Why Telling Stories Matter - It's All About Connection

I remember every detail of a recent brainstorming session I facilitated for a public relations client who handles lifestyle and food brands. We were talking about the agency’s newbusiness pipeline and the kinds of clients that would be an ideal fit. The conversation evolved into how each team member uses the products they wanted to represent.

Why was I so interested in the shampoo they used, or the pasta they preferred?

The answer wasn’t the packaging or the taste. The reason I was so engaged was that my clients were sharing stories about their own lives, and how the products affected them personally. The discussion was profoundly rooted in purpose. Some products and companies they wished to represent had a significant social, health, or charitable component.

My clients were passionate about their work. They shared their experience in a compelling way, and they made me feel that I was part of the journey. Every person on that team felt a connection to something beyond the scope of work. Their stories conveyed what made them tick as people, as well as business professionals.

That’s why stories are an essential tool to engage our people. Stories can connect our work and our world to deeper meaning and a higher purpose.

Why We Tell the Story

According to Mitch Ditkoff, author of Storytelling at Work: How Moments of Truth on the Job Reveal the Real Business of Life, “When people tell their stories to each other and are heard, magic happens. People bond. Barriers dissolve. Connections are made. Trust increases. Knowledge is transmitted. Wisdom is shared. A common language is birthed. And a deep sense of interdependence is felt. That’s why, in days of old, our ancestors stood around the fire and shared their stories with each other. Survival depended on it, and so did the emotional well-being of the tribe.30

Ditkoff adds, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why employee engagement is down in so many organizations these days. It’s because so many people are feeling isolated, disconnected, unseen, and unheard.”

Imagine you are having a conversation with one of your employees who is struggling with one of the biggest professional decisions of her life—whether or not to relocate for her job. Your colleague is doubting her ability to make the right decision. She asks you what to do. Do you tell her what to do, or do you share a story of someone you know at another company who was faced with a similarly large life decision, and how he found his way?

I would suggest sharing stories is far more powerful than telling, dictating, or directing. It empowers the listener to put him- or herself into the shoes of the protagonist. It opens up new possibilities and approaches.

Without a story, you are saying “Do this my way.” With a story, you are saying, “Here’s what happened to someone just like you at a company just like ours, when faced with the same problem. Here’s what this person did to fix the problem.” Now you are making a connection via a story rather than creating distance with an edict.

Stories And the Brain Connection

According to neuroscience experts, evolution has wired our brains for storytelling. We know that we can activate our brains better if we listen to stories. Why?

A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. And that is exactly how we think. We think in stories all day long, no matter whether it is about where to go on vacation, about work, or about our spouse. In fact, science and technology writer Jeremy Hsu found “personal stories and gossip make up sixty-five percent of our conversations.”31

When we are being told a story, things change dramatically.32 The language-processing parts of our brains are activated, and any other areas in our brains that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are, too. If someone tells us about how great the sand felt under their feet, our sensory cortex lights up. If it’s a story about motion, our motor cortex gets activated. If it is about hearing something, our auditory cortex is aroused.

A story can put your whole brain to work. When we tell stories that have affected us, it can have the same effect on others. Both the brain of the person telling a story and the brain of the person listening can synchronize. True connection.

Anything you’ve experienced, you can get others to experience the same way in their brains.

What Is a Story?

Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes. It begins with a situation in which life is relatively in balance: You come to work day after day, business as usual, and everything’s fine. You expect it will go on that way. But then something happens; something unexpected throws things out of balance. You get a new boss, your company is sold, or, as in the situation above, you are asked to relocate across the country.

A good storyteller, says Bronwyn Fryer, in an article she penned for the Harvard Business Review, “describes what it’s like to deal with these opposing forces, calling on the protagonist to dig deeper, work with scarce resources, make difficult decisions, take action despite risks, and ultimately discover the truth. All great storytellers since the dawn of time—from the ancient Greeks through Shakespeare and up to the present day—have dealt with this fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and cruel reality.”33

The reader or listener hears and sees himself or herself in the universality of the protagonist’s struggle, and is able to access new ways of thinking about his or her own challenges and possibilities.

Why Storytelling Works

Have you ever found yourself glazing over during one of your colleague’s PowerPoint presentations, sitting through a difficult conversation, or a boring meeting?

In these situations, storytelling could have been a game- changer.

Peter Giuliano and Frank Carillo, principals of Executive Communications Group, told Workforce Magazine the main reasons storytelling can work are:

• Storytelling builds relationships. Storytelling puts people at ease. Stories open people up to be more receptive to your ideas.
• Storytelling contextualizes information. People learn best through stories. The technique gives you a powerful edge on your competition when your audience looks to you to communicate complex information in a way that they can understand.
• Storytelling makes an emotional connection.

Telling stories reveals something about yourself, which gives people the sense that they know you. Often, this is an advantage with a potential client, an employee, or just about anyone, because people feel comfortable working with those with whom they connect.

• Storytelling can enliven a presentation of facts and figures. Using storytelling in a presentation can bring numbers and pie charts to life.

• Storytelling keeps you top-of-mind. A person who tells a good story is memorable.

Storytelling is the thread that connects all of my work - leadership and team coaching, public speaker coaching and transition coaching.

Learn more at www.alansamuelcohen.com.