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Thought Leadership and Storytelling | Michelle Mellon
Answering the question of “What If” with thought leadership.
An interview with Michelle Mellon about the importance of storytelling to connect thought leadership with an audience.
Today’s guest is Michelle Mellon, Thought Leadership Director at SalientMG, a strategic marketing firm that creates custom programs for clients seeking to spur new business, create awareness, or get recognition as an industry leader. Michelle is also an accomplished short-fiction author; her work can be found in compilations like The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction. She’s an expert in using creative storytelling to drive insights and make thought leadership accessible and powerful.
When writing a work of fiction, Michelle often starts with the question of “What if?” And, indeed, as she tells us today, that question also forms a powerful intersection between fiction and thought leadership. Michelle explains how her thought leadership goes deeper. She looks at trends, listens to her audience, and crafts stories that will both educate and entertain.
In our conversation, Michelle explains the basics of storytelling, and how the elements of fiction can also empower good thought leadership content. Michelle walks us through the best practices of crafting and telling engaging stories about leadership, brand, and mission, and explains that by following and even sometimes breaking the rules of basic storytelling, one can capture and inspire an audience.
Every author has to find their voice and stay true to it. Michelle explains why an authentic voice is necessary to craft good thought leadership. In addition, we discuss ways to develop the mind’s ear, and how to use voice and language that is specific to every audience. Having a distinct voice will only carry you so far – if your audience doesn’t understand or isn’t interested in what you are talking about, your thought leadership won’t stick!
This is an insightful episode for creative writers entering the world of thought leadership, and for those seeking to breathe life into an idea and share it with others. Listen in!
Three Key Takeaways:
- Thought leaders should embrace the speculative and look into the future as they craft their content. Your ideas don’t have to be 100% right; they just have to be engaging and enlightening.
- It’s a fallacy to think that long-form content has more prestige. Convey your thought leadership in a variety of formats, and you’ll reach a wider audience.
- Thought leadership needs to tell your personal story, share your experiences and your mission, but it must also inspire others – and to do that, you must share it in a way that they can understand.
Join the Organizational Thought Leadership Newsletter to learn more about expanding thought leadership within your organization! This monthly newsletter is full of practical information, advice, and ideas to help you reach your organization’s thought leadership goals.
And if you need help scaling organizational thought leadership, contact Thought Leadership Leverage!
Transcript
Bill Sherman For many years, the prestige forms of thought leadership were all long form. The business book, the white paper and the research report. But now our audiences demand shorter form thought leadership snackable bytes of insight, if you will. And they want to be told stories that make ideas accessible. So today I sit down with Michelle Mellon. She’s the thought leadership director at Salient MGI. She’s also written and published short stories. So in today’s episode, we’ll explore how do you put big ideas into small containers? How do you turn an idea into a story? And how do you develop your mind’s ear? The ability to hear as your audience would hear? I’m Bill Sherman and you’re listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Ready? Let’s begin. Welcome to the show, Michelle.
Michelle Mellon Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Bill Sherman So I’m excited to talk with you about storytelling and thought leadership. I think it’s something that’s deeply connected. And so where I want to begin with is a question for you. You do storytelling within thought leadership as well as you write outside of Thought Leadership. Tell me a little bit about what you write about and the types of writing to what formats to work in.
Michelle Mellon I write primarily for fiction. And my say my favorite genre is horror, although I’m a speculative fiction fan. So I also write science fiction and fantasy. And I have one mystery story that I written. I think that storytelling is integral to everything that I do. So, you know, no matter if I’m writing my fiction, in the past, I was writing poetry. And then obviously when I’m working the energy I’m writing or client thought leadership, I think there’s an element of storytelling that surveys everything that I do.
Bill Sherman And one of the things that I see in fiction writing intersection where thought leadership is when you’re talking about speculative fiction or horror, it begins with a what if question.
Michelle Mellon Right, exactly.
Bill Sherman And so I think that’s a great place to play with the intersection of thought leadership and storytelling is where do you begin with the what if?
