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Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.
Johanna Walker (00:00):
The gate is the thing that you want, the buy-in from your team or the sale or the funding, whatever it is, the moving walkway is the story that's going to get you there faster. And when the moving walkway is broken, you don't get to the gate on time. And that's what happens with a lot of stories is people know they got to tell stories but they don't really know how to so it doesn't work the way we think it should. But I think it is the thing that connects people to meaning and ultimately moves things along more faster and more sustainably and with more depth.
Matt Poepsel (00:38):
One of the most powerful leadership tools you have may not be another framework, dashboard, or productivity system. It just might be a story. Today we're exploring how storytelling helps leaders create meaning, build connection and bring strategy to life and why in a world increasingly shaped by AI, human presence may become one of the clearest advantages that we have. Our guest is Johanna Walker, a public speaking storytelling and presence coach who helps leaders, founders, and mission-driven professionals find their voice, make friends with the fear of speaking and communicate with more power, clarity, and connection. She's the founder of Women Who Speak, leads the Speaker's Playground, and brought her storytelling work to companies, communities, and the TEDx stage. Johanna has worked with me and my teams at the Predictive Index, helping my product leaders strengthen their storytelling and presentation skills. And today we're going to explore what every manager can learn from that work.
(01:29):
Johanna, welcome to the show.
Johanna Walker (01:31):
Thank you so much.
Matt Poepsel (01:32):
It's so wonderful to see you again. We ran into each other recently at a speaking event and I was not expecting to see you there. And oh my gosh, I was so glad to see that you were there and we got a chance to catch up and I'm so glad to have you on the show now.
Johanna Walker (01:45):
It's great to be here. Thanks.
Matt Poepsel (01:47):
It had been a long time since we met, but this notion of storytelling, it was important when you did that work that I mentioned earlier with my teams. Heck, it's more important now for all the reasons I can't wait to dig in with you. But I want to start with sort of the reality that it seems like managers are busier than ever. We've got a lot of pressure to hit goals, a lot of talk of productivity. I mentioned AI in the top. There's so many things that we could be focused on. Why should managers think about storytelling in this context of a leadership skill as opposed to just some other normal form of communication?
Johanna Walker (02:21):
Yeah, it's a great question because so many people think, "I don't have time for stories. Stories are great, but right, I don't have time for stories." But in fact, you talk about wanting to move faster and get the team focused. And in fact, I think a story is the quickest way to get there because stories make meaning. Story is the thing that creates meaning and when somebody is connected to why they're doing what they're doing, they're going to do it with more investment, more care, more commitment, and it's going to go faster. It's going to go faster. So I tell a story. The story that you heard me tell and the story that happened on my way to work with your team in Boston was late for a plane and I'm running to the gate and the moving walkway was broken. When I tell the story, I use it as a metaphor.
(03:08):
If the gate is the thing that you want, the buy-in from your team or the sale or the funding, whatever it is, the moving walkway is the story that's going to get you there faster. And when the moving walkway is broken, you don't get to the gate on time. And that's what happens with a lot of stories is people know they got to tell stories, but they don't really know how to so it doesn't work the way we think it should. But I think it is the thing that connects people to meaning and ultimately moves things along more faster and more sustainably and with more depth.
Matt Poepsel (03:39):
I think a lot of the communication that comes out of corporations today is fairly technical sometimes, or we just assume that people understand why we're making these big shifts that we're making. Sometimes they can be sensitive. Developments like return to office or change in policy, or if we lost a big customer, we're launching a new product, even though we're feeling some pressure from the competition, it may not be fully ready, but we just need to get it out there. And when we do those things without the story, I think people kind of fill in the blanks on their own or it creates that slowdown that you mentioned.
Johanna Walker (04:08):
Yeah. The story drops it to a human level. When you can see the human person that is impacted by the work that you do very specifically and individually, then it takes it to a different level.
