Storytelling with Thought Leadership | Adam Zuckerman, Mary J. Cronin, Michelle Mellon, and Christopher Brace | 495

Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways you can elevate your thought leadership. It can create an emotional connection, convey the need for change, or provide a vision of the future. In this episode, we collect advice from our experts on the various ways a thought leader can utilize the storytelling skill to elevate their content. Adam Zuckerman is Product Leader, Employee Engagement Software at Willis Towers Watson. Adam shares how his personal approach of sharing experiences in storytelling can help connect the research and data you provide with your audience in meaningful ways. Mary Cronin is a Research Professor at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. She teaches about entrepreneurship, and explains to us how storytelling is a vital component of the success of both thought leaders and startups. At the time of publication, Michelle Mellon was the Thought Leadership Director of SalientMG. She is also a published fiction author. Michelle takes her experience writing stories and applies those same principles to writing thought leadership explaining how the fundamentals of storytelling need to be followed, as well as how they can be broken to create engaging narratives. Our final guest is Christopher Brace, Adjunct Professor of Marketing at MICA. Christopher helps us understand how storytelling can be used in marketing to build brands. He explains how, by employing a listening ear, you can discover the emotional territories of your audience that will help you know what resonates most with them. Three Key Takeaways: * Storytelling is a component of the success of entrepreneurs and thought leaders; yet storytelling is often neglected. * Don't be afraid to provide predictions for the future in your thought leadership. Your speculation doesn't have to be 100% right it just has to provide a glimpse of what could be around the corner. * When starting a narrative look at the questions of "What if" but ensure the basic elements of storytelling are not forgotten.