Storytelling That Builds Connection with Ben Green

**SPEAKER_1** (0:05)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Xero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:18)
Well, come back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest who will introduce in a moment. So business leaders often spend enormous energy creating strategies, transformation plans, articulating values, priorities, and change initiatives.
But a strategy is not truly activated until people understand it and feel connected to it. And that is where empathy and storytelling become really powerful tools. And today we're exploring storytelling that builds connection in business. And Tullio, introduce our special guest today. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Me too.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:01)
It will be my pleasure. Our guest today is Ben Green. He's a lead consultant at The Storytellers, which is part of Accenture. Ben has spent the last seven years working globally with C-suite leaders and organizations to transform workplaces through the power of storytelling. The storytellers' fundamental belief is that the emotional connection and innate power of stories should not be taken for granted in the working world. The storytellers uses six-chapter story framework to help organization transform and manage change through powerful human stories. Ben's background is in behavioral change, psychology, and leadership development, and he has spent more than a decade thinking about the ways to make organization more human.
Ben is also a coach, facilitator, and consultant to senior leaders, helping them connect people to strategy purpose and meaningful action. Welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast, Ben.

**Ben Green** (2:00)
Hey guys, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited about this conversation and super passionate about this topic. So yeah, looking forward to getting into it and chatting with you both.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:10)
Yeah, we only got 40 minutes. It'll go by quick, Ben, because when you're passionate about stuff like that, it's like-

**Ben Green** (2:15)
It flows by.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:16)
Yeah, you think you can do a couple of episodes at least. But from your perspective, why is empathy such an important leadership capability right now?

**Ben Green** (2:26)
Yeah, I think it's such an important question to think about in the working world. And one of the things I love, I don't know if you've ever seen Brenny Brown, who does a great video on the difference between empathy and sympathy. And I always start with that when I'm thinking about empathy. Sympathy is this looking down and saying, oh, that looks bad. I feel sorry for you. And people and leaders often can confuse that with empathy. And empathy is really putting yourself in their shoes. And I think, as we all know, and I've seen you guys talk about in other episodes, that the world is changing so much, both at work, the amount of transformation, the role that AI is playing in our working world, but also outside of it, in politics, in day to day life, everything is changing and it's quite a tough time for people to keep up to speed with everything that's going on. People need to be felt and heard and seen and connected to, otherwise it becomes one more overwhelming thing for people to really deal with, which is why I think empathy is so important. We spend such a big part of our lives at work. If you don't feel like you're treated as a human and really connected to and understood, everything else can sort of fall apart around that. If you ultimately want to take a strategy and do something meaningful with it, you need to get the trust and the connection to the people that you're working with.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:49)
I love your reference to Renee Brown.
Where do you think most leaders fail in terms of understanding what empathy is and how it applies? What is the misunderstanding based on your experience and working with leaders? Because you guys work at the intersection of behavioral change, psychology and leadership development. So I'm just curious what leaders often misunderstand about empathy?

**Ben Green** (4:18)
Yeah, I think empathy can sometimes be seen as a soft skill, something that's nice to have that is almost a sign of, I guess, weakness sometimes. It's kind of the same that we actually experience when we talk to C-suites and senior leaders about storytelling. Some of them get it and they understand that it really isn't non-negotiable in 2026 for businesses to be successful. But I think the word fluffy, I don't know if that's a US word that you guys would use too, but it's something fluffy to be discussing that isn't going to really drive business performance. It's something that shows weakness. But I think you can be empathic and you can still say no, and you can still challenge people, but you connect to them more at a human level. But I think that's one of the biggest things that I've seen is it feels like a nice to have a soft skill as opposed to a critical lever really.