams — which means you have to invest the time in banking those stories, creating your story bank for all of the aspects, and then also shifting and creating the context. So really mature storytellers can take the Mahabharata and tell the story in Eastern Europe, just to continue with that example. But you should then know how to make the connection of the Mahabharata that people of Eastern Europe will make. So how do you connect the Eastern mythology to Greek mythology before you tell the story? Right? I'm taking mythology as an example, but that applies to organizational stories also.
The names of the gods — the Greek gods are different, the Indian gods are different. You know, you've got to be able to relate the story to the local people. Sometimes the story can remain the same.
100%.
And the impact that you're driving would probably be —
Correct. So I've seen people making the mistake, but I've also seen people being very very successful because they were thoughtful. My last point is, I'm going to contradict my first point. My first point I said over-rehearsed. My last point is underprepared.
Absolutely. And I think that's one of the biggest pitfalls. If you are not prepared and you don't understand the context of where you're going to be speaking and what are you going to be speaking, I think that is —
But it's a fine line, right? That's why this needs to be taught in practice in a way, because as new leaders you're like, oh, do I be underprepared or do I just wing it? You're not supposed to wing it, right? You are supposed to prepare your story, but you're not supposed to over-rehearse your story. And ultimately, it's about the credibility and the honesty with which you come across during your process of storytelling.
I sort of marvel at the politicians because they can create a story which relates to the audience that they are talking to, generally at all times.
Yes.
You know, and that is why they're good politicians, because they understand the pulse of the people who are surrounding them. Even if they are in a different society, they can talk there. If they are talking to the ground level people, they can talk differently.
Sometimes they miss the mark as well. So we've had those situations when leaders travel globally — like just taking India and US as an example, we've had both the situations — when they become too rigid about what they are bringing to the table and that's the only script they can follow, they can't shift the script based on the situation, and then that lands flat, right? That lands flat as well.
Absolutely. You know, and I think we've spoken about storytelling today, and I think let's bring an end to the session.
Before we end, I want to make sure we cover this piece, which is — we've all watched the Cadbury's advertisement, right? And to me that should be a case study in storytelling. It's the story of a working woman balancing career and personal life, right? But it worked, and it worked because of all the things we just said throughout the last conversation. It put a character in the center, which is a real character. It uses relatable global context, right, because most viewers, whether in India, US, America, UK, Australia, can connect with the pressures and joys of juggling work and personal life. I told about conflict. It speaks about conflict, meaning the real challenges, right? And then resolution, meaning the emotion and the inspiration. And in a quick 30-second clip, it makes a connection.
You know, and generally these clips nowadays are getting shorter and shorter because the air time is becoming so expensive. You got to tell your story in five to six seconds.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, people are on their phones. They don't have the attention span to listen to you telling long stories, right?
So you know, I think let's call it a day and let's end. And you know, I'd like to thank you, Kashana, for sharing your expertise on how leaders can move beyond logic and leverage the power of storytelling to create real impact. If there's one key takeaway for our listeners today, it is: the story you tell is the culture you create. That's what you said.
100%. Thank you so much.
And remember, the goal isn't just to be heard. It is to be felt and to inspire action.
Yes. Ultimately outcomes — why are you telling this story? Outcomes matter. And my personal feeling is that we should always start small and find our authentic voice and turn data points into human movements. Yes. And I would say the one thing — start collecting your — like, I'm very obsessed with story bank, right — start collecting your stories, become better observers.
And most of us have stories but we never collated them together.
Correct. Yes. Yes.
And when you want to collate them, you do not recall what you've experienced at that point.
Yes. Exactly. So start doing that as a conscious activity. Right?
It's like somebody in the party tells you, can you sing, and you say I don't know what to sing, and otherwise you've been sort of mumbling so many songs.
That's a great analogy.
When you want to recall something, you can't even recall the first word of any song.
First word of that song. Yes. Yes. It's the same thing, because you've not practiced it right. You've not really consciously thought about it.
And to all our listeners today, I'd like you to sort of learn more about Kashana's professional insights and work by searching her on LinkedIn. And though we'd be sending out the LinkedIn contact, but you know, she's so famous, you can always find her on LinkedIn. And thank you, Kashana, for being here.
And thank you all, listeners, for tuning in today. Storytelling for influence, inspiring teams and driving change, I think is the mantra that we should follow from now onwards.
Thank you for having me today.
And I'd like everybody to like and subscribe and share this podcast with as many people as you possibly can. Thank you very much, Kash.
Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care.