Michelle Mellon I think in terms of the thought leadership that I’m working on for clients, you know, I’m helping them develop their platform, if that’d be their idea for what they’re going to talk about. It’s always going to be this what if scenario. So we know what’s happening in the world right now. But with that leadership, we want to dive a little bit deeper. We want to say what are the trends? What is coming around the corner? What if this thing that’s happening now turns into this thing that’s happening tomorrow? And so I think there’s always a very strong speculative element to be thought leadership as well. And that’s something that I want to encourage, you know, my clients and other thought leadership professionals to embrace, but then also want to make sure that these basic elements of storytelling are off the map so that, you know, there’s a beginning, middle and an end for whatever clients are trying to convey with their followers.
Bill Sherman Well, and I want to get to the narrative journey in a moment, but I want to pull out a little bit of a thread that you mentioned. So you talked about what if and what could be. But often much of what we read is what is that’s the news today or what was right. We read things from the past. And so it is a little bit of a different focus to be able to ask the question and say, let’s write the story of the future and figure out how to get there.
Michelle Mellon I think that’s a difficulty for most people. I mean, I like I said, I love speculative fiction. But sometimes it’s difficult for me as a fiction writer to sit down and say, okay, what is the world going to look like in 50 years or 200 years? What does the world look like on another planet somewhere? And then you go into that as a writer and you figure that out and you create that world. I think there’s probably a hesitancy in terms of thought leadership to do that because you’re going to be judged on what you’re placing in front of people, and it’s not going to be a different world in another galaxy a hundred years from now. It’s going to be something that business leaders and innovators and founders are looking at as a guidepost for where they can be in ten years. And I think there’s a lot more pressure to do that.
Bill Sherman And with that time frame, some thought leadership may be ten years out. It could be five. You could even be talking about a transformational issue, 12 to 18 months, depending on what industry or sector you’re in. And so your proof point comes a whole lot sooner, right?
Michelle Mellon Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. But I think if you’re if you’re telling the right way and you’re engaging people in that vision that you have, then they’re a little more likely to buy in and say, okay, maybe I don’t get every single point or maybe I don’t agree with every projection that you’ve made, but you’re telling it in a way that makes me think. And I think, you know, obviously thought is part of thought leadership. You want people to think. You want people to think in new ways. You want them to think about things that they haven’t thought of before. And you want them to think maybe this is something that I can apply and what I’m doing or what my organization is doing, and we can make a change. We can turn things along.
Bill Sherman Absolutely. And as a genre is speculative. Fiction, for example, doesn’t have to be 100% correct. It’s about leadership. You don’t have to be 100% correct either. You have to just be able to peer around the corner into the future to see something that’s valuable and say, okay, if this is true, here’s what you should do today.
Michelle Mellon Right. And I think that I mean, I think that that point is really key for storytelling in general. It doesn’t have to be correct. You have to communicate an idea and you have to communicate it in a way that it resonates with someone and that they can engage it with it and embrace it. But it doesn’t have to be perfectly correct. It doesn’t have to follow all the rules. It doesn’t have to follow the predictable path. It just has to be at least one person to bring them in and get them on board with what you’re thinking.
Bill Sherman So earlier, you laid out a predictable path. All stories have a beginning, middle and an end. And the beginnings, what comes first? And then comes the middle and then comes the end. But you just said that sometimes breaking those rules is what makes a story interesting. How do you tell engaging stories in thought leadership and how do you either follow the rules or break them?
Michelle Mellon That’s a great question, I think. I mean, to go back to what I said, though, the beginning, the middle and end, those are the elements of storytelling. But I think we’re seeing more and more that when you mix those up. Maybe you start in the middle and then you have the end in the beginning or you start at the end and you look backwards. That’s playing with the format of the narrative can also be interesting and engaging. And, you know, like we just said, there’s no right or wrong in telling. And so I think you also have to let yourself go when you’re doing storytelling and thought leadership and think I don’t necessarily have to tell this in a way that everyone else has. If I’m writing an article or I’m doing a podcast or, you know, whatever format it comes in. I don’t have to do it in the way that everyone else does. So I think that, you know, you have to remember that there are these elements you want to include. You want to have some sort of central character or protagonist or, if you will, town. And then you want to talk about the effect of that protagonist before you challenge that have day and you want to offer some sort of resolution or you want to leave people with the idea that there are multiple options for resolution for that issue or whatever that might have become. So I think it’s more about a focus on the elements of storytelling and then figuring out how they come together to best tell your story. I don’t think there’s a prescriptive way to do that. I mean, I think if you read my story, you can tell by my voice that they’re all by me, but I use different format than I might use first person this, I might use third person and that I might start at the beginning for this one. And it’s a very traditional narrative. I just wrote a short story that’s entirely true. And so I think the story is going to tell you how it needs to be told, and you just have to listen.
