'The Conflict is Your Story'

He was a straight-A student confidently stepping into his final college exam.

But when the professor asked the students to flip over the page, Walt Benninger grew a bit nervous.

“I’ve taught you everything there is to know except for this one thing,” the professor said. “What is the name of the person who cleans this room?”

Benninger, now the CEO of Charles Schwab, flunked the test, but it was a key lesson for him to “know the Dottys” in his life.

Author and business consultant Karen Eber frequently references the Benninger anecdote when she advises corporations and teams about their messaging.

“It’s a story that brings a lot of meaning,” Eber said. “It just says so much and the listener thinks, ‘Would I have known Dotty’s name? Who are the Dottys I need to know in my life?’”

The Daily Coach caught up with Eber recently to discuss the hallmarks of an impactful story, where leaders can lose their audience, and what she hopes readers take from her book “The Perfect Story” set to be released this fall.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Karen, thanks a lot for doing this. Tell us about your childhood and some key lessons from it.

I grew up in Miami in a family of four. We lived in a house on a cul-de-sac and were outside from early morning until dinner time. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was in middle school. My father was in banking, then ended up going back into the school system as a guidance counselor.

I knew pretty early on I wanted to go to Florida State. I played the flute and the piccolo and was really excited to go be in the marching band. It was in an era where the football team was great and going for its first National Championship with Bobby Bowden as the coach. But I went there because I also thought I was going to go into nursing. I spent a lot of the humanities requirement time working toward that, but when it was time to declare a major, I wanted to pivot to psychology and how to use it in business and help people do their jobs better.

You went on to work for General Electric and Deloitte in the ensuing years. What were your biggest takeaways from your experiences after graduating?

I first went to the Boston area and was working for companies that became Hewlett Packard after some mergers and acquisitions. I got the chance to learn really quickly how to make people better from training to leadership development. Then, I had an opportunity to do consulting at Deloitte for a few years working externally with clients.

What I found was what people struggled with there, people struggle with everywhere. It’s a fast-paced environment where you’re trying to deliver results for your clients while also helping grow your employees and create a meaningful experience for them. I think when you have big projects and deadlines, that’s where the leadership growth comes because that’s where people max out on coaching people and giving real-time feedback. What I found is that people get stuck in the moment, but want to think about how to do things differently. They want to think about what will cause people to follow them.

When did storytelling become such a significant part of your life?

It’s a two-part answer really. I used it often, but I was never thinking about what I was doing or how to do it better. As I started to get into these roles at Deloitte and General Electric, where very few people had the authority to say yes but everyone could say no, I was using stories to try to influence all of those No’s to try to slow them down and get them on my side.

People started asking me, “How are you doing this?” “How do I do this?” “What can I do?” It’s part of how I’ve always done my work. When I was at GE with employees in 150 countries, the only way to create culture for everyone was to touch each person and have them feel like they were connecting with what you were saying and what that meant for them.

You mention in your TED Talk that leaders are often allergic to telling stories. Why do you think that is?

I think a lot of leaders in business think that to have executive presence, you have to be formal and have perfect slides, and talk about data, and that stories might be too soft. They don’t like the vulnerability of it and it exposes too much. A lot of what I end up doing is challenging leaders on this and getting them to recognize what’s happening in the brain. You don’t have to share the most personal event ever for it to have a big connection. A lot of it is challenging the biases and getting them to recognize that storytelling is actually a more memorable dynamic and way to communicate.

You believe there are four questions to any story. Can you share what they are and what do you think coaches and leaders should consider before preparing to share a story with their team?

I think coaches are natural storytellers. The halftime talk is rooted in story. If that’s not a motivational, influential moment, then what is? They connect players to stories in these moments that are aspirational and hope-filled.

The first question is, what is the context? What is the setting for the story? Who’s involved and why should the audience care?

Second, what is the conflict? What is the moment of tension where something happens that has to be resolved?

Third is the outcome. What is the result of the conflict?

Fourth is, what is the takeaway? What is the theme you want the audience and players to come away thinking?

You can do that in five minutes before you tell the story to make sure you’re anchoring on the major points of it. It gives you an outline to tell a better, tighter story.

You put a big emphasis on the conflict and think everything changes there.

The conflict is your story. As soon as you run out of conflict, you run out of story. It’s like your gas pedal. The conflict is saying here’s something that needs to be resolved. Maybe it’s between two people or two teams or between a person and him/herself realizing his values weren’t in alignment. The conflict is realizing something needs resolution, and that’s what the heart of the story is that’s going to be explored. We should get some type of understanding of what that outcome is as a result of the conflict.

A lot of coaches and leaders out there probably don’t view themselves as great storytellers and may think their strengths lie more in Xs and Os or data. For someone who wants to get better at storytelling, what advice would you give?

Everyone can learn to be a great storyteller. When you see someone tell a story that looks effortless, it’s usually because a lot of work has gone into it or they’ve practiced a lot. Just like a great coach can read a situation, know what’s needed and make the right calls, in storytelling, you’re going to learn and get your sense of timing.

There are different steps that make that better. Some of it comes down to what’s happening in the brain and how do you lean into the neuroactivity. Step one, always think about your audience, who you’re telling the story to and what you want the outcome to be.

Where storytelling goes wrong is people focus on the story they want to tell and not enough on who they’re telling it to. The first thing is get really clear on the audience and what you want the outcome to be.

The second is use the context, conflict, outcome, takeaway because that’s at least going to give you an outline. From there, you just start playing with things like tension and details and making people feel like they’re there. When you put these different things in, it changes the experience of it.

Is there anything in particular you’d caution leaders about with their stories?

What I’d say about data in particular is that it’s not an over-reliance on it, but if you don’t create meaning for people and are just putting up data, it’s like putting up an inkblot. Everybody’s going to view it through their own experiences and make their own assumptions. What storytelling is doing is helping take people from their assumptions and come to a common understanding so you can have a discussion. The caution is not thinking through the story you want to tell and the basic pieces you can expand on. Otherwise, you’re rambling and telling a story that’s not relevant for your audience and doesn’t make sense.

I can tell you my favorite story ever, but if it doesn’t focus on the audience or connect to you, it doesn’t mean anything. If it’s just rambling and lacking any structure or detail, it’s just a status update of events and not anything that makes me feel like I’m there.

What do you hope people take from your soon-to-be-released book, “The Perfect Story?”

I want people to recognize that you can learn to tell the perfect story. There’s no real such thing as the perfect story, but you take whatever stories you have and make them perfect. You take your ideas and you make them perfect when you walk through the steps to make it meaningful for your audience. My wish is that storytelling becomes accessible and someone can take this and the steps and now get better at what they do and think about what they can lean into further.

Q&A Resources

Karen Eber ― Linktree | Book: The Perfect Story