CHAPTER 15 STORYTELLING

“Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best – and change – from hearing stories that strike a chord within us….. Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves”

John Kotter¹

A story is an account about events and people (fact and/or fiction) that can be told for different purposes: to garner excitement and entertain, to inform, to share how something developed or might develop.² Stories are how we organize our experiences and make sense of what has happened to us.

Stories don’t happen in a vacuum. As individuals, we gather stories about ourselves from friends, family, the jobs we have had, people we have worked with. We integrate these into our personal story – and are free to edit – adding and deleting perspectives and insights as fits our dominant ideas about ourselves. Our personal story constantly changes shape, growing as we grow throughout life.

The same goes for business; the story of a business has a starting point and a future point and a narrative that connects the two that makes sense of the business as it has developed, grown, reshaped and changed again and again. An organization’s story is heavily influenced by the accounts of different stakeholder groups – to the extent that your organization’s story is what others say about you, not necessarily what you say about yourself.

“I realised the importance of having a story today is what separates companies. People don’t just wear our shoes, they tell our story.”

Blake Mycoskie Founder & CEO, Tom’s Shoes³

Stories can really work to support and feed a business reputation, or destroy a trusted brand very quickly. In Chapter 2, Values, it is easy to see how reputations fall when organizations fail to address cultural failings that run counter to the trusted brand.

WHAT’S IN A STORY?

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

Philip Pullman⁴

Storytelling is at the heart of our existence as human beings. We have used stories to share experience, culture, traditions and learning for most of human history. Stories connect us to others, to our past, our future and to the wider universe. Modern humans have been on the earth for about 195,000 years.⁵ Writing was not invented until about 3000bc. It’s hard to imagine a world without written information within our current context of information overload and yet we are designed from such a world.

Without the written word, oral skills provide the main form of purposeful communication. It’s no surprise that there is a certain amount of receptivity to stories that makes a good story hard to resist. We are sense-making, social creatures, and stories provide a familiar way of making sense of information.

We think in stories.

If this doesn’t ring true for you, pay attention to the chatter in your own head. We’ve discussed the power of this inner world in Chapters 13, Mindfulness and 14, Resilience. What are the stories that you are telling yourself? Psychologists have come up with many names for the internal stories we hold: schemas, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models, metaphors, or narrative.

Stories fit our need to be able to predict what will happen next so we can prepare for it. At the very least, we are hardwired to avoid loss and harm (emotional and physical) and curious as to the impact of something on someone else so that we can make some assumptions about the impact of the same event on us. We use stories to support us to make decisions, justify our decisions, and persuade others about what they might do.

“Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution—more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to”.

Lisa Cron⁶

Peter Guber describes stories as the “cornerstones of consciousness”.⁷ Stories provoke our memory and give us the framework for much of our understanding.

As well as our inner stories, stories impact directly on those that we share them with, whether one to one, groups or an entire business.

In the business world, at some point, the idea of telling a good story got lost. In the words of Jason Hensel, “the vast majority of business communications is deadly dull”.⁸ And yet stories are so powerful. Psychologist Pamela Rutledge sees that stories are the “pathway to engaging our right brain and triggering our imagination, making us participants in the narrative. We can step out of our own shoes, see differently, and increase our empathy for others. Through imagination, we tap into creativity that is the foundation of innovation, self-discovery and change”.⁹

The story of Joshie at Ritz Carlton (shared by Chris Hurn) goes like this. Chris’s son had left his favourite toy at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island. Facing a distraught son, Chris told a little white lie. “Joshie is fine,” he said. “He’s just taking an extra long vacation at the resort.” His son seemed to buy it, and was finally able to fall asleep, Joshie-less for the first time in a long while.

That night, the Ritz Carlton called to say that they had Joshie. He had been found, no worse for wear, in the laundry and was handed over to the hotel’s Loss Prevention Team. The father mentioned the story he told his son and asked if they would mind taking a picture of Joshie on a lounge chair by the pool to substantiate the story. The Loss Prevention Team said they’d do it.

A few days went by, and a package was received from the hotel. It was Joshie, along with some Ritz Carlton-branded “goodies” and a binder that meticulously documented Joshie’s extended stay at the Ritz – showing:

•     Joshie wearing shades by the pool (the original request/suggestion)...

•     Joshie getting a massage at the spa...

•     Joshie making friends with other animals... stuffed and real...

•     Joshie driving a golf cart on the beach…

•     Joshie was even issued a Ritz Carlton ID badge, made an honorary member of the Loss Prevention Team, and was allowed to help by taking a shift in front of the security monitors.

