W EEKLY EDITION JULY 19, 2017
Great Leaders Help People Find Passion for Their Work…
E ven when the job is "unappealing" …continued
Based on Lead with a Story by Paul Smith
"The people were very nice," he said, "but they all seemed a bit
melancholy. Depressed even. And the weather was beautiful, so
that wasn't the problem. Most of them just seemed irritable and
unhappy." He went on to describe in detail the behavior he saw
that led him to his dreary conclusion.
As he did, the woman nodded and smiled knowingly, as if to
agre e with his assessment. When he finished his story, the
woman turned quietly and looked out the window in a
contemplative manner. After a long pause, and without even
looking back at him, she sighed, and said matter - of - factly, "I
think it's the toilet paper."
Okay, it's funnier when you hear the story told in person. But the woman was de ad serious. Here's the
point. To a lot of people, toilet paper may seem like a pedestrian, unimportant part of people's daily
lives. But imagine what your day might be like if all you ever had to use for toilet paper was the thin,
rough, cheap tissue you m ight imagine to be typical in Budapest 20 years ago.
If that's all you ever used, you might be constantly chafed and slightly irritated in your nether region.
Perhaps not so much that you thought about it constantly, but enough that it might just make eve ry day a
little less pleasant. And that might make you a little more short - tempered with a visiting businessman
from the States, as well as anyone else who crossed your path.
The implication to Paul for his new job was this. "We may not be curing cancer. But what we do matters
to people probably more than we realize, perhaps even more than they realize." Just that easily, one of
Paul's prejudicial notions had evaporated. The toilet paper business still wasn't going to be glamorous.
But at least it felt mor e meaningful now.
What Paul came looking for when he entered Jeff's office was a sympathetic ear to commiserate with.
What Paul left with was an eagerness and passion for his work on a job that hadn't even started yet.
Today Paul Smith is one of the worl d's leading experts on organizational storytelling. He's a keynote
speaker, storytelling coach, and bestselling author of the book Sell with a Story (#1 bestseller in Amazon's
Sales and Selling category). For four years after the incident above, he told th at story to dozens of other
newcomers to the paper business. Many of them, it turns out, came with the same preconceived notions
he did. And many of them, like Paul, abandoned that preconceived notion very quickly after hearing this story.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
PAGE 7
