Creating a story telling culture
What are the steps to introducing a story-telling culture as a means to engage, deepen learning, enhance relationships and teamwork, and thus improve performance results? Briefly:
• Convince top leadership of the need and benefits • Introduce the concept and techniques to key players • Begin to use story in everyday organisational life
• Select and communicate easy-to-access tools for constructing or finding stories, for example ‘google-ing’ or specific web sites such as:
www.storiesfortrainers.com www.businessballs.com/stories.htm#stories_index www.katinkahesselink.net/sufi/stories.html www.tomthumb.org/sufistories.shtml www.nasruddin.com http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/nasruddin.htm and
www.mindtools.com (Communication tools, Business story- telling)
• Cascade throughout the organisation the development of story-construction, telling and listening expertise
“People respond far better to stories than they do to facts, figures, statistics, bar charts, bullet point presentations, jargon and business- speak. Facts tell but stories sell. They are catalysts to learning and improved performance.”
• Review the impact on organisational life, culture and performance
Acquiring the skill
What do the two stories that follow tell you about how to progress with your own story-telling endeavours? At a rural gathering a famous actor is invited to recite
something. He chooses Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” He recites grandly, eloquently, perfectly. At the end there is polite applause. Then one of the locals points
to an elderly man. “He also knows that Psalm.” So after much persuasion the old man gets up and recites in a quivering voice, making a few mistakes. As he ends there is a poignant silence. Then thunderous applause. Someone asks the actor, “What was the difference between your rendering and his?” The actor responds, “I know the Psalm. He knows the Shepherd.”
A man is wandering around New York looking for the famous
music concert venue, Carnegie Hall. He asks directions but no-one seems to be able to tell him where it is. Eventually he sees an elderly woman with grey hair carrying a
cello and concludes she must surely know how to get to the place. So he approaches her. “Excuse me, Ma’am, can you please tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?”
The woman puts down her cello on the pavement, shakes her
white hair and looks him in the eye. She answers, “Practise, practise, practise.”
The skill of story telling is available to all of us. It’s not about being perfect but being authentic and understanding that stories are everywhere. As writer Ben Okri in Birds of Heaven (Phoenix, San Francisco, 1996) reminds us, “Africa breathes stories… In Africa, things are stories, they store stories, and they yield stories at the right moment of dreaming, when we are open to the secret side of objects and moods.”
14 Halo and Noose | May 2012
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