Matt Poepsel (04:22):
It's so true. And it's this humanness, if you will, that's kind of being challenged with work today in some regards. And on this show, I often like to talk about these notions of performance, people, and purpose. These are the things we tend to want in our work lives. And I see story is really stitching these things all together pretty well, but I'd ask you as the expert, when you think about story, how can it help us go from even just managing tasks or doing some of the explanation as to why we might be doing something, but really connect people and help them understand why their work actually matters in the grand scheme, the bigger picture, however you want to frame it, how does story allow us to connect to meaning and purpose?
Johanna Walker (05:02):
I think a story helps people see who benefits when the work is done well and also the cost when it's not. And that's stakes. That's what's at stake. When you hear a good story, you lean into listen when something's at stake, you know what's at stake and that's what makes a good story. That's what drives a story forward. When you're really clear that there's a person who wants something, they may or may not get it, that's what's at stake. And when you can communicate, effectively communicate what's at stake to your people, they're going to stay for the end of the story. They're going to commit more wholeheartedly. And so I think when you talk about people, performance and purpose, a good story starts with a character, a person, a specific individual person who wants something, who has a goal and that's how it connects to people and people perform better when they understand the why.
Matt Poepsel (06:08):
I know that when you were doing your work with my teams and were on developing products at the time and so much of what I tried to do instinctively, and you helped me and my teams take it to the next level, is tell the stories from users that we would do interviews with. Here's the way they were trying to solve a problem if they had success with the product and you bring that back to engineers or to certain people working in the company that never get to talk to customers and all of a sudden it takes this thing that's like, well, we work all the time and never meet anybody who actually uses our products. You're like, "That's all I do is talk to people who use our products. So let me bring those stories back." And then all of a sudden you could see people light up saying, "Oh, they were able to do that.
(06:45):
" And they actually feel better. They feel a connection even though they weren't there in the room to hear it. And today, of course, we can share audio and video a little bit easier than we could back then, but I think stories have always been powerful and that connection, like you said.
(07:06):
And I think that a lot of the people listening might be thinking, "Oh no, stories. I don't really have any good stories." A lot of times we're just not wired to think about our stories. The people that you work with, how do you help them notice the stories that either have happened to them or that are already taking place around them? How should we choose of the available stories that we might tell? How do we notice them and how do we know that they're kind of ready to be developed? To pay attention, I mean, that's the one thing we certainly have to do, but I think also when you feel the emotion, I'm an observational person and I notice a lot of things I can see connections, but a lot of times they're not that interesting. There's not that much emotion behind it. I could see a duck crossing the street and be like, "Oh, there's a leadership lesson." And you're like, "Okay, maybe." But there was no mistakes, to your point.
(09:21):
But when you find something that there was, maybe you're talking to a customer and they surprised you with how they were using the product or you had an exchange or a bank teller and somebody came in and they were really frazzled and you were able to calm them down and you learned something about them. Every time you feel that emotion, you're like, "Okay, but take us back to the moment." So if I wanted to tell that story, you said it takes a time and a place. So we were just about to close, this customer came in, they were frazzled, they spilled their thing on the counter and I knew they were about to lose it, something like that.
(10:14):
I find that sometimes in our business, we get to hear a lot of storytellers, you and me, and sometimes people will add all these details that aren't actually moving us forward or are necessary. Others leave out entire pieces here, "Wait a second, I can't follow you. " So how do you advise the people in your workshops, et cetera? How do you know which details are actually helpful and which are, okay, that's enough? Right. And a lot of times we can get really invested in the details if we like those details, but it's really the story that's unfolding in your audience or your listener's mind. That's the most important part of how they're receiving that story, I think. Sometimes the details just like.