Bill Sherman Well, and this leads to something about thought leadership and also with writing and format. I think in many cases we assign prestige to longer forms. You’ve written a white paper or you’ve written a book on the topic. In the world of leadership, or you’ve got your novel out versus a short story or, as you said, a story in tweets. But many ideas really can fit certain formats better. Yes. So one of the things because I know you specialize in short story, let’s talk about suiting the idea to the format. What comes to mind there?
Michelle Mellon So I think it’s interesting, said talking about length and how every thought leader doesn’t have to be 50,000 words book or a white paper. I think about the short story attributed that way. It’s six months long. And actually Wired also has a 6 or 6 month sorry context.
Bill Sherman And for our listeners who might not know that story, could you tell that story?
Michelle Mellon Yes, of course. They’ll say B.S.. Number one. And I think you said, yeah, think about that story. And, you know, it gives you chills because it’s very simple. It’s obviously very short, but it opens up in your mind all of these possibilities about what who these people are, what happens. And I think that’s also what you want to start with if you want to open up possibilities for people. And so if it takes 100 words to get your idea across, make those the best 100 words possible so that you can grab someone and make them think about what you’re saying. If you need to include research and citations and you need that white paper, sometimes you need that white paper make it compelling. I mean, you want it to still tell a story. The format, I think, again, I think it’s sometimes dictated by the nature of what you’re talking about. But I don’t think people need to feel constrained by the outward perceptions about what leadership looks like and what something that is going to be useful or meaningful looks like in terms of the length of format.
Bill Sherman Well. And if we simplify failed leadership as and defined it as something that makes you think in a different way and be disposed to take an action you wouldn’t have taken before then. If that’s the goal. It doesn’t have to be long. You know, and you could say that Hemingway, some hundred years before Twitter wrote a tweet. Right on that. Right. And or that could be expanded all the way out to the blueprint of a whole movie. You know about these baby shoes, right? What he’s articulated, I would say, is an idea that evokes curiosity. You want to know why? You want to know the story?
Michelle Mellon I mean, if you think about other think about marketing formats and ads, things that you see TV or online, you have a 32nd TV ad or you have three lines or something, and that’s still memorable to you. That’s still something that stays with you. And then if it is something that’s marketing for the purchase, then makes you more likely to make that purchase or at least follow up to find out more information. So it doesn’t have to be something that is long and complicated and it just has to be something that communicates the message in a way that someone says, I get that or I want to know more about that. And then you follow up on.
Bill Sherman If you are enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about the podcast. Please leave a five-star review and share it with your friends. We are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all major platforms as well as at LeveragingThoughtLeadership.com. So in terms of story, I’d like to hear a little bit about your story. How did you get into the world of thought leadership?
