“It could be a story from your life inside or outside the busi-ness
context,” said Nossel. “It doesn’t specifically have to be a
business story, but it’s a story from your life that has a strategic
business application.”
For example, Nossel tells the story of working with Craig
Kostelic, a senior business officer with Condé Nast. Kostelic had
a challenge in front of him: After a merger, he was working with a
group of executives who didn’t know each other. He had to find a
way to connect with them and get them working together toward
a shared goal. Working with Nossel, Kostelic decided to share a
story from his days of playing high school football. He painted a
vivid picture of the time and invited his listeners into the intimacy
of his family home. He told of a great relationship with a coach,
a new coach who sidelined him and his desire to quit the team.
Then he shared his father’s wisdom about staying loyal to a team.
That time in his life even inspired a tattoo over his heart that reads,
“Blessed is he who accepts failure without despair.”
That story, says Nossel, was an important first step in helping
Kostelic connect with the leadership group and turn them into a
connected, trusting and collaborative team.
There’s more than one way to tell a tale; some strategies take the
focus off the teller and place it on the listeners. “Another way to
use storytelling is to tell a story in a way that puts the people you’re
talking to right at the centre of the story,” said Nick Todd, general
manager – Americas, Expression for Growth.
Steve Jobs was famously good at this. Introducing the iPhone
to shareholders (and the world) in 2007, for example, Jobs invited
the audience to be part of a “revolution.” Then he set the scene with
villains (rivals’ complicated phone technology), engaged audience
members who called him and revealed the “hero” product only
after a long and dramatic build up.
THE SHAPE AND STRATEGY
Whatever form it takes, a story is only as effective as the strategy
behind it. “The best storytellers aren’t just telling random stories,”
said Todd. “They’ve really thought about what outcome they want
and what change they want to effect.” He said, “Then they think
about the story they want to tell and how that could change minds.
“If you think about really amazing stories you hear, or even great
movies – the first thing they do is grab your attention and really
captivate you,” said Todd. “They capture you in the first 30 sec-onds
and make you stop and think.” Then, he notes, they’ll set the
scene. Only then will they set up the problem and introduce some
peril. “If a storyteller does it right, the people listening will feel
that tension on an emotional level,” said Todd. “When you set up a
problem, what do people want? They want a solution. So, you say,
‘Here’s the resolution to that, here’s how we move past it together.’ ”
HUMAN BRAINS: WIRED FOR STORIES
“Our brains are hard-wired for storytelling,” said Nossel. See side-bar,
“The Science of Storytelling.” Simply put, when information
is shared, wrapped in a well-crafted tale, it lands with more impact
and has a greater likelihood of inspiring co-operation and action.
There’s an evolutionary reason for that. “In order to survive,
humans needed to pass on important information for our survival
to our next of kin,” said Nossel. Before the written word, people
did that through spoken stories, handed down through genera-tions.
“We needed to share with our clan just what kinds of things
to look out for in the world that were dangerous and what kinds
of things were key to our survival,” said Nossel.
These days, the number of ways we can pass on information is
staggering, but there’s a compelling argument to lean on the hum-ble
story when the stakes are high. “For humans, storytelling is the
most powerful way of communicating,” said Nossel. “We have no
better way of sharing a message.”
HR APPLICATIONS
For HR, storytelling is a natural fit and can help drive success in a
number of areas. “Being professionals in our industry, we under-stand
human motivation and we know from studies what drives
engagement is connection with people,” said Cheryl Fullerton,
executive vice president, People and Communications at Corus
Entertainment. She said, “Relatedness is so important to motiva-tion
and engagement, and storytelling is at the heart of relatedness
– you have to make something personal and relevant for people to
hook their wagon onto it.”
At a high level, a particular story can frame or define an organi-zation’s
identity. “If you think about the overarching narrative of a
large corporation, every organization is on some kind of journey,”
said Fullerton. “An organization’s vision and its strategy are tied
to some kind of story or narrative archetype. It might be the small
upstart slaying the dragon or maybe a rebirth.” She said, “If you
think of all the story archetypes, organizations are living those.”
Even if the message is high level, the story only has impact
if it’s rooted in the personal. Rather than talking about a com-pany’s
origins, for example, a story would focus on what things
were like for the people there at the start. “It’s not that the com-pany
is on a journey, it’s that we’re on this journey and we’re
working hard together,” said Fullerton. “If it’s a story about over-coming
an obstacle, it’s about the person or people who did it, so
it’s personalized.”
When HR needs to help employees shift their behaviour in
some way, storytelling can offer the much needed accelerator that
gets things done. “If you want to create a change it’s pretty much
useless to tell people they have to change and here’s what they have
to do,” said Todd. “Employees need to have a personal connec-tion
to why they want to change, otherwise the steady state rules.”
He said, “Change takes energy, you’ve got to want to change. To
get someone to want to change you have to connect with them
cover feature
“THE BEST STORYTELLERS AREN’T
JUST TELLING RANDOM STORIES.
THEY’VE REALLY THOUGHT
ABOUT WHAT OUTCOME THEY
WANT AND WHAT CHANGE
THEY WANT TO EFFECT.”
– NICK TODD
20 ❚ NOVEMBER 2018 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL