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Beyond Words: How Leadership Stories Inspire Action

Using the REST Model to Build Connection, Strengthen Culture, and Move Nonprofit Teams from Information to Inspiration

Julie Lancaster

Julie Lancaster is a leadership development expert, speaker, and author who helps leaders communicate with greater clarity, authenticity, and impact. Through her REST Model—Relate, Engage, Short, and Theme—Julie teaches leaders how to use meaningful stories to connect people with purpose and inspire action. In her recent book, Beyond Words, she explores how storytelling can strengthen leadership, shape organizational culture, navigate change, and preserve the human connection that matters more than ever in an increasingly AI-driven world.

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More about Julie Lancaster and her work at https://www.lancasterleadership.com

The Interview Summary

Beyond Words: How Leadership Stories Inspire Action

Nonprofit leaders communicate every day, but more information doesn’t always create greater understanding—or inspire action. In this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange, Hugh Ballou welcomes leadership development expert and author Julie Lancaster to explore how authentic, purposeful stories help leaders connect with people and move their mission forward.

Julie shares her surprising journey from disliking long-winded stories to discovering that stories were among the most memorable and influential parts of her leadership training. She introduces her REST Model—Relate, Engage, Short, and Theme, a practical approach to making stories relevant to the audience, inviting participation, keeping the message concise, and communicating a clear purpose.

Together, Hugh and Julie discuss how everyday experiences can become meaningful leadership stories, why sharing failures can strengthen human connection, and how practice and honest feedback improve a storyteller’s impact. Drawing on Hugh’s experience as a musical conductor, they emphasize that effective communication requires rehearsal, attention to the audience, and the courage to keep learning.

Julie also introduces her book, Beyond Words: How Our Stories and Strategies Inspire Leadership Action, which combines storytelling guidance with 31 leadership strategies. Her challenge to listeners is simple: identify something that happened today, consider what it taught you, and practice sharing it with someone who could benefit.

For nonprofit executives, board members, staff, and volunteer leaders, this conversation offers an accessible starting point for turning everyday communication into connection, learning, and action.

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou

Yes, it’s Hugh Ballou again. This is The Nonprofit Exchange. We interview great leaders every week who have great ideas. They might be nonprofit leaders or business leaders, but they’ve got great ideas, and they share them with you.

The purpose of this episode is to explore how nonprofit leaders can use concise, authentic stories—not simply more information—to create trust, meaning, motivation, and action. We want people to do something. The conversation will unpack Julie Lancaster’s REST Model, connect it to the leadership challenges addressed in her book, Beyond Words, and give nonprofit executives practical ways to use storytelling with staff, boards, donors, volunteers, and community partners.

Nonprofit leaders live in a world of mission statements, strategic plans, dashboards, board reports, grant narratives, donor appeals, and endless meetings. We communicate constantly, but communication doesn’t always connect, and information alone rarely inspires action. Julie is our guest today, and she believes leaders can change by learning to tell the right story, the right way, for the right reason.

Here’s a little about Julie. She’s the CEO and head leadership development expert at Lancaster Leadership. Over three decades, she has studied what helps teams succeed and fail, conducted more than 900 performance evaluations, and worked across education, health care, government, business, and nonprofit settings. Her leadership work has reached tens of thousands of people and focuses on leadership skills, future-focused strategy, workplace culture, and change readiness.

Julie’s newest book, Beyond Words: How Our Stories and Strategies Inspire Leadership Action, pairs practical leadership strategies with storytelling and introduces the REST method for making stories more relevant, engaging, concise, and purposeful.

Julie, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. You’ve said that you once thought you hated stories, especially the wandering kind that can hold an audience hostage. What changed your mind? When did you realize that storytelling was not an extra leadership skill, but a core competency?

Julie Lancaster

Hugh, thank you so much for having me. I am so delighted to be here, and I want to jump right in. I want to share the story of me hating stories right out of the gate. You nailed it already.