Michelle Mellon It was a twisty path, I would say, to get to thought leadership. And it started with me realizing that storytelling is not something that is just in the world of fiction or creative void, that it’s something that you could apply in a professional realm. So when I went to when I went to college, I had this plan and I thought, I am going to get a science degree and be very responsible. I’m going to do research by day, and then I’m going to write poetry by night. Because I was still writing poetry at that point. And that was my plan. And then I took chemistry my freshman year and my hand fell apart. It just obviously and interest in science was not enough for me to have a good, good capability in science. And so I just went the English route. When I graduated from college, there were not a lot of opportunities that I could see for storytelling outside of what I was doing on my own. I just needed to find a job and just do that job and then again, write with those on the side. But as I went through, you know, my next two role, I realized that I was telling stories and that I was doing I was working for a nonprofit nursing education association, and I was telling stories through some of the profiles and doing some of the nursing school work. Then I was working as a consultant to the US EPA, and they were marketing their grant programs to underserved communities that needed to assess and clean up the level of contamination or abandoned gas stations or mines or military bases. But part of that was telling the story and the success stories of others to take on these grants and and apply them in their community. Then I move into a marketing role with an educational coin manufacturer. I work with a global manufacturing corporation, and this is the first time the light bulb kind of went off. And I like storytelling in marketing. This has impact. This is interesting that this has an immediate effect. This is a way to apply storytelling and a way that I never thought that I could before. And as I continued to move on, I started working more with executives and the organizations I was in writing for them, doing these very small thought leadership pieces that were, again, telling stories, stories about them, stories about the organization’s eco mission. And that just kind of continued until I moved into this role with Valiant last year, with specifically for running a thought leadership program for executives. And again, you know, I have the accumulation of experiences and this outside passion for telling stories that I immediately wanted to play into this role, to show executives that it doesn’t have to be very cut and dried, doesn’t have to be. Here’s what I believe, and this is why you should believe me. The ends tell a story that shows us who we are that we want to know more about. You want to relate to you. We want your message to resonate with us. Because once you tell us that story, then you’re picking up on a journey and are willing to follow you to see coming next.
Bill Sherman So what tips or advice would you give someone who’s in a leadership role that is feeling like the ideas that they’re sharing like a story? How do they breathe life and create story around an idea?
Michelle Mellon I think the first thing would be to think about the things that resonate most with you, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be in your professional life and other thought leadership, but what are the stories that stick with you? What are the things about those stories that you like and how can you transfer those and the things that you want to tell? The other thing I always tell people is if you’re trying to explain something, think about sitting down in a coffee shop with your grandmother or, you know, the Gen Z neighbor or whoever it is, and then explain to them what your idea is. Think about how you would sell that idea and then think about how you would make it interesting for that particular person, whoever, whoever that target is for you. And then make sure that you incorporate those elements into what you’re communicating. When I write fiction, I always read it out loud to see how it sounds. So I would say do that as well. When you’re reading something out loud and you tend to hear things that you know your mind doesn’t necessarily catch. And so once you can figure out where there are disconnects flow or where there’s a disruption in the narrative, maybe you can start adding in those elements or trying to better those elements that really make it a story that’s going to be compelling for people.
Bill Sherman So in terms of that mind’s ear, the ability to hear not only with your own ear, but your audience’s ear. Let’s talk a little bit about that because I think that’s very important. You talked about whether it’s a Gen Z or talking to your grandmother. You’ve got to understand your audience.
Michelle Mellon Absolutely. Yes. And I think that I mean, obviously over the past 18 months, that’s been having interaction interactions with different people that are on video interact with people who are already in your bubble. That’s been hard. I know when I did freelance work previously, sometimes I would spend three days at home writing or working on a project, and then I realized I have no idea what’s happening in the world and I would just drive to Target and just walk through the aisles just so I can hear other people speaking. And sometimes I would find specific groups of people to hear how they were speaking to each other, what things they were interested in. I’m not saying that for your thought leaders that we go to your local store on the Isle of Wight eavesdropping on people. But I think that you do need to make a little bit of effort to find out what people are talking about in the target audience, what they’re reading, what they’re watching on TV, what kind of music they’re listening to, whatever, whatever it is that you think is going to get that connection, that you need to speak to them in a way that’s going to be resonant.
Bill Sherman Well, and I remember in a playwriting course that I took in my undergrad an assignment where it was simply to go out into a location that I chose and listen to people as they spoke. Okay. And we often layer these expectations that spoken language is much like written language. But in even in this podcast, they’re very, very different. If we were writing an. Article. Yeah. And so my recommendation on that would be whoever your audience is. Listen, in places where you can hear them talk, because the closer you can bring it to a conversation, the less work that it takes for them to understand the idea. Now, there’s some constraints. If you’re writing a journal article, you have to meet the requirements of the journal, Right?
