Prof. Leopold Kohr is known to all too few, but many are certainly familiar with the phrase he helped to spread worldwide: "Small is beautiful." This sentence perfectly sums up what Leopold Kohr postulated, even if it did not come from him but from his companion Ernst F. Schumacher.
Prof. Kohr was a philosopher, national economist, political scientist, multiple book author and thought leader of the environmental movement. He constantly warned against structures that exceed their critical size, because this inevitably leads to collapse.
I had the pleasure of meeting Leopold Kohr in person several times. One day in the late 80s I drove him home in my very worn Citroen 2V (aka duck) and so I may add "chauffeur of an alternative Nobel Prize winner" to the list of my exploits that I like to recount around the campfire.
One of my favourite stories by Kohr goes like this. When he was a boy, he lay ill in his bed in Oberndorf near Salzburg, the place where people are joyfully embracing each other this year on the 200th anniversary of the song "Silent Night" created there. Little Leopold's father was a doctor who examined his son and presented the findings with the following words: "Leopold, be happy, you have scarlet fever!
"But why should I be happy when I have scarlet fever?" replied the little boy.
The father replied: "If you're not happy, you'll have scarlet fever too!
This is Story!
Strictly speaking: This is leadership & motivation through story.
So father Kohr pushed his son on twice. Firstly, he tells him: "Don't let it spoil your day - just because your temperature curve is pointing upwards, doesn't mean the corners of your mouth have to hang down."
And secondly, with this apparent paradox, he implicitly led him on the righteous path of psychosomatic wisdom: "A happy mind contributes greatly to recovery!"
Skilful leadership activates values, in this case: joy. The perfect delivery form of values, as we doctors know, is story. Preferably three times a day at least, because then the vital soul vitamin called meaning is created.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was also a philosopher, better as an author than as a pilot, and wrote a lot of good things. You probably have at least one copy of "The Little Prince" on your shelf, with a personal dedication from your first great love. Or with a dedication from you to your first great love, who gave the book back to you after you were no longer the great love ...
For us little story princes, there's a vital phrase in terms of leadership & motivation from de Saint-Exupéry's "The City in the Desert": "If you want to build a ship, don't gather men* together to procure wood, assign tasks and divide up the work, but teach the men to long for the wide, endless sea."
This is Story!
This story is not about a ship. Nor is it about the wide sea. It is a story about freedom. This value describes the common longing of the narrator and his audience.
If we understand this, then we also understand that story-telling falls far short and that story-sharing is much more our magic word. Because story means: shared common values.
Always.
And especially when it comes to leadership and motivation. Then meaning arises, the primal longing of us humans.
In a perfect world, this would also be understood by the countless buzzword-gurgling hipsters on the festival and summit stages of this world, who can't sleep peacefully if they don't bullshit at least a little storytelling heap in front of the audience during their keynotes. But in a perfect world, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry would still be piloting his biplane over the clouds with a song by Reinhard Mey on his lips.
What story can do - in art and in the art of marketing communication anyway, but also as an instrument of leadership, for motivation, in innovation management or for personality development - a guy is writing a book about it right now, by the way, and I can't wait for it to finally be finished.
In the meantime, we should do as my grandmother, the old Storydudette, did and write "not at all small but beautiful" behind our ears in scarlet letters: No Story. No Glory.
*) Applies mutatis mutandis to women as well ...