When I first landed in Europe, I was asked several times whether we had lions, springbok, and leopards outside our house. I often lied and shrugged nonchalantly. I found that funny.
I found it not funny when a colleague came up to me sympathetically and whispered to me conspiratorially: “I don’t like them either.” I asked them if they thought my first words were English words.
Chimamanda tells vivid stories that illustrate the problem of a single story, an incomplete stereotype. She talks beautifully about the power and danger of words and stories. And the need for plural stories.
Building storytelling capacity in a business
A growing storybank and a diverse range of internal storytellers is money in the bank for a business. The CEO should be the Chief Storytelling Officer. Not the only storyteller. Marketing doesn’t have the budget or the ability in a world of social media to control the narrative about a company.
Note: This is a good quality check for the business as it doesn’t matter what your adverts say if your people and their faces and demeanour and social media profiles contradict the official narrative.
- Enhanced Brand Image: Diverse stories told by all sorts of people build and broaden the brand. This enhances the brand image, making it more relatable and authentic to more people.
- Greater Engagement: A variety of business anecdotes engages different people. People are drawn to stories that resonate with their experiences and perspectives.
- Improved Internal Culture: When a range of internal people are involved in reporting on how the business is helping people, it makes the culture more inclusive and engages people.
- Market Insights, Innovation, and Problem-Solving: Uncaged stories provide insights into different market segments and customer needs which could trigger innovation, inspire solutions, and guide product development, marketing strategies, and customer service.
- Crisis Management: In a crisis, a diverse range of stories and storytellers can help a business communicate more effectively and humanly with its stakeholders. Empathy, trust, reputation.
- Competitive Advantage: Stortellers talk about the future. A business with a wide range of in-house storytellers is often seen as more dynamic and forward-thinking. Along with all the factors mentioned above, this can be a significant competitive advantage in attracting customers, partners, and talent.
A Client Case Study
A FTSE 250 company asked me to help broaden their story bank and improve the storytelling ability within the company. The business was living off a single legendary anecdote that was now decades old. They didn’t want to delete or archive that iconic story. They wanted more stories. Stories from their frontlines. Gritty, relatable human stories.
Every business should have a large story bank
First, they wanted me to help their SLT and the next level of managers become more aware of the need for a large treasure of small stories. Narratives told by current employees about their own experiences, personal anecdotes, proud reports of how their business with its next-day delivery service had changed customers’ experiences, business models, and added value.
Everyone on the payroll should be company storytellers
Then they wanted me to help them develop their storytelling abilities – how to identify what could be a great story, then how to distill it, articulate it, and then how to tell it.
Storytelling workshops
Most of their team were easy to convince or were already convinced and hungry to learn. Some didn’t understand the relevance to them and their roles. Some were accountants or in other roles that had helped them persuade themselves that they were bad at storytelling.
Like with every workshop, people are involved. You don’t know what baggage the participants will bring into the room – so your workshop toolkit needs to be ready for everything.