Category: Storytelling

Stories are fascinating things. They convey huge amounts of information. They help people to make meaning of things and rapidly learn. They impact behaviours and spark ideas.

Storytelling itself has enormous potential to accelerate change and drive performance.

But through this period of unprecedented change and uncertainty there is one benefit of storytelling that is perhaps most relevant for leaders to consider. It is the ability of stories to connect people at a rational and an emotional level. It’s the fact that stories can connect us and unite people behind both challenges and opportunities.

The stories that emerge about an organisation now will help define the lens through which their people, partners, customers, shareholders and the communities they operate within view them.

Whether it was Pret A Manager announcing its actions to support NHS members, LinkedIn providing free learning materials, Louis Vuitton turning its hand to manufacturing hand sanitiser or Google moving quickly to set up a fund for temporary staff to take paid sick leave, companies are playing their part in making people’s lives easier.  

Small stories

An ocean of kindness and support has swept across the globe, and stories are emerging at local and global levels. A small corner shop in Edinburgh is giving away free ‘corona virus packs’ to the elderly. Likewise, a local distillery in Bristol is producing sanitary gel rather than gin and donating it to local residents in exchange for a donation to charity.Even small stories are having a major impact: inquiries for the sanitiser have been pouring in from all over the country, including from Network Rail and many hospitals. 

Individual acts 

On Monday, fitness guru Joe Wicks became the nation’s PE teacher with more than 800,000 households live streaming his home workout. The Kindness Pandemic Facebook group which started on 14^th March now has more than 80,000 followers across the world who are encouraging each other by sharing stories of the individual acts of kindness they have shown. 

The benefits

Acts of kindness build the right stories within an organisation as they inspire employees and customers to do great things. Psychology even shows that acts of kindness create an emotional win for two parties as they are both left with a positive glow (Guardian). Further, cognitive science has shown that shared adversity brings out team innovation and creativity (Psychol, 2013). 

In these complex and uncertain times, the power of connecting with one another at an emotional level is more pertinent than ever before. Kindness will keep teams motivated, engaged and connected with one another. And as we go through this together, community action will keep us on the right path forward. This is a narrative that belongs to all of us, at a national and global level, and we can write it together. 

Changing attitudes and belief systems, and winning hearts as well as minds, is one of the hardest aspects of organisational change to overcome.

As human beings we are governed by our emotions, often entrenched in existing behaviours and mindsets which can make us highly resistant to change. 

Yet a simple, inspiring story can have a dramatic effect on the way people think, feel, act and behave. Harnessed to a strategic context, leaders who use storytelling can help dramatically accelerate the pace of organisational change in a very powerful way. 

• How storytelling can bring meaning and purpose to work
• Why people resist change, and what to do about it
• How leaders can ‘reset the narrative’ in their organisation to inspire change
• How to construct an emotionally compelling strategic narrative

Watch our webinar to find out what it is about a story that is so compelling, and how leaders can use story to change mindsets and create emotional connection. 

Crafting a vision

Every client has their own set of challenges. For one luxury hotel chain, they wanted to achieve an exceptional standard of service, creating the ultimate holiday experience that drove guests to come back and tell all their friends. This meant sharing their vision with their staff and inspiring 9,000 new employees.

We started by crafting an overarching narrative of the journey the business was on. We distilled a simple yet powerful story about the founder’s vision, then tailored a programme that connected people to this narrative through their own stories, allowing employees to truly understand the personal contribution they could make.

The case of the missing ring

One story told of a hotel guest who had the misfortune of binning two theatre tickets. On letting reception know, they offered to buy him replacements. But the guest insisted: it had to be those tickets. So a few off-duty members of staff offered to search through the rubbish to find them. Eventually, they uncovered the envelope – and within it, an engagement ring.

This was just one inspiring story of exceptional customer service uploaded to a digital platform that collated over 1,000 other motivational stories. Through this interaction, through emotionally engaging with the narrative, every member of the business was able to connect with the hotel’s ambitions and contribute in a meaningful way.

The impact of storytelling

The results? Employees felt hugely engaged. Guests’ expectations had been exceeded. Repeat business increased, as did spend during stays and customer recommendations.

Our impact even transformed the founder’s outlook on empowering people. “This business of storytelling,” he said, “and finding a way to give individual recognition to people by allowing them to tell their stories every day and publishing them, is the single greatest idea that I have heard in business of any kind whatsoever.”

That’s why we talk about storytelling delivering meaningful change. It ditches the jargon of traditional programmes in favour of genuine, human language that shows how everyone has a role to play and can be part of the journey towards achieving great things.