I grew up, I think, patient and a good listener, which was a strength and also not a strength, because I felt like I was held hostage at times. People would share stories that felt irrelevant, that I cared nothing about. I felt like I was secretly figuring out how to feign my own death as they were telling me these long-winded stories.

But then there was one day that changed everything. About 15 years ago, I became a full-time coach and trainer. The person I was apprenticing under was teaching me all of the material for the first session, because I was learning everything from her. We were going out to the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, each month to teach and coach. I was really getting to make an impact. It was inspiring.

At that first session, she was teaching me the content: emotional intelligence, generations in the workplace, different interaction styles, communication styles, delegation—all the stuff. She said something that scared me. She said, “Julie, just make sure, of course, to fill all of your training content with your own stories.”

Hugh, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like this, where somebody says something and you don’t want to put all your cards on the table. You don’t want to tell them how little you know about the topic. Have you felt like that?

Hugh Ballou

Oh, never. Oh, never. Sure.

Julie Lancaster

Never, never. Yeah. That’s what it was for me. I was wide-eyed, like, “What stories are you talking about? I don’t have stories. I don’t tell stories.”

What I realized in that moment is that, since I had thought stories were terrible, I never told them. I thought stories were a way to dominate, hold people hostage, and not truly connect. So I had to get scrappy. I had to sit down and ask, “What have I experienced?”

When she said to tell stories, she meant your own true, lived experiences of when you’ve succeeded or when you’ve failed. Quite frankly, people like the stories of when we’ve failed even better. It’s very vulnerable and connecting.

I had to think, “I’m going to teach about accountability. When is a time that I demonstrated accountability or a lack thereof? I have to talk about motivating others who might not want to be motivated. When did I try and fail, or when did I try and succeed?”

I figured out stories to tell, and then I started to tell them. What I realized is that I absolutely love stories. They just have to follow four really particular rules.

Just to wrap this up, because it spans decades: decades later, I thought, “Wait a minute. Let me ask these thousands of folks I’ve had the honor to work with: What’s actually made an impact? What was more than just training and learning? What did you take action on?” Guess, Hugh, what they said.

Hugh Ballou

What?

Julie Lancaster

They said two things. One was the stories. They said, “I remember the stories, and when they connected to my own life, that’s what inspired me to action.”

As a storyteller, I can’t control the narrative in terms of what it’s going to inspire them to do, but I create the space, right? We can’t lead a horse to water and make it drink, but we can make it thirsty. Stories were one thing. They then went on to implement something. They made some change if they felt inspired and connected.

The second, which I thought was interesting, was the connection moments. In the beginning, sometimes I’d say, “Everybody, today we’re playing a game.” There’s a collective groan, like, “We seriously have to play a game?” By the end, they were loving it. They’re crossing the lava on carpet squares, and it’s funny.

What I make of that is that they’re both about stories. One is when I would tell stories that would hopefully connect with their own lives. The second was when they were creating stories in real time—their own lived experience. It was all through connection with their peers, who then became their friends. Hugh, what do you think about that?

Hugh Ballou

Yeah. It’s the difference. It’s the people part of this connection. When you talk, I can feel your passion. You don’t get that in AI. You don’t get that in an email. You don’t get that in a text. It’s that personal connection.

Let’s go from information to inspiration here. Zig Ziglar tells a story of the kid who asks his mom a question. She says, “Why don’t you ask your dad?” He says, “Because I don’t want to know that much about it.” That could go to either parent.

When I ask people, they write a book. That’s really counterproductive. How do we judge? They need some information, but we want them to want more information when we’re done, instead of shutting down and saying, “Good luck.”

Julie Lancaster

That’s so true. I am the case study, because after three minutes, if you’re still talking, I am desperately thinking about how to exit, but I look like I’m pleased as punch on the outside. I’ve developed ninja skills over the years in the art of interruption: how to gracefully but forcefully wrap it up and get out of there.

What the research shows is that a story can be as short as five seconds, but a good story typically is between five seconds and five minutes.

