Can I Tell You a Story?
Chances are that you have asked someone, "Can I tell you a story?"
Why did you do that?
If you were having a serious conversation, you thought of a story that had much affected you and felt it would interest or help your listener to hear it, as well.
By asking the question, you meant to invite your listener to sit back, to relax, and to get ready for an important message. You were also asking for permission to speak without interruption for awhile, rather than exchanging words after just a few seconds.
Telling a story is a powerful way to build a relationship through sharing your feelings about the story. You might work side-by-side with someone for many months and not create as much understanding of and appreciation for one another as you can by taking just a few minutes to tell and discuss such a story.
Did you ever stop to wonder why stories have such powerful effects? It's certainly not a new phenomenon. Long before people could read or write, listen to music on the radio, watch television, play video games, search the Internet, check in on Facebook, or text one another, many of life's most important lessons were taught by telling stories.
Parents use stories today to share values and warnings before youngsters are of an age when they can easily connect with people outside the family through our myriad communications and entertainment choices. Such early stories provide a lasting foundation for successfully steering around many of life's pitfalls.
As a result, we've all become accustomed to the idea that stories are special. We also like stories because they appeal to our imaginations, to our longing to be entertained, and to our desire to feel more alive by having our emotions stirred. In fact, a compelling story can be harder to get out of your mind than one of those irritating advertising jingles.
Many people are comfortable with employing stories in just such ways. As a result, they look forward to hearing new stories, building a healthy stockpile of tales to share, polishing their deliveries of the best stories, and relating the appropriate ones at just the right times.
Increasingly, business leaders appreciate that stories can focus attention in ways that increase the amount of useful work that is accomplished. Let me mention some of the more important ways that business leaders use stories to help their companies:
1. Identify Opportunities
Many times people have trouble appreciating the problems and needs of other people whose lives are much different from their own. A story built around describing such a problem or need helps lower the barriers to mutual understanding.
Here's an example. A business leader who wanted to emphasize the need to provide employees with the right tools once told a story about a Russian cleaning woman who kept a spotless floor at home but who was dispiritedly swabbing away at work with a worn-out mop and leaky bucket filled with dirty water, fruitlessly swishing muck from one place to another without being able to remove it.
2. Improve Understanding
Everyone makes assumptions about what's going on while observing something. A story about such an occurrence provides the opportunity to share several additional perspectives to help establish a common, and more accurate, point of view.
A business leader who wanted to encourage colleagues to understand one another better might tell this story:
After a large, fierce-looking African-American man moved into a nearby home one afternoon, neighbors were soon alarmed that drug dealers were taking over when dozens of equally huge men driving flashy cars arrived that night and piled into the house. Several neighbors nervously called the police, who arrived with hands on their holsters, ready to draw their weapons.
When the large, fierce-looking man opened the door, the police were surprised to be greeted by the middle linebacker of the local pro football team who was conducting a Bible study for his teammates who were placidly seated, drinking milk and eating cookies.
3. Demonstrate What Needs to Be Done
A hotel manager who wants guests treated well can create a stronger and clearer mandate by describing the front desk clerk who drove to a guest's home in another state on his own time and dime to pick up an important prescription medicine that had been left behind by an elderly guest he had checked in.
As a result of seeing how much stories can help, many business leaders are now adding to their formal communications (speeches, manuals, newsletters, and in-house videos) brief stories that encapsulate their most important messages. In doing so, the leaders hope that the stories will be repeated and remembered.
Such story-telling opportunities just scratch the surface of what stories can do for improving business performance according to Dr. Juanita Day, a Ph.D. graduate of Rushmore University, who has done ground-breaking research into more advanced ways for business leaders to learn from and employ stories.
In case you aren't familiar with her research, let me share a few of the most important findings for improved business leadership:
1. Leadership development opportunities can be diagnosed in part by noting how current and potential leaders speak with others, including what stories are or are not used.
2. The stories that are most often shared among colleagues reveal deep assumptions and beliefs about the organization and its environment that can help identify sources of potential problems before they occur.
3. Leaders can use stories to close cultural and understanding gaps among those who need to cooperate smoothly.
4. Monitoring changes in what stories are informally told is a valuable way to measure how well organizational and strategic transformations are progressing.
5. Monitoring stories in an organization provides an early warning system to spot new problems and opportunities that are cropping up.
Dr. Day's dissertation contains six case histories describing an Australian company that employed these perspectives. She continues to advance her remarkable work through many unpublished experiments.
If you are like me, you want to learn more. The good news is that she intends to publish more about her research.
While you and I wait to read more about how to use and gain more advantages from these methods, rest assured that Dr. Day continues to investigate new ways that stories and mutual discovery can be used to engage employees and other stakeholders (such as customers) with one another in highly productive ways to create more sustainable solutions and effective cooperation.
What are some practical lessons you can apply in the meantime while you await her next research publication?
1. Keep track of the stories you tell, the ones other people tell you, and the ones that are circulating about your organization outside of the company.
2. Note your reactions to the stories.
3. Find out how different colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders react to the same stories.
4. Notice any gaps in mutual understanding that the reactions reveal.
5. Analyze how you might use different stories and shared experiences to close such gaps in mutual understanding.
6. Change the ways you communicate and monitor how well the changes work in overcoming the understanding gaps.
While you're at it, be sure to stay open to finding new stories you can tell your kids and grandchildren. Future generations will thank you.
About the Author:
Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school, who often teaches people who want to improve their effectiveness in order to accomplish career breakthroughs through earning advanced degrees. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness, visit
http://www.rushmore.edu
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