Managing Director at Narrative: The Business of Stories. I write about storytelling for corporate professionals.
Well before storytelling formally made its way into the corporate world, we were already using stories in many other domains. Journalism is one of them.
As a reporter, you find the facts and expose what is hidden. Your core job is to inform without fright or favor.
Netflix’s documentary “Victim/Suspect” is a perfect example of storytelling that uncovers a daunting truth. In this documentary, Oakland’s investigative journalist Rachel de Leon investigates cases in which sexual assault survivors were arrested on charges of false reporting. Therefore, the victims become suspects.
As a viewer of the documentary, I felt informed. In my opinion, director Nancy Schwartzman masterfully tells a story that has the potent power to influence but doesn’t necessarily desire an action from its viewer.
You can tell a story that informs but doesn’t get action.
Corporate storytelling demands something different. When I make reference to corporate storytelling, I mean the kind of storytelling we practice in corporations. I believe the potency of corporate storytelling must provoke action. After informing, it must generate emotional energy in a way that prompts its audience to act differently.
Two months ago, I worked with a mechanical engineer who is responsible for conducting energy audits with the goal to help businesses decarbonize. She is excellent at her job as an energy auditor; but after an audit is done, she has to communicate the findings in a way that the businesses act in a certain direction, which she struggled with.
When her existing skills as an energy auditor were fortified with storytelling, she was able to do one of the best presentations on decarbonizing businesses. I often tell her story to other mechanical engineers working in the energy and sustainability field. The purpose of storytelling here is to get action, both for me and the mechanical engineers who tell the story to the businesses.
In my case, I am telling this story for more professionals to leverage the power of storytelling. In the mechanical engineer’s case, she tells the story to businesses that can benefit from her services, and her desired action is that more businesses sign up for the energy audits she conducts.
In the corporate world, we are not just uncovering the truth to inform the audience; we are uncovering the truth to get the audience to act in a different way. Corporate storytelling is about finding interesting small moments to get people to act in the desired way. Because, unlike journalism, the probability of finding situations where you expose the impenetrable is rare. Therefore, labeling the purpose of your corporate storytelling as one that informs is a futile effort.
You can tell a story that informs and elicits action.
Leaders can improve their corporate storytelling by following these steps:
1. End every story by asking,”What does this mean for you?” And then clearly give them an action they can take. For example, recently I helped a technology leader build an AI narrative and at the end, he said, “So, what does this mean for you? This means that you should join our AI learning roadshow that we are having next week.”
2. Recognize that you may need to provide change assistance to get action. In the above AI example I have, joining the roadshow is the assistance towards the final goal.
3. Use stories from the environment your audience belongs to. For example, if the action you want from your audience is to build new skills, you must tell a success story of someone just like the audience for them to believe that building skills is the right action to take. If someone like them has built new skills, they can too. If we tell stories of famous people, your audience might fail to find resonance in that message and disengage.
I believe every form of storytelling has a clear purpose: journalism informs, movies entertain and corporate storytelling incites action. These are all forms of storytelling and without a doubt, we will witness overlaps in how these purposes interface with their audience. But at the core of it, every form of storytelling has a clear purpose.
If you work for a corporation and want to practice storytelling, then think hard: What is the change you seek to make? The story you tell is just the vessel that helps you propel that change.
If you don’t see making a change happen with storytelling in a corporate setting, your story will most likely fall on deaf ears. Corporate storytelling must push beyond informing to acting.
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