Needless to say, Chris and his wife were completely wowed and the story will be talked about for many years to come – creating a strong sense of emotional connection with the Ritz Carlton brand.

The blog of this story¹⁰ received plenty of attention – connecting people to the Ritz Carlton brand in a very different way to a traditional corporate advertisement.

A recent study at Princetown University¹¹ showed how our brains synchronize when we listen to stories. Using brain-scanning techniques, the researchers could see that the areas of the listeners’ brains being triggered were the same as those being accessed in the storyteller’s brain, in the same sequence, as the story unfolded. The greater the level of understanding of the story, the more the speaker and listener brain images dovetailed. When there was no understanding of the story, where the same speaker spoke in a different language, no synchronization was seen.

“Stories are the most effective form of human communication, more powerful than any other way of packaging information”

Peter Guber¹²

MAKING USE OF STORIES

For individual leaders: Stories are essential as they unify and make sense of our sensory experiences. There is no central command post in the brain, only millions of highly specialized local processors, brought together by an interpreter module in the left brain hemisphere.¹³ This built-in storyteller generates explanations about our perceptions, memories and actions and the relationships among them. We create ourselves through narrative. Stories really don’t just come from “out there” – we listen to a constant stream of stories every day in our own head. The stories we tell ourselves are telling us where to focus our attention, they give clues about how we see ourselves in the world. Our internal stories are far from fact-based. We create our stories, just as any story is created.

And, just as the cast of characters in a play have their roles, our stories give insights into the role we take in our own life. Are your stories a wealth of support, a resource to draw upon? Or do they keep you focused on your anxieties, and fears – what you can’t do, what you need to be scared of?

The greatest freedom comes from knowing that we can recast the role that we play in our lives, changing unhelpful stories to be more helpful, more realistic, and more of a resource. While some stories might have had elements of “truth” decades ago, even perhaps a few years ago, or more recently still, stories go past their “sell-by date” and some well-recited stories can cast us in a role that is no longer true.¹⁴

Take one very capable professional client; let’s call her Jane. In her story, Jane felt her own needs were unimportant, it was her role to enable others to shine, to support others to realize their goals. Jane was admired in her field and received a lot of feedback appreciating her supportive approach. Exploring her story a little more, she felt uncomfortable sharing her own needs with colleagues. Pushing a little further still, Jane felt that her colleagues would no longer “like” her or may even get angry with her for saying what she really needed and sharing what she really thought in a situation. Jane was suffering from stress, at the level of early burnout.

These outcomes that Jane feared; were they really true? Or even likely? The only way to find out is to start doing things differently. This is exactly what Jane did. She identified one or two situations where she felt safe to say what she needed and thought. Not surprisingly, no one got angry. In fact, against Jane’s expectations, people responded really positively to her expressing herself more clearly. On reflection, Jane thought she was probably a bit more “human” as a result. Jane rewrote some critical parts of her story; being supportive and receiving support from others was a healthy two-way flow and enabled Jane to stay well, thrive and achieve even more.

For organizations: storytelling in communities gives shape to the foundations of a community, the “what” and “how” of past events and future possibilities brought to life through a tale. Organizational values are learned through the stories told in organizations. What is it important to pay attention to here? How do we do things around here?

We learn to navigate an organizational context in exactly the same way we navigate other social contexts. We listen to the stories to understand what it is important to hold on to and what to let go.

When organizations, brands or individuals identify and develop a core story, they create and display authentic meaning and purpose that others can believe and identify with, participate in – emotionally through their own imaginations, and share with the storyteller and others. Peter Guber describes stories as “state of the heart technology”, turning the listeners into “viral advocates of the proposition, whether in life or in business, by playing the story – not just the information – forward.”¹⁵

The hotel MD, walking around on a Sunday, visited the employee restaurant. There was nobody there and it was a mess: dirty plates left on tables, upturned chairs, discarded newspapers, cups with coffee dregs, debris on the floor. So he started to clear things up. Then a young chef arrived and offered to help: “I don’t have anything else to do in my break”. In about 20 minutes the place was clean and tidy. The following week, ahead of a holiday weekend, the MD went to see the goods receiving area and asked the clerk if he could make time on the holiday Monday to give the whole area a spring clean. The response? “If our managing director can clean our restaurant I am sure I can give this a good clean”. Do you think that an email restating the health and safety reasons for keeping the restaurant clean and tidy would have had anywhere near the same impact as this story being told among the employees?

Stories are rarely pure fact – the “goodies” that show the storyteller in a better light are often positively embellished, the “baddies” sometimes unfairly represented. The critical thing is that these “myths” become the reality.