Michelle Mellon But I think that I mean, I think that’s a really good point. And going out and listening to people, I mean, I found it in terms of my fiction writing. I found it invaluable in writing dialog that was believable. And so I think it’s the same thing for thought leadership. If you want to write something that’s relatable and believable, you have to speak in a way that people actually speak. And you know, Shakespeare is not it anymore. So, you know, it can’t always be formal and academic. You really have to get your ideas across in a way that, you know, your audience is going to be able to receive it and retain it. You want them to remember what you’re saying.
Bill Sherman Well, and your example of Shakespeare is great because his contemporary audience founded Lively, sort of bawdy, filled with puns, and it goes over our heads most of the time, unless we have footnotes now, Right? Or Hey, Ben, a geek and studied Shakespeare extensively.
Michelle Mellon Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I think I’ve heard you talk in the past about thought leadership is timeless. And I think that, you know, to some extent it’s about the idea and an idea that resonates. And obviously you read and performed Shakespeare now because the idea that we had are so, so human and so timeless. The language not so much coming and people doing Shakespeare’s plays as maybe sometimes they’re being true and sometimes they’ve given the modern version that are easier for modern audiences to absorb. But the ideas are still there and it’s lot of them.
Bill Sherman So as we begin to wrap up, I have a couple of questions I want to ask you first. What advice would you give someone who’s coming from a writing background into thought leadership and becoming a thought leadership practitioner?
Michelle Mellon That is an interesting question. So advice for someone coming from writing about leadership. I think hold on to the principles that you’ve learned or that work for you as a writer. I think sometimes in thought leadership, particularly when you’re working with someone else, there are these very preconceived ideas about what thought leadership is and what it looks like. And as a writer, you have to remember, you know, that stories are something that are based on thinking and being, that you’ve been telling stories and drawings on page. And we’ve had we have this history of storytelling worldwide, and those have translated into written stories once they have written language that we could use. And it’s something that is universal and universally appreciated and accepted. And so just remember that the storytelling tool is just as important as the idea and the very first step back with that idea. Mary Louise is going to make the most effective thought leadership position.
Bill Sherman And then the next question that I want to ask is one about evoking emotion, because an idea without emotion is unlikely to create action, right? It’s yeah, that’s smart, but I’m not going to take it to heart. I think storytelling. And you mentioned you write horror fiction. That’s certainly about evoking emotion. Talk to me just a little bit. What advice would you give on weaving that emotional sort of drive into the leadership?
Michelle Mellon I think the key to including emotion is knowing your voice. I mean, as a writer, you always have to know your voice and who you are. And it’s something that I always try to work with clients on finding as well when they’re when they’re picking up on that thought leadership. What kind of thought leader are you? What kind of emotion are you? Kind of broke. And what’s the best way to draw that out of people? Are you humorous? I mean, that’s one way to evoke a nation. Are you someone who is serious and you really want people to think heavily about what you’re doing? You know, I’m not I’m not an advocate of people who are fear mongering. I don’t think we all need to be any more scared than we’ve been for the past 18 months. But I think trying to figure out who you are as a thought leader. For your own particular voice and what feels authentic to you. So again, if you’re sitting down with that, you know that person in the coffee shop and you’re having a conversation with them, who are you? You’re that person and you’re open and authentic and vulnerable. What is going to make you have that connection with that person? Because they really feel like you’re speaking to them in the same way.
Bill Sherman And you’ve used that before. You said true voice here. You said truth as well. I think where we can wrap up is this sense of authenticity and has to drive through whatever you’re talking about, whatever idea you’re bringing to the table and however you’re telling a story. Michel, I really want to thank you for joining us today.
Michelle Mellon I really thank you for having me again.
Bill Sherman If you’re interested in organizational thought leadership, then I invite you to subscribe to the OrgTL newsletter. Each month we talk about the people who create, curate and deploy thought leadership on behalf of their organizations. Go to the website. OrgTL.com and choose join our newsletter. I’ll leave a link to the website as well as my LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Thanks for listening and I look forward to hearing what you thought of the show.
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