To discover how storytelling can transform your business, download our e-book, Storytelling: how to reset an organisation’s narrative to inspire change

At The Storytellers, we know that meaningful change is built on emotional connection. That’s why we talk about moving people to do great things through storytelling. In this post, we want to unpack what that means.

Our purpose in practice

Let’s take Trolley Tom. An ordinary guy working for one of our clients, a major supermarket retailer (you’ve heard of them). While collecting trolleys, Tom notices people struggling with the sloping car park. One meeting, he raises his hand to offer a simple but effective solution. Within days, he’s crafted small cardboard wedges that fit into trolley wheels, enabling customers to manage the slope.

And there it was, in a nutshell, the perfect example of how this supermarket goes above and beyond to preserve its trusted reputation through customer service. When this client approached us, they were facing a dip in morale and an unhealthy shift in culture. Trolley Tom’s was just one story of inspiring behaviour following our tailored programme, engaging individuals with the company’s wider ambition.

A unique approach

We work with a company to co-create its overarching narrative and devise an integrated programme that connects people to the bigger picture through their individual stories: the initiatives, the inventions, the acts of kindness and courage.

These human, relatable stories show people the role they can play within an organisation, engaging everyone from shop floor to C-suite so that they feel invested in the company’s overall goal. This emotional hook is critical for people to embrace change, whatever the business’s ambition: to deliver big shifts in customer satisfaction, increase share price value or slash operating costs.

Of course, every client we speak to is different. Industries vary, sizes differ, pain points range from skills gaps and organisational politics to entrenched behaviours and fear of change. We’ll always design the most effective programme, finding the stories that link back to the core narrative and champion the behaviours you want to see.

Storytelling as opportunity

Today, many leaders question whether their stories are compelling enough to bring people with them on their journeys and to realise their goals. Through storytelling, we offer an opportunity like no other: the chance for a business to shape its narrative and to talk to its people in an authentic, human way, allowing each person to understand his or her part in the overall journey. That’s how you move people to do great things, and accelerate change.

To discover how storytelling can transform your business, download our e-book, Storytelling: how to reset an organisation’s narrative to inspire change

In Feel Like a Number, 1978’s plaintive rock paean to crushing corporate anonymity, the American songwriter Bob Seger roars about life as “just another spoke in a great big wheel, like a tiny blade of grass in a great big field”.

It’s a story that endures. Musicians, like all creatives, have long bemoaned the white-collar world and its structures – its need for order where art seeks chaotic, free abandon. It’s easy to see leaders as villains in this narrative: the wheel crushing the butterfly, the field of uniformity swallowing up the unique and the unusual. But the paradox is that creativity often thrives between the parameters marked out by robust leadership. Great music is just a powerful, emotive narrative told by great musical leaders, and the same power of story can be harnessed in business to inspire, accelerate change and transform performance.

In this era of uncertainty and ambiguity, the leaders of the 21^st century must embrace new ways of imagining the traditional management story. This is not the management landscape of Bob Seger’s 1970s – or even of a decade ago, when “topics such as inclusion, fairness, social responsibility, understanding the role of automation, and leading in a network were not part of the leadership manifesto” (Deloitte, 2019). The future is now – and story is an essential tool in shaping how your organisation embraces that future.

The 21^st century organisation is no longer judged on just financial results. It must be diverse and inclusive, or risk alienating both staff and consumer; it must be involved with and empathetic to its wider context in society, or be dismissed as regressive; it must understand the advent of the ‘superjob’ and its symbiosis with artificial intelligence and automation, or risk falling behind in an accelerating technological arms race; it must access and exploit the ‘alternative’ remote personnel, or risk leaving unfillable gaps in its workforce.

We sometimes refer to the ‘symphonic’ C-suite, an ideal balance of leadership talents which can overcome any obstacle when deployed effectively. But to address the challenges of the 21^st century we need to tell a broader story – one that gives a voice to the orchestra, not just the conductors.

At The Storytellers, we focus on the 3Ms of behavioural change: building motivation through meaning, connection and personal storytelling; giving people the means to help them learn independently through storytelling; and creating momentum to keep this new shared story alive.

Leaders need to provide motivation to their ‘orchestra’, through the inspiring power of story. They need to give them the means through which they can achieve a collective mission – the organisation’s platinum album, its sold-out world tour, if you will. And they need to maintain the momentum of success, so that the unforgettable ‘song’ isn’t remembered as merely a ‘one-hit wonder’.

Story can bring your strategy to life, and help you lead like a maestro. 

