We went to Liverpool on the train this morning and, when we got to the Chamber, Martin King told us stories.
In his South London, taxi-driveresque accent, he took us all around the Tulse Hill, Norwood and Dulwich stomping grounds of his youth.
He also told us classic morality tales and fables packed with riddles, real-life crossroads to negotiate and mountains to climb.
Heroes and heroines emerged in the hurly-burly of real-life, through stories people could relate to, not from the dusty pages of unread rule books.
Martin works as a storyteller to help people develop and deliver messages which are both authentic and understood.
He would agree that too much of our business culture is driven by the perceived need to grandstand, obfuscate and overpower. In fact, in his world of deep meaning but plain telling, “bullshit” would hit the mark perfectly.
He’s right, you know. The real world proceeds in stories. I offer you a story. If it makes sense and rings reasonably true, you will engage with me and respond. You may very well offer me a story of your own in return.
A man at the front told us that lawyers seldom notice real people through the clutter of the legal framework.
A woman sitting near me told us in an utterly compelling away about how shoes can tell us so much about people.
So many stories, so many self-narratives, so many tales that we can tell…….
What stories are you telling others on your journey through your business life? Are you being heard? Are you even listening?
Hi Malcolm,
There is a vast difference between a storyteller who recognizes that what they do is an interactive form of engagement vs one who goes on autopilot and tells the same story the same way regardless of who they are with. Yes, it is easier on the trainer to tell their stock ‘driveway story’ at 10AM just before the break because….well, they always tell the driveway story at 10AM before the break. Less mental processing but the shine comes off that story sooner or later. You see much the same thing in customer sales reps who have developed a few great stories but mistake their telling the story for focusing on the impact they are having on those with whom they are speaking.
Great stories are compelling; we retain more of what we hear when we have an opportunity to resonate to the story, if not with the storyteller directly then with someone who accompanies us on this spot in the journey. And if not at that time, then we need to retell some part of the story to savor its relevance.
Here is one exercise on corporate culture and storytelling that I like to facilitate: in a group setting I ask the group to help me reveal the story of the company culture, but with a twist…I’ll ask one person to begin at the beginning and soon ask another person to pick up where that first person’s story left off. As we go around the room, the challenge is to build on the story so far. At various points I’ll interject with comment like “As these events were taking place, under the surface people in the company were thinking…” or I might offer up, “Not everyone felt this way. Tell me about the divisions in the culture because people had different events occurring in their parts of the business”. As the story unfolds the group typically gets engaged in building this shared story, some even interject their own questions to the group, and at some point I ask them to now summarize for me the core attributes of their culture as revealed in their collective story. Perhaps you’ve don’e something like that with your own clients…
….but that’s another story!
Marc
Storytelling is truly one of the lost arts in modern western culture. We forget that narrative draws and builds more engagement that any of our tactics or tricks.
Malcolm,
To avoid sounding like gossiping house husbands over the garden fence, story telling needs a sense of context to ensure the meaning shines through.
This sadly means most strategy is told as lines of text projected onto a wall.
PS Marc – great facilitation tip. thanx
I’m looking at my shoes right now wondering what story they tell apart from I need a new pair without holes in them! Really like the post and the way you’ve told it. Made me think about what stories we carry unconsciously around with us everyday through what we wear, how we speak, what we read, the way we sit…
The danger is that storytelling can sometimes become a cliche and in so doing lose its underlying power. How many times have we heard the following sentence thrown about – man is a storyteller…