(12:03):
Yeah, exactly. I think Tom Clancy was famous for that in his books, putting so much detail. And if you like the details, that's great. But for those who weren't, you're like, "Oh my gosh, are we still talking about this? " But I think that in a business setting in particular, what are some of the most tried and true? I've heard a couple I've heard talking about the time and the place, understanding that there has to be change. When we think about the normal business communication that might take place, for example, when we have decisions that we've made, sometimes they're big. We've decided to buy our biggest competitor. You're like, "What? We haven't liked them for years and now all of a sudden they're part of our team." That's going to need a big story. Sometimes it's a lot smaller like, "Hey, you know what? I know we've been going through a lot and I want to make sure that I can kind of give the team a pep talk.
(12:46):
I want to tell them about a positive customer interaction so they know their work matters." That might be a smaller story, but in terms of the stakes of the story, are there any other key elements that we should be thinking about if we're kind of beginner storytellers in a business setting in particular?
Johanna Walker (13:00):
To me, the heart of the story and I've already said it a few times is the stakes is being able to identify what's at stake. So the question I ask is, so one is there's a character. The character could be a team, it could be you, it could be a customer, but there's a character. So when you really know who is the driver in this story, what's the goal? What do they want? And the stakes are when you can be really clear about what they want, but they may or may not get it. That's the story. It's like you want something that you may or may not get. And when you can build a story so that I'm with you, like, are they going to get it? Are they going to get the job or lose the job? Whatever it is, I'm going to be with you if I don't know whether or not you're going to get the thing that you want.
(13:43):
So I always say it's a character who wants something they may or may not get or has something there at risk of losing. When you can really articulate that, that's the heartbeat of the story. And when you can build it around that, your story's going to tick.
Matt Poepsel (13:59):
There's that natural tension. Stories need energy and that's where that tension comes from. In my experience in a business setting in particular, I might be telling you a story about the here and now, something that's kind of temporally relevant and that I was talking to a customer yesterday and here's what I learned or I really want to celebrate this team who did something novel at our company because it really showcases our culture. So that's pretty temporal. As leaders, a lot of times too, we're telling stories about the future, whether it's next year, this is going to be our targets for the year in terms of revenue, product launch, whatever it might be, you're going to be telling a story about the future and you still need those stakes. And in that case, you don't know how it's going to turn out for your team, your department, your company, whatever it might be.
(14:41):
So it's kind of like you have to figure out how to tell the story, but you don't have the ending yet and that's a different kind of a story.
Johanna Walker (14:47):
Right. It's a vision though. You're setting out a vision for yourself. And so the stakes are the vision. It's like you're living the story now and the vision is the thing that we want and the stakes are, we may or may not get it. Here's what it could look like if we go this way. Here's the cost if we don't. So you're painting a picture of either meeting the vision or not. And then we get to feel the costs in a very visceral way.
Matt Poepsel (15:15):
I think all managers would benefit from improving their storytelling, working with experts like yourself. If you find yourself talking and presenting to groups internal or external or both fairly regularly and you need to create an emotional response, a shift in perspective, a change within them, then it does make sense to absolutely study story. There's so many tried and true sort of story formats. It's fine in the beginning if you don't have a lot of background in my experience to be able to just use the proven methods. So a rags to riches story, there's so many different archetypes and saying like, "Just try that with the story that you have. See the one that fits best to the situation." Over time you can get more creative with that. I'm not saying you'd be Tarantino about it and start telling things out of order, but that might be a leap for us.
(16:01):
I've never felt bad using the tools or the templates almost if it's going to help me get through it, right?
Johanna Walker (16:09):
Yeah. I think templates are great and I think of them as something to push against. It can really help organize a scattered mind because stories aren't so linear and they can feel really messy and our lives are not always linear and clean and tidy. So it can be hard to say like, "How do I tell this story?" So much that happened and the really simple structure can help you kind of boil it down and you get to push against it. It can't fit the ocean in a paper cup, but you can try. And so it's like you can push against those templates. They serve as information and a container for you to play in and help you organize your thoughts and find clarity. But still, you're very human and you get to tell the story. So I always use the template and then leave it behind and then go back to it to figure out where the gaps are and then leave it behind.
(17:03):
So we get to go back and forth between the containers that help us find the story and then the luscious detail full human story that is reality.
