Are You Making an Impact, One Story at a Time?
We know stories are powerful, but where do you begin…and what do you do after the story is created? We’d like to provide a case study for how you can leverage storytelling to make an impact.
Storytelling is a tool we use to help make change easier. At Switch, we help our clients move their teams through change with a 3-phase approach: Understand, Plan, Launch.
Storytelling touches a number of elements within the three phases, primarily Leadership Alignment, ensuring you are telling a consistent story about the transformation or project that is underway. Storytelling also supports the Case for Change and why you are making these business choices, along with Engaging and Communicating with your employees about these choices. At Switch, we incorporate storytelling into our change approach so that we can help leaders and employees get beyond seeing a change from a limited lens. A story helps to create a picture of the larger vision and how that connects to what your organization is trying to do.
Why storytelling matters
Let’s first learn more about what happens in our brains and with our emotions when we hear a story. Anthropologists tell us storytelling is (and has been) central to human existence. Long ago, oral traditions of storytelling were effective ways to transmit important information and values from one person to the next or one community to the next. Places to avoid that could be dangerous. Good spots to find water and food. How a community grew. How a leader died. We use stories to make sense of our world and to share that understanding with others and help them experience it in the way we are experiencing it.
Stories create an active response in our brains – lighting up certain parts of it differently from others, producing chemicals, helping our memory better hold onto information and creating an environment that makes us more amenable to taking certain action.
We have so much vying for our attention. An effective story is like a spotlight to capture and hold our attention, like a signal within the noise of the world. The conflict of the story can cause the release of the chemical cortisol (associated with the fight, flight or freeze response), increasing our attention and readiness to commit something to memory. If it holds our attention long and strong enough, we begin to resonate emotionally with the characters and what is happening to them, simulating their emotions in our own brains.
How to put this into practice
We recently worked with a client on a large functional transformation that would have an impact on the entire organization. We first interviewed key stakeholders to understand their perceptions of the change, then wanted to frame a story, leveraging these important perceptions, to create a greater vision for the work that was underway. We already had a change network in place and wanted to work with this group to begin drafting their story -- but not from their perspective as a project team member or change network participant, from the perspective of an employee.
We conducted a working session with the goal of ensuring the team was working together, aligned, and understood how to effectively tell a consistent and concise story.
We used Switch’s storytelling framework and worked together to develop the details that explained the Present State, Pivot Point and the Path Forward. At the end of the session we crafted a three paragraph story based on the team’s input, and then sent it to the change network and transformation sponsor for feedback. The feedback step is critical to ensure the language, positioning and cultural voice is accurate. Once we had the final version of the story, the next step was to provide guidance for the storytellers to think through the right sender, channel and method for delivering the story to other audiences who needed to hear it. The story now served as the catalyst that the change network and project team members could leverage and tailor to their various audiences/stakeholders, based on what would resonate with them. We also created a mini communication plan so there was clarity on what to do next with the foundational story, who was doing what, and when.
As an outcome, we were able to use the story with the broader project team to help them understand what will happen to their stakeholders and how to position the story so the word could spread.
How Stories Impact Business
Stories aren’t just for bedtime. Bring them into your work and see the for yourself the results. Here are a few ways storytelling impacts business:
Build Trust. Stories can build trust by allowing the storyteller to share personal or authentic experiences. This transparency can foster trust and credibility with your audience.
Engagement and memorability. Stories captivate and engage audiences more effectively than facts and figures alone. They create an emotional connection, keeping listeners interested and involved, which enhances retention and recall.
Clarify Complex Ideas. Stories can simplify complex ideas or concepts by putting them into context. They make abstract concepts more tangible and easier to understand.
Inspiration and Motivation. Stories have the power to inspire and motivate. They can convey values, beliefs, and goals in a way that resonates deeply with listeners, encouraging them to take action.
Impact on Decision Making. Stories can influence decision-making processes by appealing to both logic and emotion. They can sway opinions and encourage stakeholders to support your ideas or initiatives.
Reach out to Switch for more details on how we can help you with your change initiative and bring your story to life.