When I met with Robert Cialdini—he is one of my gurus. He’s like the godfather, or father, however we say that, of the topic of influence. You know him, right? I got to sit down with him at a coffee shop, where he ordered a small mint tea. I thought, “How funny.” He’s larger than life in my mind, and his drink of choice is this mild tea. It seems so sweet.

I finally got to ask him, “What do you think is the most important thing to know about storytelling?” He said, “Make it short.” I thought, “Hallelujah and amen. Could everybody hear this? Everyone in my family, everyone I’ve engaged with.”

I think our first thing is to ask, “What do I have to say that is actually interesting?” Then figure out how to turn it into a story instead of just a telling. Instead of just telling, it’s storytelling, which involves a few things that make it especially interesting or connect with your listener.

Hugh Ballou

That’s great advice. I remind people who are watching or listening: you don’t have to write down every bit. Write down what you’re going to do about this, and then go to thenonprofitexchange.org. You can get the full transcript and listen to it again.

What do you say to those nonprofit leaders who say, “Oh, I’m not a storyteller”?

Julie Lancaster

Oh, my gosh. Here’s what I want to say: get over it. If I were to do a study of all the folks I work with, I would say about 70% of them start there. Another 20% say, “I’m long-winded, and people want to avoid me. How do I make an impact?” There’s a small percentage who say, “I’ve got this nailed.” I feel proud of them for even claiming that.

Here’s the thing. Being a storyteller doesn’t mean that you have read the books, know how to beautifully craft the beginning, middle, and end, or know how to do all the fancy stuff the English teacher would tell you to write. I happen to be married to an English teacher, so I know all about this.

First of all, think back. This is how I would encourage any of your listeners right now who are asking, “But how do I find a story?” Think back to what has happened today—just today. Don’t try to think back a whole week. I can barely remember yesterday. What’s happened today that could be interesting and poignant?

I’m thinking off the cuff right now. I might say, “For 15 minutes before getting on this podcast with you, I was cold, and I have a dog. So I went and sat outside on my fake lawn, because I live in Arizona, where we don’t have much water. I sat with my dog and warmed up.”

I could turn that into a story somehow, but I want to keep it short, and I want to share it only if it seems right for my audience—not because I have this need to talk. I love the acronym WAIT, which stands for “Why am I talking?”

If you, as a leader, are the kind of person who pushes yourself to grow, and you’re saying, “Right now I want to work on the skill of storytelling,” figure out something that’s happened today. Think about how you can share that at the dinner table or at your next meeting. It also needs to have a point. Why are you sharing it, and why are you sharing it with that person? What do you think about that, Hugh?

Hugh Ballou

I think it’s great. Talk about Relate, Engage, Short, and Theme—your REST Model. How is that helpful?

Julie Lancaster

Here’s the thing. I am such a believer in making something concise and simple so that it’s memorable. I think about the groups I work with that have this really elaborate strategic plan. When I say, “Great, are all of the actions you’re doing today in alignment with your strategic plan?” they’ll often say, “I don’t remember the strategic plan. I don’t know.”

What I’m getting at is the REST method. There are just four things you have to get right. It’s not all this extra stuff. The extra stuff is just icing.

The first one is R: Relate. Are you relating to the actual people you’re talking to? If you’re not sure, you need to think about why you’re telling it. Is it because they’re interested in this topic, and you’re saying, “I was thinking about you, and here’s this thing I wanted to share”? Or is it because they’re asking? That’s even better.

I might be working with someone who says, “I’m struggling to hold other people accountable.” I can say, “Let me share with you. I struggled, too, and let me tell you how.” That’s Relate. It’s really about the audience, and so is the second one.

The second one is Engage. This is one where we have to use the Goldilocks philosophy: just right, not too much, not too little. Like you were saying, “I don’t ask Dad, because he’s going to tell me too much.” You just sent me back to math. I was thinking about asking my dad, who’s an engineer, for math help. I was like, “Oh, no. Just tell me the answer. I don’t want to know.”

