Arkansas Native Paul Smith ‘Leads With A Story’

Paul Smith, director of consumer research with Procter & Gamble, has a new book, titled “Lead With A Story,” which chronicles leadership advice from 75 business executives worldwide.

Smith, a native of Conway and a 1989 Hendrix College graduate, wrote the book to illustrate how storytelling can be an effective inspiration to motivating employees to accomplish company goals.

“Everybody who is going to succeed in something needs to be a leader in some way or another,” Smith said in an interview with Talk Business. “The point of the book is that leading by just bossing people around has never really worked that well. It is a much better way to lead by using stories to lead people where you want them to go as opposed to just telling them what to do.

Smith uses his two decades of experience with Procter & Gamble, one of the leading consumer conglomerates in the world, to underscore the advice in the book.

“Lead With A Story” shares a number of examples of storytelling, including an insightful story from former Alltel CEO Scott Ford and how he coped with the new private equity owners that acquired the Little Rock-based telecom in 2007 before selling it to Verizon Wireless a year later.

To learn more about that story and how you can obtain a copy of the book, watch the video below.

Here is a link to Amazon.com, where you can purchase “Lead With A Story.”