Matt Poepsel (17:14):
Yeah. There's this notion that not everyone's going to tell the same story the same way, but I think it really does come down to practice. You might go to a party or something, you meet a person for the first time, they say, "Oh, what do you do for work?" Well, here's an opportunity to either just tell them your job title, which is the most boring thing probably ever, or tell them a story about what it is that you do. Have you ever noticed this or have you ever seen or have you ever wondered this like, this is what I do. And all of a sudden it's a lot more interesting to be like, wow. It doesn't be grandiose. It doesn't have to be long even. But I think casting your work and who you are, your identity in the form of a story, even if it's only 30, 60 seconds, you're going to have more interesting conversations than just being, "Oh, I work accounts receivable at XYZ company." You're like, okay.
Johanna Walker (17:58):
Yeah. Yeah. There's so many opportunities, so many different places where you can drop in a story and a story doesn't have to be, again, it doesn't have to be a big epic story. It can be just a moment of something happened or something's about to happen. I think to paint a picture. What a story does is it paints a picture and when you can paint a picture that your listener that can then see in their head, they're going to go with you.
Matt Poepsel (18:21):
And I think one of the biggest complaints that you get, and I know my team had it and I felt it myself too, is that it doesn't feel natural. Telling stories doesn't feel natural because a lot of times, maybe when you're kids, you tell stories all the time, but as an adult person in the workplace, it can feel a little awkward at first. Why is that? Why do we feel like it's not a natural thing to tell stories when we have that opportunity?
Johanna Walker (18:44):
I think habits, we get comfortable in our habits and our habits feel very natural because they're habits. When we go to break a habit, it feels very uncomfortable. It feels unnatural. So we don't do it because like, well, that doesn't feel authentic. That doesn't feel like me, but actually it's just not a habit. Recently, I've been really working on not picking up my phone unconsciously, just challenging my compulsive use of picking up my phone. And it's very natural to just pick up my phone, unconditional look at it, pick it up, pick it up. And when I don't, it's very uncomfortable. If I intentionally feel the impulse and I don't pick it up, it's uncomfortable. And so that's what happens when we're changing habits, that moment of creating a new pathway in our brain, it's going to feel uncomfortable, but we have to be willing to sit with that discomfort, get curious about it, try it, try it again, mess up a little, make mistakes and then it becomes a new habit and it starts to feel more comfortable because it's become a habit.
(19:48):
So we're creating new pathways and learning new skills. It takes time. It takes being willing to be imperfect, possibly not get it right, feel a little awkward, but ultimately it's going to serve us because it's opening a pathway to deeper connection and more meaning in your teams and relationships.
Matt Poepsel (20:13):
It makes me think too that we can probably start small. So let's say we have lunch with the same person quite often. Well, just one-on-one with that person next time, just pay a little more attention to your storytelling. See if you can turn up the volume a little bit and be more intentional with a story at that level. And then maybe in your next team meeting, if you have the opportunity, just try a little storytelling with people who you know quite well where it feels a little safe before you addres the entire company or some other group with strangers in it and that could be a little higher stakes.
Johanna Walker (20:42):
Yeah. And I think the flip side of that is inviting stories and asking questions that invite stories. And that is how we create a culture as leaders, how we create a culture of storytelling to ask rather than like, "Okay, what's the report for the week? What's the challenge you overcame this week? What's a mistake you made this week?" And then you start to normalize storytelling and normalize the challenges that we face. When you're inviting those stories, those moments as learning opportunities and sharing those stories in a team, then you're deepening the culture of meaning and everybody's more connected, everybody's more invested, everybody feels like they get to bring their humanity into the room and I think that always is going to serve work.