Engage means I’m checking in with you from time to time. I’m imagining if my dad, back in the math days, had said, “Julie, so far, we’re two minutes in. Is this helpful?” I would have said, “Thank you. Yes. Done.”

With storytelling, we can also check in, but it’s subtle. It might be like how I just asked you about Robert Cialdini: “You’re familiar with him?” You were like, “Yeah,” and then I keep going. I can’t pause, or you’re going to think it’s your turn to take over, because that’s what we do in conversation. When one person goes quiet, the other person thinks it’s their turn. It’s this beautiful nonverbal thing we do. But stay in the driver’s seat and keep going.

Hugh, I bet you’ve had the same situation where you’re talking to a large group. I remember being in a group with 2,000 people and thinking, “How am I going to use this E part with them?” It was just with a hand raise: “Here’s an example of me when I was being really hard-charging, too to the point, too direct. Who in here can relate to that?” They give a show of hands. It’s a way to check in with your audience.

That’s the second one. Now we’re to S, and you know it’s my favorite one. It’s the one we’ve already been talking about: keep it Short. Three to five minutes, but know the situation. If you’re doing a keynote on the stage, you’ve got more space and time. If you’re running a meeting that’s only half an hour once per month, you probably have 30 seconds.

If you don’t know how to keep it short, practice it out loud to yourself first, because people default to too long instead of too short, even when they think, “I’m not a storyteller.” It reminds me of the quote that’s often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but sometimes to Mark Twain: “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to write you a shorter letter.”

Hugh Ballou

“Sorry it was so long.” It was also attributed to George Bernard Shaw, but it’s a fact. It’s hard to write short.

Julie Lancaster

Stop it. Okay, perfect. That’s it. It’s hard to write short. When we’re talking, we tend to put in too much unless we’ve really gotten clear.

The last one is Theme. T is Theme. What’s the point? Ad-libbing off the cuff again, if I’m thinking about sitting outside in the sun on this September day with my dog, Frank, as the aphids are starting to eat my garden and frost is coming within a month, I could start thinking, “What’s the theme that I want?”

Here’s what it would be. I just figured it out. Like I mentioned before, I can be this hard-charging person who tries to get tons of return on investment for every moment I’m living. I want to get through 45 things on my to-do list in my 45 seconds.

My theme would be about taking breaks: the power of sitting outside in the sunshine for five minutes to be calm, to relax. There is time. Time is not always of the essence, and sometimes it’s even better spent—and we show up better—if we take a break.

That’s me going through R, E, S, and T. I’m curious, Hugh, because I’m sure you tell stories. Do any of those relate or engage at all?

Hugh Ballou

They all relate. The bigger the crowd, the faster they turn on you. It’s really important to look for those glassy eyeballs and make sure people are responding.

There’s another element embedded in all of this. This is really helpful. Somebody said, “I tried storytelling. It just didn’t work.” I said, “I tried working out one time last year, and it didn’t work either.” What we know as musicians is that we need to practice. I don’t care how good you are; you always rehearse. If you’re a keynote speaker and you’re a good keynote speaker, you rehearse.

If you want to have a really tough audience, find a middle schooler. They’re going to say, “Hello?” If you can hold them, you can hold an adult audience.

Talk about that element of it. You said to go through it, but you need to do a little more than just run through it. You need to practice it in front of somebody, don’t you?

Julie Lancaster

Heck, yeah. It’s not brave to just practice for yourself. That might be one of the first steps, but the true feedback comes externally.

Recently, I’ve been engaging in these storytelling competitions, and they actually terrify me because I want to get it so good. This is my method. First, I’ll think, “Here’s the theme of it. What’s the story?” Then I write it out word for word and record it for myself. I take lots of walks around the block, and I can hear the crappy parts. I’m like, “I’m trying too hard there. That’s too off-topic.”

After I’ve done my best myself, I have to share it with somebody else out loud. My best advice for actually trying it out is to know that first is the worst. Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you’re learning to play the violin, your first year doesn’t sound as great as when you’re in year 20. Practice it. Try it out.

