How To Use Storytelling To Achieve More in Life and Business
Persuasion is a “tool” we use daily to convince people to follow our ideas and do what we ask them to do. Most often, it comes without thinking, and we use it without putting too much effort into trying to review or improve the techniques we use to persuade other people around us — it is the way we grow up as humans. This applies in the work environment as much as it applies in our personal life. Customers need a story to believe in to buy a product; Investors need an inspiring vision and plan to throw money into our business (idea); Employees need to be convinced to get along with a certain company strategy; And the people closest to us (family and friends) need a strong narrative to trust our choices and follow along. Yet, we often struggle to communicate things in the form they should be communicated to achieve their goal. Consequently, we either drive ourselves into confusing situations (misunderstandings/arguments) or we fail to make the audience ours (stay engaged and follow us).
With that said, it is important to mention that the art of persuasion and effective communication — although some of the most ancient art, is also an overly complicated and difficult tool to use. Even people in media or content writing often struggle to transmit the right message and achieve the goal of their message. Nevertheless, one thing is certain and has been proven to be effective since the ancient times of human history: “storytelling is a skill that can be learned, and it can help us achieve more in life (or business)”.
Two Techniques of Persuading:
Conventional Rhetoric — which consists of two elements [Strekalova, Yulia & Krieger, Janice & Kleinheksel, A. & Kotranza, Aaron. (2016)]:
i. A statement that could be expected in general situations that call for the expression of empathy, understanding, or support.
ii. Identification of an opportunity for the patience (the audience) to find relief from or move beyond the disclosed situation (that you try to transmit).
This Technique is often noticed to be used by CEOs and leaders in organizations with a PowerPoint presentation, which presents an issue (the company faces), and a statement about what the audience needs to do to solve it [Fryer, B. (2003, June)]. To make the story more convincing, you also use statistics and graphs from the corresponding authorities.
Uniting The Idea With An Emotion — this is considered the most effective technique. To use this technique, people apply storytelling through which they don’t only provide lots of information, but they also focus on the audience’s emotions and energy. Imagination is key to forming a compelling story that will get your audience engaged. It starts with the description of a “balanced” situation, but then when you expect things to continue the same way, it refers to an event that throws the situation out of balance. An event that will make the audience connect to the story because it will “travel” them through the same emotions that the story represents. An extreme example would be the following: While being through a difficult period of time (personally and professionally), in your daily work stand up as a Software Engineer, you listen to your manager talking about business tasks you need to complete (task-deadline, task-deadline, and again tax-deadline), and all you think about is how stressed you are to be dealing with such deadlines while the manager is not helping you, that it makes you feel low and hopeless. But then, out of a sudden your manager states the following: “I understand how difficult and stressful this can be for you, and that is why I wanted to confess a personal event with you”. Then he continues: “Recently, my wife and I decided to take a divorce. It has been a nightmare for our children who are both 5 and 7 years old, respectively. It has brought a lot of stress to our life, and it goes without saying that it has affected my performance at work too. I am aware of that, and I would like to tell you how much I appreciate you all for stepping in and not letting us miss a single goal. I have now entered a program to help me recover quickly and soon I expect to be working more closely with all of you together, same as before. Thank you for staying committed while I was not. Together, we can achieve remarkable things”. With such a story, your manager will directly grab your attention and through the details shared with you, the manager will make you continue to stay committed to his request (perform the daily tasks and meet the deadlines). All because they had a compelling story to share with you and justify their behavior while at the same time make you feel the “pain” they were going through.
Now, not everything has to be so dramatic and extreme. This was just an example to help you understand the role of emotion in storytelling. The essence is linked to how the human mind, in its attempt to understand and remember, assembles the bits and pieces of experience into a story, beginning with a personal desire, a life objective, an event, and then portraying the struggle against the forces that block that desire. This is how cognitive psychologists describe the human mind [[Fryer, B. (2003, June)]. Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.
Structuring A Story:
Like a novel, the storytelling structure should follow the practice of Start + Conflict + Finish. Often, it starts by triggering the questions that will be resolved through an emotional experience, and it will leave a lesson or memory behind. To build a strong story, one needs to answer the following questions:
- What objective would you like to achieve? What do you want to happen after storytelling?
- What narrative will fit your audience best? Who are you facing and what role do you want them to take?
- What kind of emotions do you want to awaken in your audience? Positive or negative? Make sure your calls to action are aligned with the desired emotions.
What is the moral of your story? You need to make sure that one idea is clear at the end of the story. The easier and smoother the idea, the easiest it will be remembered. Complex ideas tend to be forgotten easily and disengage the audience.
Storytelling As A Means To:
- Develop trust and commitment — sharing personal stories serves as a way of showing vulnerability towards your audience. In return, one’s vulnerability makes us trust that person who was willing to share something so personal and sensitive with us. Knowing what someone has gone through makes us also want to follow their requests due to empathy.
- Facilitate unlearning — Rational arguments are often insufficient to accomplish change; an emotional or intuitive element is also needed to convince us of our level of tacit understanding. Stories can be effective in achieving this. [Soule, Deborah & Wilson, Gray. (2002)]
- Acts as an instrument for change — It draws on the active, living participation of individuals. It dwells in the experience of the people who act, think, talk, discuss, chat, joke, complain, dream, agonize and exult together, and collectively make up the organization. By contrast, conventional management focuses on lifeless elements — mission statements, formal strategies, programs, procedures, processes, systems, budgets, assets. [Denning, S. (2011, June 8)]
- Give meaning to data — Many people perceive data as meaningless numbers. This happens when the data is disconnected to anything important in their experience. But when the data is placed in the context of a story, it comes alive. One of the most well-known examples of this is Hans Roling’s presentation: “The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen”. [Malamed, C. (2021, September)]
- Encourages reflection — creates space for professionals to reflect on their own moral compass, and their personal values and practice in relation to other groups [(Hardy, 2008; Haines and Livesley, 2008; East and colleagues, 2010; Haigh and Hardy, 2011)]
I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and it hopefully offered some insights on why and how storytelling can help you achieve more in life and business.
I would love to read your opinion in the comment section below.
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References:
Strekalova, Yulia & Krieger, Janice & Kleinheksel, A. & Kotranza, Aaron. (2016). Empathic Communication in Virtual Education for Nursing Students: I’m Sorry to Hear That. Nurse educator. 42. 10.1097/NNE.0000000000000308 (Link)
Fryer, B. (2003, June 1). Storytelling That Moves People. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2003/06/storytelling-that-moves-people
Soule, Deborah & Wilson, Gray. (2002). Storytelling in Organizations: The power and traps of using stories to share knowledge in organizations. 53. (Link)
Denning, S. (2011, June 8). Why Leadership Storytelling Is Important. Forbes. Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/06/08/why-leadership-storytelling-is-important/
Malamed, C. (2021, September). Why You Need To Use Storytelling For Learning. The ELearning Coach. Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://theelearningcoach.com/elearning2-0/why-you-need-to-use-storytelling-for-learning/
Haigh C, Hardy P. Tell me a story — a conceptual exploration of storytelling in healthcare education. Nurse Educ Today. 2011 May;31(4):408–11. doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2010.08.001. Epub 2010 Aug 31. PMID: 20810195. (Link)
