Leadership Principle #5  There is no need to rely on manufactured fanfare or high-tech presentations to motivate people. Leaders should simply tell stories.
“‘You saw with your own eyes the great trials and those great signs and wonders.’” – Deut 29:3

In Deuteronomy, Moses reminds his people of the adventures of their 40 years wandering in the desert. Then he shocks them with another fact about his own mortality: “I am now 120 years old; I can no longer act as your leader” (Deut. 31:2).

He says a new leader, Joshua, will take them into the Promised Land. If they follow God’s laws and Joshua’s lead, they will prosper. If they don’t, catastrophe will befall them.

Moses instructs the people on how to set up a government, what holidays to celebrate, and how to wage war. Though he hasn’t yet delivered his people to the Promised Land, he uses a simple illustration to keep them focused and excited: plentiful milk and honey will be there for the taking. To people who had subsisted on manna for decades, this sounds like heaven!

Moses weaves history and facts into a vision for the future without the need for a whiz-bang PowerPoint presentation or emotional pleas. He encourages everyone that they can in fact make it without him and defeat the inhabitants in the new lands.

When his people are reminded how far they’ve come, the impossible appears doable.

Jim Collins’ Good to Great explores a similar paradox: “Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. And at the same time, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

The best communicators tell stories out of habit. If you lack in this area, the following common situations will cue you when to use them.

1. Tell a story to drive home a point – If you want people to understand something, attach a story to it.
2. Tell stories if you need employee support – When people understand the dramatic tales behind the leader’s decisions, they more readily support those decisions.
3. Tell stories when you need to spread organizational culture – Anecdotes about happy customers or organizational history drive home who you are, reminding staff and volunteers of the core values they need to uphold.
4. Tell a story to enforce your vision – Are people failing to get behind your vision? Describe the future in story form (like Moses did). What will happen when the organization reaches its goals? What reward is awaiting everyone?

The storytelling leader maintains a hold on reason while describing an adventure.

-- This post is from chapter 5 of Leading from the Lions' Den: Leadership Principles from Every Book of the Bible (B&H, 2010)