Emotional risk-taking is the willingness to try something where you don’t know the outcome. You don’t know if it’s going to land well or poorly. Emotional risk-taking also looks like asking for feedback.

Let’s say I’m running a weekly staff meeting, and I want to have a record-scratching moment where I shock people and do something new. For the first three minutes, I tell a story. Afterwards, I would want to pull someone aside and say, “Give me feedback. What did you like about that story? What wasn’t helpful?” Just keep asking. It’s okay. “What do you think? Tell me your thoughts.”

Hugh Ballou

And listen to what they say. You don’t have to respond; just listen. That’s how you discover.

Before we run out of time, I want to make sure we get to the book. Have you got a copy handy?

Julie Lancaster

Here it is. Look at this: Beyond Words: How Our Stories and Strategies Inspire Leadership Action.

Hugh Ballou

Will some of this stuff be in that book?

Julie Lancaster

For sure. Can I talk about the book for a second? Does that make sense?

Hugh Ballou

Go for it.

Julie Lancaster

Perfect. There are two important parts of this book. One is how to create and use your own stories. I give lots of story examples in here because I think leadership books are boring when it’s just how-to. There are lots of stories, and at the same time, you’ll be emulating that.

The second part is that there are 31 leadership strategies. Leadership being hard is not a new idea, so it’s really support in 31 areas. It includes how you can maximize the power of your stories, and I share my stories in there. There we go.

Hugh Ballou

People can find you online. What is the link for your website?

Julie Lancaster

It is LancasterLeadership.com. There is no D in Lancaster. It’s just L-A-N-C-A-S-T-E-R, Leadership.com.

Hugh Ballou

There it is. There are people listening, so just describe it, and then I’ll put the link. There’s a lot of stuff here. What will people find, and can they contact you here?

Julie Lancaster

They can definitely contact me there. Go to the contact page. Here’s what I want everybody who’s listening to know, to think about, and to explore: if you are a leader who believes you have room to grow, you’re the kind of people we support. If you think you’ve got it all figured out and you’re not interested, don’t reach out, please.

If you’re interested in growing, we’ve got one-on-one coaching and group coaching. We have leadership academies where we come into your organization and help train your leaders, whether they’re emerging leaders, mid-level management, or executive teams. We have 360 feedback. We have strategic planning. We’ve got all the stuff.

If you want to grow, those are the teams we work with—the ones who are humble enough and hungry enough to say, “We want more.”

Hugh Ballou

There’s a lot on there. There’s a great video of her. Let’s have some fun. Let’s do a quick-fire set of questions in the few minutes we’ve got left. Let’s do it.

One word you want people to associate with great leadership?

Julie Lancaster

It’s a hyphenated word: human connection.

Hugh Ballou

Which is more dangerous: the leader who talks too much or one who never shares anything personal?

Julie Lancaster

This is a biased answer, but the one who talks too much, just because of my own baggage.

Hugh Ballou

Data first or story first?

Julie Lancaster

Story first, because it’s so atypical that it gets people listening to care.

Hugh Ballou

What makes a story unforgettable?

Julie Lancaster

When it connects to the listener’s own secrets.

Hugh Ballou

Complete this sentence: “A leader goes beyond words when…”

Julie Lancaster

When they’re brave enough to take risks. Risks look like trying something new, telling a story, getting feedback—just going for it.

Hugh Ballou

Of course, every concert, every time I stepped onstage, every time I stepped in front of a choir, I was nervous. You want to convert that nervous energy into momentum. You can pull on that. That’s good adrenaline.

Julie, you’ve given us so much to think about today in just this short period of time. You’ve made good use of a little bit of time, and that’s a lesson in itself. Thank you for being our guest today. People know where to find you, and let’s stay in touch. Thank you, Julie.

Julie Lancaster

My pleasure. Let’s do. Let’s do. Here we go.

Hugh Ballou