As a child growing up in working class England, finding stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things became a pastime of importance. I needed to believe that I could achieve magnificent things even if I wasn’t afforded the opportunity of the bourgeoisie.

If I found them, could I dare to dream big?

What enables to me to now believe that anyone can make a difference in this world, including you, is by understanding the common thread of how other people have done it.

Not driven by money or power or status. But by an unwavering focus to effect change for good.

It is what I call a change-magnet; when the power of one person can magnetise others to align with a leadership vision and incite them to act. 

Question is, how do you do it?

Henri Dunant, is the founder of the world’s largest humanitarian network, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Without the internet, mobile phone or television, he used one of the single most powerful laws of attraction to rally support for his global movement; storytelling.

Dunant’s arsenal: words.

Storytelling is a strategic pillar that personal brands use for position and identity, such as Seth Godin and Richard Branson. It is the way Adolf Hilter and Slobodan Milosevic gathered their staunch believers. And how Donald Trump used words on stage create a rousing story to follow.

With the power of leadership and storytelling in action, let Henri Dunant’s strategy for change fuel the fire in your belly.

Leaders don’t often set out to become leaders.

Born in Geneva in 1928, Henri Dunant was raised into a religious and financially independent family. Both parents engaged in work to help low socio-economic communities and in particular orphans and parolees. Humanitarian causes were the fabric of Dunant’s childhood.

Aged 21 he left the Geneva College with poor grades and began an apprenticeship at a bank. After a business assignment took Dunant to Tunisia and Sicily, Dunant created his own colonial business in French-occupied Algeria. It was fraught with limitations. He required immediate permission to access water required to turn the wheels of his newly acquired flour mills – or bust.

The story takes a sudden twist.

In a desperate plea to secure water rights, Dunant decided to seek an audience with Emperor Napoleon III and resolve the matter himself. Slight snag. The Emperor was fighting a war in the neighbouring country of Italy.

Let’s pause here. What kind of risk-taking mindset would it take to address a personal business matter with one of the most powerful leaders of the 19^th century? It would be almost madness to think that a leader of the French Empire in 1859 would care to entertain Dunant at all. And in an era where cars, trains and the ability to move across country at speed was not yet possible, anyone intent to travel by horse and carriage several days across a border into a war-torn region would be considered bereft of sanity.

Dunant however, was a driven businessman and resolute he set off on this journey alone. 

What happened next changed the world irrevocably.

The Italian Piemonte’s Army, supported by French troupes, were fighting the Austrian Army in an effort to drive them out of Italy. It is known as one of the bloodiest battles of the nineteenth century. When Dunant arrived on the eve of 24^th June 1859 seeking an audience with Napoleon on the battlefields of Solferino, he was instead met with twenty three thousand men dying in front of him.

The ‘chaotic disorder, despair unspeakable and misery of every kind’ prompted Dunant to immediately tend to the sick and wounded – on both sides. It was his call to arms. Cleaning their wounds, bringing water and setting up shelter in churches, barns houses and lanes where squalor, pools of blood and flies feasted on the rancid. Days turned into weeks. Without medical knowledge or aide, he wrote to his friends to purchase supplies and convinced local civilians in the small village of Castiglione to set up makeshift hospitals. Dunant negotiated the release of Austrian doctors to care for French and Austrians alike, in a place of neutral medical safety.

A leader is born.

Compelled to share his story with the global community, Dunant wrote an account of his experiences in a short book called ‘A Memory of Solferino’.

A staggering work that catapults readers onto the frontline of an horrific slaughter, it is written like a beautiful three act Shakespeare play; the beginning depicts the blood and gore of war, the middle draws the reader into the urgency of care and the finale expounds a masterplan of hope.

Returning to Geneva, at Dunant’s expense, he printed 1,600 copies. Written as an open letter to world leaders, he sent his personal story to sovereigns and statesmen, military commanders, doctors, writers and philanthropists as “not to be sold”.

‘A Memory of Solferino’ sent shockwaves throughout Europe. The story permeating the sensibility of men and women, with whom sent messages of support – much like a viral campaign of modern day.

