Story telling - a useful IC tool?
Storytelling is an ancient art that has been used for generations to pass on wisdom and embed culltural expectations. As children, our carers told us stories and fairy tales to ignite our imaginations and reinforce acceptable and unacceptable behaviours as well as cultural values.
The role of storytelling in a business context is growing in popularity. Authors like Stephen Denning and Noel Tichy advocate the power of storytelling in engaging employees by providing them with an inspirational vision of the future. Tichy argues that leadership is about taking others on a journey of change and storytelling can be a highly effective way of leading people into the unknown by painting a picture of the future that fires their imaginations.
So how useful is storytelling in an internal communications context? Research has found storytelling to be particularly effective in a number of areas such as communicating change intititatives, training, problem solving and conflict resolution. In their review of storytelling in organisations, Sole and Wilson found it was used to:
- share norms and values
- develop trust and commitment
- share tacit knowledge
- facilitate unlearning
- socialise new members
- generate emotional connection
- kick start a new idea
- share wisdom
- mend relationships
"Stories are particularly relevant for communicating complex knowledge within organisations - which may include awareness of values and norms, or details or workable solutions to complicated problems." Sole & Wilson.
Although stories have many uses in an organisational arena there are some limitations which are important to note. Stories are told from the individual's perspective so may be less relevant to others; the impact of the story is also highly dependant of the skill and commitment of the story teller; stories are not useful for developing deep skills-based knowledge, for example, we may like to hear stories of how pilots learn to fly, but I'm sure we would all be less than willing to fly with them unless we knew they had the relevant skills based training and experience! Finally, stories are not particualry effective in developing and communicating detailed policies and procedures.
As we can see it is important to select the appropriate topic for storytelling and be clear about what we are trying to achieve. The message must be clear and simple to have the right impact.
Denning provides eight storytelling objectives from stories designed to spark action through to those that foster collaboration. He also explores four key elements of storytelling performance which are:
Style; Truth; Preparation and Delivery.
For details of his book on storytelling in organisations
click here.