S8E5: Nancy Duarte on Faith, Communication, & Leadership

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Summary

What can Scripture teach us about the power of storytelling? How can leaders be resilient through tough times? What unique challenges do female leaders face in their organizations and communities? Joanna talks with Nancy Duarte about her role as a leader, a communicator, and a Christian.

Highlights

On faith and organizational culture:

"The culture is driven by a set of values, and our values were formed through different seasons of pressure. You can state a value, but it gets tested to see if it's true during hardships...Every single value and everything we commit to is based in a Scripture. So we'll tell a story around the values and they're all Scriptural. Our values spell the word "bliss": belong, lead, innovate, and serve."

On the role of a Christian leader:

"If our love doesn't supersede even my profession of my faith, then there's something wrong. If people attack me for my character, that's really bad. If they attack me for my faith, I signed up for that...I signed up to be persecuted when I decided to follow the Lord; it's what we sign up to do."

On the power of communication:

"I believe we went from invisible to the world formed just through the power of the spoken word. You can't really point to a movement that didn't start with an impassioned plea of sorts...So to be experts in the spoken word business and giving voice to the voiceless and...the world's biggest concerns is humbling."

On the role of our choices:

"It wasn't that I was a failure as a learner; I just wanted out of my house more desperately than I wanted to be in college. I think that you have a choice when things are thrown your way: you get to be a victim, or you get to be a victor. And I think storytelling has really helped me cope with it...I just frame everything as, 'Oh, this is just the messy middle. If I make the right decisions and really work on my own heart and my own perspective, I will emerge changed from it.'"

Resources

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