Matt Poepsel (21:32):
Totally. And I feel like whenever I do the kind of survey work about, "Tell me about the best boss you ever had. Tell me about the least favorite boss you ever had." Without fail in the least favorite, the thing I hear most often is they didn't take an interest in me outside of work. They didn't take an interest in my life beyond what I could do for them. This is a great opportunity to normalize, like you said, and invite in a safe way, some storytelling, right? Tell us about a time when we're all going to do this. We're all going to learn something about one another. We can take the first 10 minutes of a meeting and say whatever it might be. One of my favorites that I like to ask is I say, "Tell me about the first live music concert or experience you ever had." Because everybody can remember, "Oh, let me tell you.
(22:15):
I went to this. " And if you invite them to elaborate a little bit and like you said, set the scene, tell me about the time. Who'd you go with? Were you excited? Was it everything you thought it would be? You just said it. How do you create a culture where we actually sort of normalize the fact that we're going to tell stories about something that's obviously pretty silly, but are we actually creating a muscle for our team that's going to create that connection?
Johanna Walker (22:37):
And I have to say that that is something that might feel awkward the first time you do it. If the listeners are like, "I'm going to go ask a question," and then people kind of don't share or it feels ... And it's like, "Well, I'm never going to do that again." So that's exactly the point. That's exactly the moment when, okay, we're creating a new muscle, we're creating a new habit, we're shifting the direction of the team culture. So you have to be willing to feel some of those growing pains and some of that discomfort and a little bit of awkward. I just say, "Go for awkward." And then the awkward's going to transform and you might get some resistance. If you decide to stick with it, you'll start to get buy-in and people will start to show up in different ways and be willing to take more risks and be willing to collaborate in different ways and something's going to change.
(23:31):
That discomfort is going to change into connection.
Matt Poepsel (23:33):
You're making the most important point in my view, which is that that connection is what's being challenged right now. I think the way that we work, the nature of how technological our work is becoming, our focus on productivity, teams are struggling right now. It means they're underperforming as well because of this lack of connection. I think if it means going through a little bit of discomfort to get to the place where we've normalized story, we've strengthened that muscle, people are feeling connection, it's worth it because you're going to get the payoff with higher retention, higher engagement, higher if you want to use the nerd talk, organizational citizenship behaviors. All that stuff gets better when we feel connected to one another. That's what story does. So you might have to go through some of that discomfort to get there, but once people are comfortable telling stories and they actually sort of lean into it a bit, the friction goes away to some extent.
Johanna Walker (24:25):
It's so powerful. It's kind of magic. I think when people can really drop into that, to connecting with one another in human and authentic ways, so much changes, so much opens up.
Matt Poepsel (24:38):
And have your clients started talking to you about that a litle bit with AI, I know can generate stories left and right, but they can't do what people do.
Johanna Walker (24:45):
Yeah, no, no, they can't. And ultimately, as you said, I think at the top of the show, it's the competitive advantage. More and more we have to know how to talk to other human beings and make those connections, build those relationships, be vulnerable, be human with one another. That's the gold standard.
Matt Poepsel (25:04):
It really is. And it's true for all the humans in our life and it will stay within the world of work for a second, but whether it's external customers or suppliers or vendors or if it's your internal employees, whether they're from another department or they're direct on your team or even when you're talking to your supervisor manager, stories, they're magical. I found the same thing and I feel like for managers and for executives listening, I feel like it's worth leaning into and learning how to tell them just even a little better. We don't have to become the world's best storyteller, but I think that it is always possible to improve our ability to tell stories. And I think that's the measurement. How do I know that I told a good story? Well, you can read it on the faces of the people you're talking to.
(25:42):
You can tell from the comments they say to you afterward, you can tell by how you feel as a storyteller. I think there's a lot of feedback that we get when we're telling stories that way.
Johanna Walker (25:50):
I remember a training I was leading. It was a team of engineers and it was like a two-day offsite. I had been working with them in the day and then we went to have dinner at this nice restaurant. So we're sitting at tables and these are folks who mostly work together. They don't have a lot of connection outside of work. We were sitting at a table and it was kind of awkward. People were talking about work and it was a little bit stiff. And then I posed a question. I said, "When was the time you got in trouble?" It just completely transformed the table and it became a really fun evening of storytelling and connecting and that question led to other questions. And so it was so great to see it in action and see people actually sharing on a human level and being connected to one another.
