Copyright 2003, 2008
Hamlet used a story – performed as a play by a travelling performing troupe – as a powerful communications tool to “catch the conscience of the King,” thus exposing the King as the murderer of Hamlet’s father. William Shakespeare knew that stories were important triggers for the brain.
Storytelling remains an important tool for communicators, and the weight of evidence showing how useful stories are in effective communication with all audiences just keeps getting larger.
In Gerald Zaltman’s How Customers Think he devotes two chapters: Memory, Metaphor and Stories and Stories and Brands, to the power of stories in how people think. Throughout the book he talks about how to tap into the deeper, sub-conscious thoughts of the people we might want to better understand in planning our communications with them.
He says one way to do that is to elicit stories from them and then mine the stories for the information that might really tell us what they will do in a given situation. (In an appendix to Chapter Four Zaltman shows how to conduct the Metaphor/story-Elicitation Process and later shows how to mine the information and build consensus maps. A very practical book.)
To support the need to dig deeper, he cites the work of Merikle and Daneman, summarizing their conclusions by saying that: “Unconscious reactions to marketing stimuli are a more accurate indicator of actual thought (and subsequent behaviour) than the conscious reports consumers often provide.” (He also devotes a very interesting section to minimizing the value of focus groups.)
And while Zaltman has a heavy emphasis on customers and marketing – the external business world – everything he talks about also has application to employees – the internal business world.
Zaltman says that “memories are stories, stories consist of memories, and both are often expressed through metaphors. Most important, the fusion of memory, metaphor, and story enables consumers to create meaning around, or to see personal relevance in, a company or a specific brand.”
I found this statement particularly pertinent to a technique we use in media training when we are trying to make our spokesperson’s messaging more useful and acceptable to the media. Simply put, we ask them to build the message platform as a story starting with the target audience’s problem (need, want, threat) and then working through to the branded solution, rather than the other way around, which we see too often in messaging. If the reporter and/or the audience don’t see personal relevance in a message, they are going to tune out, move on, and not remember the message. The message will not have any meaning for them. The story format helps remedy that need.
Stories within stories
Using stories in management is an area that needs a look as much as using stories with customers. Gaynor Dawson’s story of becoming the superintendent of 43 Junior High School Principals for the Calgary Board of Education offers a clear illustration of the effectiveness of using stories in a management context.
“As I look back, without realizing it then, the tool that was most useful to me in my job was story-telling. I was the carrier of school successes, colleagues, system news . . . These principals began to share their stories with me . . . they became part of the junior high school’s legends, myths. If a school had a success story, I would say, “Did you hear?” If there was a tragedy within a school, I would say, “You will want to know . . .” These 43 principals became story-tellers . . . at our meetings we left time to share stories of success, hard times, personal challenges . . . Our meetings became a place to come to refuel, to rebuild, to share pain, problems and celebrations.
“They knew through the stories I shared of the values that were important in their work with me. They knew which lines they couldn’t cross . . . not because of rules … because of shared stories, successes and even failures.”
If we think of our management teams, who uses stories this way and who doesn’t? And who are the most effective managers as far as communication is concerned? Ms. Dawson has shared an effective technique for improving communications.
Learning the art of storytelling
There are many consultants who teach story telling as part of or as the focus of their practice. One, whose website alone provides very useful information on the impact of stories, is Richard Stone, President of The Story Work Institute based in Florida.
In his articles section there’s a piece called How is Business Like a Story? Using Narrative Structures to Create a More Successful Organization. This article takes us through the application of the narrative form in business and describes its impact in an internal context. Near the end he points to practical implications, such as:
“Take the time to listen to the stories being told in the hallways of the organization. Here you’ll find what bureaucratic layers will hide from you. This is the pulse of the company, and will serve you as a diagnostic tool for understanding what ails the organization. Creating space for staff to tell you their stories will also unleash their creative spirit.”
And for those who might still be skeptical of the power of stories in a business environment, I’ll close with one of Stone’s examples. In an article titled Enhancing Communication Skills Through the Power of Story Telling he relates the example of the Disney Development Company and how it went about training Community Guides who would sell the as yet unbuilt new community of Celebration, Florida.
“To help them with their task of selling the community, SWI designed a one-day training program that taught the guides
· how to improve speaking and listening skills through the art of storytelling;
· how to effectively communicate a clear picture of the power of place in people’s lives through the sharing of personal stories;
· how community means much more than a place, that it lives in the relationships people have with each other, and how to communicate that Celebration will be a place that fosters such interactions;
· how to translate the city’s many features into stories filled with human interest, and
· how to ask incisive questions that will elicit a visitor’s stories of community, thereby enhancing the Guide’s ability to relate Celebration’s many features to the visitor’s true needs and interests, improving the likelihood of a future purchase.”
Did it work? Oh, yeah. When development is complete, Celebration is expected to have 12,000 to 15,000 residents (9000 to date). Some 2,500 of those had already moved in during the community’s first year of existence. Subsequent new developments sold like the proverbial small-town hotcakes – one new section sold a third of its lots on the first day of sale. In a later section about 78% of proposed units were reserved by potential buyers, again on the first day of sale. Such is the power of a good story well told.
-end-
Zaltman, Gerald, How Customers Think, Harvard Business School Publishing Copyright 2003
Philip M. Merikle and Meredyth Daneman, “Conscious vs. Unconscious Perception,” in The New Cognitive Neurosciences, 2d ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 1295-1304.
Storytelling as Communication, excerpts from an address by Gaynor Dawson, Human Resources Consultant, in The Business & Professional Woman magazine, copyright (c) 1998 Val Publications Ltd on behalf of BPW Canada. Note: this magazine is no longer published. Dawson piece now available online.
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