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In the forward to John Hennessy’s book, Leading Matters, author Walter Isaacson writes, “There is one leadership skill in this book that I found a bit unexpected but also profound: storytelling.”
Storytelling’s influence on Hennessy’s career is, indeed, profound. And that’s why Hennessy has become a strong proponent of storytelling as a critical 21st-century leadership skill. “If you really want to inspire a team to action, it’s best to engage them with a story,” he told me during my visit to the Stanford campus, where Hennessy served as the university’s president for 16 years.
In addition to running one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Hennessy is the cofounder of MIPS Computing Systems, Chairman of the Board of Alphabet/Google, and director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program at Stanford, along with his co-partner, Phil Knight. Oh, and he’s the 2018 winner of the Turing Award, the most prestigious award in computer science.
“Storytelling is a powerful tool,” Hennessy told me. “Think of an entrepreneur who is starting a new company. In many cases, you don't have a product yet. You have a vision of what you might be able to build and how you might be able to change the world. That's what you take to a group of investors and, often, to your first customers. When you move from the field in which you build your career and step into leadership, your technical talent will become less important. In this phase of your career, one of your most powerful skills is an ability to tell appropriate, compelling, and inspiring stories.”
Hennessy’s storytelling skills led to the creation of the largest graduate-level scholarship program—and a $400 million donation from Nike cofounder Phil Knight.
As Hennessy was nearing the end of his tenure as the president of Stanford University, he wanted to share a new vision with the university’s trustees. “Let me tell you a story,” he began. "One hundred fifteen years ago, a prominent British businessman started a scholarship program for promising young people around the world…Cecil Rhodes." He then listed some notable Rhodes scholars from world leaders to Nobel Prize winners. Hennessy concluded: “Given Stanford’s West Coast location, diversity, academic quality and entrepreneurial culture—just think of the class of leaders a program like this could help create.
The trustees bought in to the idea. Hennessy told the same story to Phil Knight, a legendary philanthropist. The Rhodes story was “the cornerstone” of his pitch. Knight committed a $400 million gift as long as Hennessy agreed to be the program’s first director. This fall, fifty Knight-Hennesy scholars were selected from over 3,600 applications. And it all began with a story.
“Facts and figures can capture our brains, but they aren’t very good at capturing our hearts,” according to Hennessy.
In Leading Matters, Hennessy explains where leaders can find stories. For example, an established institution like a university or a brand can draw upon their history. While he served as president, Hennessy was responsible for eliciting donations. He would tell the story of how Stanford got its name. The university is not named for Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate. It’s named after his son, Leland Stanford Jr, who died at the age of sixteen. Leland Sr. and his wife were so devastated, they resolved to build a university in their son’s name. Their vision: “the children of California shall be our children.” The emotional resonance of that story hit home with potential donors.
But Hennessy says the greatest and most effective stories come from a resource we all have available to us—books. “I read the stories of great leaders to examine their habits, to understand what characteristics helped make them successful, to see how they prepared themselves for moments of crisis, and to understand how they handled success--and perhaps more important—failure,” says Hennessy.
In this video highlight from our conversation, Hennessy explains why he included a list of more than 150 books in the conclusion of his own book.
Former Stanford University president John Hennessy reminds us that great leaders are great storytellers. And that’s why it’s important for entrepreneurs, CEOs, managers and aspiring leaders to always remain alert for new stories. According to Hennessy, as a leader “your goal is to have a regularly refreshed quiver full of stories you can pull out of for almost any occasion.”