Let’s reflect here. This is an age without photography or images to depict a scene. This is an era that relied on word of mouth, where stories recounted amongst communities were passed on across the seas via tall ships and telegrams. Only the most entertaining, the most memorable, the most compelling story could be told and retold without dilution, and with the same end cause. To stir. To illicit a deeply profound emotional reaction. The only weapon Dunant had was the power of his words; descriptive first hand retelling and writing of a gruesome bloodbath to incite others to join his movement.

The story of Solferino was real, raw and authentic. His vision was pure, altruistic and rooted in compassion for mankind. It arrested the hearts and minds of other leaders who, so moved by the story and his plan for change, were willing to align with the leadership vision of Dunant to set a new course for human rights.

“Enthusiasm counts for nothing, if it does not lead to action”

Dunant found four advocates (early adopters) to commit to his vision and mission; lawyer and local chairman of the Geneva Public Welfare Society Gustave Moynier, Swiss Army General Henri Dufour and Doctors, Louis Appia and Theodore Maunoir.

On 7th February 1863 they became the five founding members establishing the International Committee of the Red Cross known today as the ICRC.

His – story is made.

During the course of the following year, Dunant addressed the King of Prussia and the King of Saxony. Using his own money, he travelled across Europe hoping to secure National Government representatives to attend his first ICRC conference in Geneva.

What a turnout. Thirty nine delegates from sixteen nations.

On 22^nd August 1864 twelve States signed an International treaty establishing the very first Geneva Convention adopted for Neutral Humanitarian Aid and Protection for Wounded Soldier’s on both sides and confirmed a visible united emblem of a red cross on a white flag.

Today, the ICRC flag is a beacon of guaranteed neutrality.

Dunant’s personal vision became a revolutionary act that remains the most prolific humanitarian movement of the nineteenth century.

Henri Dunant received the first ever Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

Four Geneva conventions have since been ratified and have guided the establishment of war-crime tribunals and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague indicting the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic and the Khmer Rouge.

In 2020, 200 States form a part of the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law upholding stringent protocols for the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers on land and sea, innocent civilians and prisoners of war. These form the legislative laws by which our Nations abide.

A breathtaking legacy.

Yet, his personal story did not end in the glory one might imagine.

Committed to the ICRC, Dunant did not maintain his business affairs and the water rights he initially sought with Napoleon in Solferino were never granted. He swiftly became bankrupt. Money invested did not recoup and his business relationships turned sour finding himself no longer welcome among the affluent Swiss stock.

He assumed the life of a beggar, dining on crusts of bread and invisible amongst the homeless. He spent his last eighteen years in solitude taking ill and residing in ‘Room 12’ at a hospital in a small village called Heiden.

Dunant died without a ceremony or mourners, despite accolades later bestowed upon him.

Dunant’s prize monies went to philanthropic charities with his last wishes honoured; paying for a free bed readily available at the Heiden hospital to those poorest and most vulnerable in the community. Even in the ashes, his spirit of humanity lives on.

Stories for change.

What is remarkable about Dunant is how he used his influence to tell a story. How he used storytelling to captivate his audience. How he used the power of emotive storytelling to find his four ‘early-adopters’.

This is contemporary leadership as we know it.

Anyone entrenched in modern day marketing will know the magnificent mind of Seth Godin. But even Seth Godin’s philosophy harks back to, and is supported by Dunant’s strategy of ‘finding his first four followers’. Seth will tell you not to focus on securing an audience of a thousand, but to find the first ten early adopters that are thirsty for your work, your content, your stories. Find your first ten that will advocate for you, that will share and spread your word or those that will sneeze the ideavirus, as he calls it.

Dunant is an exemplar of this method, but not by design. By conviction of cause.

Could anyone have witnessed the Battle of Solferino, written a book and used the story as a global call to arms?

Yes.

And No.

The perfect storm lay in Dunant’s childhood influence of social impact, having finances for the opportunity to travel to Europe to tell his story but more importantly a fearless leadership mindset that stood up for what he truly believed in; humanity with a determination to change the world for good.

This is the reason that ‘Henri Dunant’ lead a revolution and why his story – some 150 years ago – inspires leaders to arm themselves with the powerful weapon of storytelling.