In a 2009 TED Talk on the musician-management styles of some of the 20^th century’s most famous conductors, the Israeli musician and leadership expert Itay Talgam likens the concert hall to the ‘little office’ of the orchestra leader. “Or rather a cubicle, an open-space cubicle, with a lot of space,” he says. “And in front of all that noise, you do a very small gesture. And suddenly, out of the chaos, order. Noise becomes music. The joy is about enabling other people’s stories to be heard at the same time.”

The key is treating these people as members of an emotionally collaborative creation, rather than just instruments in a room. “When it’s needed, the authority is there,” Talgam says. “It’s very important. But authority is not enough to make people your partners.” He warns against the heavy-handed authoritarianism of the Italian conductor Riccardo Muti, who received a letter from the 700 employees of the Teatro alla Scala opera house in Milan which read: “You’re a great conductor. We don’t want to work with you. Please resign.”

Get this balance right, however, and Talgam says you will unlock irresistible potential. “You’re telling the story,” he says. “And even briefly, you become the storyteller to which the community, the whole community, listens to.”

The music journalist Tom Service spent hours watching how these leaders work with their musicians while researching his book Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and Their Orchestras. His conclusions draw obvious parallels with the personalities of the business world, where human dynamics are equally delicate; like Talgam, he cautions against didacticism. The best leaders tell an inspiring, inclusive story in which everyone has an important role.

“The last thing the best conductors do is to force a group of musicians to do their bidding,” he told The Guardian. “Performances are constructed through patient hours of listening, so that each player has the chance to build up a similar mental, musical and emotional map of the piece in question.” He cites Simon Rattle’s relationship with the Berlin Philharmonic, in which he is “continually shaping and moulding the orchestra’s sound”, rather than directing or controlling it, and says that while every musician he spoke to wanted to be valued both as an individual as well as part of a collective, “they also would not tolerate a lack of inspiration or leadership from the person on the podium.” In other words, empathy without direction, and vice versa, will hit a bum note. Your workforce – your ‘musicians’ – need to be connected to their purpose through the story you tell as an inspiring leader.

The history of music is peppered with blood-curdling tales of tyrannical leaders, the autocrats whose musicians were in bondage to the story rather than free agents within it. For every Simon Rattle, there is a James Brown, who kept his band in a permanent state of groove-tight performance anxiety with mid-gig gestures equating to dollar penalties for every missed beat or imperfect riff. Thankfully, there are also leadership heroes aplenty in this tale, inspirational creatives who knew how to get the best out of their musicians by finding ways to touch their emotional core, and by successfully involving them in their creative story.

Reeves Gabrels, who founded Tin Machine with David Bowie, says that the iconic pop genius told his band members the story of a new song by giving them visual prompts to help them pursue a fresh sound.

“The first time we worked together he said, ‘Maybe you could build German gothic cathedral architecture out of guitar’”, Gabrels explained to the music website Quartz.  “Other times it was, ‘This should be like Jackson Pollock,’ or ‘This should be like ‘The Persistence of Memory’ by Salvador Dali, but with melting guitars instead of melting clocks.’ The reference points were rarely specifically musical. They were almost always visual or about feeling.”

Bowie was inviting his collaborators to fashion the musical story with him, to be architects in this cathedral of sound rather than just builders. Like all great storytellers, he wanted you to participate; he chose the creative tools, but then placed them in your hands. He inspired belief in the story, united his team with this creative inspiration, and accelerated their performance to new musical heights.

Academics at Warwick Business School have taken this to its logical extension – that good leadership fosters greater productivity regardless of discipline – by correlating the leadership skills of jazz greats like Duke Ellington and Art Blakey with the best practice of successful entrepreneurs. In her paper Leading Entrepreneurial Teams: Insights from Jazz, the school’s professor of Entrepreneurship, Deniz Ucbasaran, finds the mightiest giants of jazz history have much to teach us about business leadership. Ellington inspired decades of loyalty in his musicians through the alchemy of motivation and respect for their freedom; Blakey preferred an avuncular warmth, a paternal concern for his team’s well-being. Their success is less about a particular management style than striking the right balance between a leadership role and a collaborative one; by being able to articulate a vision, to tell a story about a musical destination and how it can be reached.

“If you have a creative process, you have to have talented employees,” Ucbasaran tells The Guardian. “But talent is not always easy to manage. You have to give them freedom and space,but direct them in subtle ways so that the end result comes together harmoniously.”

The true leaders of the 21^st century can conduct the tricky ambiguity of modern business by telling a story that inspires a shared emotion that people can connect with – like the harmony in a beloved album track, or the last shared chorus of that unforgettable tour. Storytelling provides the motivation, means and momentum to help you strike that perfect chord.