4-minute read
The latest neuroscience suggest that we are hardwired to respond to the leader with the most compelling story. We examine the evidence and what it means for those of us who lead teams, business units or countries.
Another lesson we can’t ignore
Last week, in Hungary’s election the contender swept aside the incumbent, challenging all who had assumed that the rise of right-wing populism is inevitable. It’s another lesson about the power of story – and one we can’t ignore.
If the devil has all the best tunes, it had been assumed that in politics the populist right has all the best stories. But Hungary’s election last week overturns that assumption.
Viktor Orbán, one of Europe’s most durable political storytellers, was defeated by Péter Magyar. Orbán’s narrative of national sovereignty and external threat had held for over a decade, but it was replaced by something more compelling. Magyar won by replacing Orbán’s story with a more immediate, credible one — about corruption, cost of living, and the basics of a functioning state. Leadership, once again, turned not on argument, but on which story people believed they were living inside.
Integral to our neural circuitry
Threshold’s most requested course over the last 12 months was Storytelling– or Strategic Narrative. No longer a fad or something warm and fluffy, storytelling is increasingly recognized as a vital piece of kit for the persuasive leader. This is based on hard neuropsychological evidence. The power of story is integral to our neural circuitry, and we ignore it at our peril.
There’s a simple but revelatory exercise that we do with participants in our workshops. They view a grainy, black and white film sequence, lasting just a couple of minutes. It’s simply a series of geometric shapes, moving around on a 2-D background. We’ve run this exercise with numerous leadership groups, in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. Instinctively, based on just few simple strands, almost all participants shape what they are seeing into a story.
The shapes have wants and motivations. There are characters (people frequently describe one of the shapes as a bully); there are obstacles or barriers; there are choices and those choices have consequences. In short, they see the classic ingredients or a story.
Here’s a thought experiment that further makes the point. (With thanks to Claudia Hammond’s All in the Mind.)
Our need for coherence
You hear the breaking news: There’s been a burglary at the local Manor House. You hear that police have arrested the butler. What’s your assumption? That the Butler’s guilty. You then hear that the police have released the butler due to lack of evidence. What do you believe now? That the butler is – in the absence of evidence – entitled to the presumption of innocence? Probably not, if you’re like most of us. Your feeling is, ‘Darn it! He’s about to get away with it!’ Now, there’s another newsflash. The Gardener has been arrested. Only now are we typically, willing to accept that the butler was innocent.
We only abandon a story when it’s replaced by another coherent story. The instinct to value coherence over and above evidence is at the heart of several high-profile miscarriages of justice.
In 2007, Amanda Knox was cast as the manipulative outsider and convicted of the murder of Meredith Kircher. In 2001, following the murder of Peter Falconio, while on a camper van trip in Australia, suspicion turned to his girlfriend Joanne Lees. In 2010, Christopher Jefferies was publicly vilified over the murder of Joanna Yeates because he fit the story of a suspect, long before the evidence caught up. In all these cases the real perpetrators turned out to be random psychopaths. This illustrates the way in which our minds have a preference for coherence over randomness.
We weave our perception of the world into stories even when we are unaware of it, and the evidence suggests that the greatest intellects are just as susceptible to this tendency as everyone else.
Deeply embedded in how we make sense of the world
In his book Into the Woods, John Yorke sets out to explain story structure and encounters a striking pattern: many of the writers and filmmakers most resistant to the idea of formula nonetheless produce work that conforms to it with remarkable consistency. Across novels, films, and television, the same underlying shape occurs (even when the creator’s unaware of it.) Yorke’s conclusion is difficult to dismiss: story is not simply a cultural convention or a creative choice, but something far more fundamental. It’s an organising principle we default to, suggesting that narrative structure is deeply embedded in how we process and make sense of the world.
Why do we do this? Again, it comes back to that core idea that our minds have evolved to value coherence over truth. And story provides coherence. That’s increasingly the conclusion of high-profile neuroscientists and evolutionary psychologists.
The neuroscientist
Michael Gazzaniga is the neuroscientist most associated with identifying the human mind’s need for coherence. This insight comes from his groundbreaking work, around the split brain. Gazzaniga observed that where the two hemispheres cannot fully communicate, the left hemisphere — the brain’s “interpreter”— will automatically construct explanations for actions and events, even when it lacks the necessary information. Presented with gaps, it does not pause or admit uncertainty; it fills them with a plausible story. The implication is stark: our brains are not wired to seek truth in any strict sense, but to impose coherence. And narrative is the mechanism by which that coherence is achieved.
Robert Trivers, the evolutionary biologist, and author of Folly of Fools, takes this a step further. His work on self-deception suggests there is a clear evolutionary advantage in believing our own stories, even when they are not strictly true: conviction is persuasive, and in high-stakes situations, it can be decisive. An individual who acts with total belief projects certainty and determination, and is more likely to prevail than one troubled by doubt. In this view, we evolved to be in the grip of our stories, because belief itself confers a survival advantage, regardless of its relationship to truth.
The leader as storyteller
As a leader, you are a communicator, and as a communicator you are a storyteller. Over the last 12 months we have helped leaders to win buy in to strategic change, mergers and acquisitions, and new market-facing campaigns, all by leveraging the power of story.
It’s time to take control of the story you are projecting. Your colleagues will already be creating one, and once a story has a grip, it’s all the harder to change.
To find out how we can help leaders in your organisation to be more impactful, influential and persuasive visit www.threshold.co.uk