Of course, social media has changed the dynamic and, now, personal stories can have a much greater impact – in a positive and a negative way.

You might be aware of Dave Carroll’s guitar broken by an American airline. He posted a YouTube clip of a song about his experience. Four days after its launch, a million people had watched “United Breaks Guitars”; United stock went down 10% at about this time, shedding $180 million in value (while the cause and effect is hotly disputed, the whole incident did not help United’s cause). The clip has now received upwards of 12.9 million hits.¹⁶

TELLING STORIES WITH SKILL

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”

Erin Morgenstern¹⁷

Storytelling really is a skill. If you’re a good storyteller, you transfer experiences directly to the audience’s brain – they feel what you feel. They empathize, are horrified and delighted at the same points. Like any skill, practice helps. But where to start? What are some of the basics?

Authentic: The success of a story rests on the resonance, authenticity, and richness created by the storyteller.¹⁸ It’s easy to see that when we enjoy a good story, we are not just paying attention to the “content”, we are paying attention to the storyteller – the energetic presence of the author, the tone of voice, inflections in speech – and the congruence between the two. On these points alone, a story may thrive or die. Stories provide us with a potentially authentic experience, so the authenticity with which a good story is told triggers whether we believe or disbelieve what we are hearing.

Golden rules: Peter Guber¹⁹ shares some secrets from his considerable directing experience about how to tell a good story.

•     Rule 1: Give the audience an emotional experience. The heart is always the first target in telling purposeful stories. Stories must give listeners an emotional experience if they are to ignite a call to action.

•     Rule 2: Use metaphor and analogy as this evokes images and turns on our memories with all their rich sensory and emotional associations. Stories motivate us because we see in them echoes and possibilities for ourselves.

•     Rule 3: It’s wise to prepare your stories in advance. But before you launch into your script, take some time to learn about your audience. What you discover will determine how you tell your story. You want to make sure your audience is with you. You can’t get anywhere without them.

Basic structure: Stories follow a structure. Joseph Campbell’s²⁰ work draws out the structure of ancient legends and myths and describes a basic pattern, which is commonly referred to as the Hero’s journey. The language of the Hero’s journey is engaging and emotive. The basic underpinning structured offered is:²¹

•     Who would be the main characters in your story?

•     What is the task?

•     Who or what is helping?

•     What is getting in the way?

•     How does the main character get around this?

•     What is the outcome or end?

This structure is so familiar to us that our brains are geared to anticipate the next part and the possibilities of what happened next, are already forming in our minds before the speaker has uttered the words. Julie Allan²² and her colleagues build from this underpinning structure, offering a rich insight into the science and art of storytelling.

Creating a strategic narrative

•     Where are you?

•     Where have you been?

•     Where are you going?

•     Ensure employees are part of that narrative

•     And repeat the story over and over again Most importantly, when telling a story: speak from the heart.

STORYTELLING AND 31PRACTICES

“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.”

Harold Goddard²³

Stories are core to the 31Practices methodology. To start with, there is the central story that is woven around organizational purpose and the principles and Practices that are designed to deliver that purpose. This chimes with the “call to adventure” – the departure phase of Campbell’s heroic journey.

There is the story around how you create your 31Practices as an organization: the main characters involved, the foundations, expectations and reputation that are you building.

There is the story around what is happening as the journey unfolds. This “bigger story” is created from the many stories that individuals share each day as they put the daily Practices into operation. This part chimes with the “belly of the whale” as the helpers and saboteurs become apparent and people learn how to navigate the 31Practices, its impact and refine it to ensure greater success. The stories about “how to do it well”, “the impact on me”, “the success I had” that people tell each other here are crucial to amplify. As in the words of Lisa Cron, the stories tell us what to hang onto and what to let go of as the culture shifts to align more explicitly behind organizational purpose. It is for this reason that 31Practices is embedded most effectively when it is aligned to recognition, communications and learning and development, capturing and then communicating these stories, turning myth into reality.

One of the most crucial sets of stories to really work on includes the stories from the organizational leaders. Make sure that those at the top of the organization are sharing what they are personally experiencing and doing this on a daily basis initially in order to send the signal through the organization. THIS IS IMPORTANT. If you don’t, interest will wane, confusion will abound and the initiative will fizzle as the old culture and ways of being steadfastly and implicitly remain.

There are stories around integration and mastery where people integrate the 31Practices into their daily routine without question. Stories of recognition from others and impact on stakeholder groups need to be shared.

To paraphrase Harold Clarke Goddard:²⁴ The destiny of your organization is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.