Matt Poepsel (26:35):
And I think the return on that human investment, it persists long after that evening that event stops because then you see each other a little bit differently when you learn each other's stories, the time when you got in trouble. What a great question, right?
Johanna Walker (26:50):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love that question.
Matt Poepsel (26:53):
Well, one of the stories I have is that there was a time going back a bit that I didn't always love ... There was something missing about my show about the podcast and I found out I had stopped doing a trivia segment. And so I'm going to bring us to a trivia segment now. As you mentioned in the top, you had this experience and a story that you tell about being in the airport and trying to get to your gate and dealing with security. So we're going to get a question about airports. I thought that might be fun. So as multiple choice question, which of these famous airports uses the code ORD despite its name not appearing to match? Is it A, Orlando International Airport, B, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, or C, Paris Orly Airport A, B, or C? B. B, it is, huh? So audience, if you're playing along at home, you think it's Orlando, Chicago, or Paris for ORD and we're going with B and that is spot on.
(27:43):
It was originally Orchard Place was actually the name named after Butch O'Hare. How about that? That I did not know. See AI is a little bit useful. But Johann, I've got a much better question for you. Where can my audience go to learn more about you and all the great work you do?
Johanna Walker (27:57):
Well, LinkedIn is a great place. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Johanna Walker speaking. You can also head over to my website. I have some couple of different free downloads there for better storytelling, better, stronger public speaking, johannawalker.com.
Matt Poepsel (28:11):
I love it. Listeners, I'll have those links for you in the show notes. So you're only one click away from getting in touch with Johanna and learning how to tell better stories. Johanna, it was great seeing you again and I'm so glad to have had you on the show just now.
Johanna Walker (28:20):
Great to be here. Great talking, Matt. Thanks.
Matt Poepsel (28:23):
Here are my top three takeaways from my episode just now with Johanna. The first is around stakes. We heard Johanna talk about how we need this emotional charge. We need to understand that there's stakes. Will the person be successful or are they going to be able to avoid what they're trying to get away from? We need that to make our stories compelling. Now, we can observe this in our environment. We can find it whether it's inside the company, whether it's with customers. And by adding those stakes, it makes our communication that much more effective and it makes that connection that people have with us as the storyteller and with the point that we're trying to make that much more profound. The second is around templates. When you think about some of us that are beginner storytellers, we might feel a little awkward, don't know how to structure it.
(29:04):
There's some pretty basic, simple templates that we can use. We have to remember that we're not trying to invent a new way to tell stories as much as we're trying to bring our unique perspective and experience into some format that's already proven. So there's nothing wrong at all with telling stories in a pretty tried and true format. And Johanna has given us the permission to be able to try to deviate from that a little bit once we get a little more comfortable, maybe come back to it. It doesn't have to be as static as it feels. We definitely don't have to feel that we're not a good storyteller if we use a template more than once or if we lean on templates to help us tell better stories. And the last one's around muscle. When we think about helping the team develop the muscles we want to create, as she called it a culture of storytelling, then we're going to have to get through that uncomfortable, that discomfort, that bit in the beginning.
(29:52):
And if we can normalize it by making it accessible, she shared the example of asking somebody, "Tell us about a time when you got in trouble," or, "I gave some examples Pulse two around live music events, whatever it might be, encouraging people by lowering the stakes, helping us to get to know one another, for example, in a team context and encouraging storytelling but sticking with it, not just doing it once and never doing it again, but make it a recurring part of your practice as a team. For example, now all of a sudden that we're going to realize the value and the importance of stories. We'll all get through our collective discomfort and we'll end up getting to know each other and feeling that tightness of our bonds that much better and it's going to be there when we need it. So that's it for today.
(30:34):
I hope you enjoyed the show and as always, don't manage the business when you can lead the people.