It’s no secret that storytelling is the most powerful way to share ideas and get decision-makers to say “yes.” But the truth is, in many organizations, it often feels like good storytelling only happens in isolation – like that high-gloss pitch deck that sales and marketing spent months developing, or your CEO’s big announcement at the company annual kickoff event. The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way.
With just a few simple strategies, managers can nurture a culture of storytelling among anyone in their organization – better yet everyone – by weaving storytelling into their team’s day-to-day communication process.
So where do you start? Surprisingly enough, with a little training and consistent coaching, anyone can become a compelling, authentic communicator. And the best part is, teams who receive regular story coaching from their managers and peers not only become more clear, concise communicators, they become more efficient, too. This is because storytelling provides teams with a common language for building, reviewing, and providing feedback on their business communications – countless rounds of revisions saved. Better still, this level of efficient team collaboration helps customers, managers, and other decision-makers get to “yes” faster.
Here are five ways managers can nurture a culture of storytelling within their organization:
1. Remind your team: storytelling opportunities are everywhere
Business stories are comprised of a basic framework that anyone can learn. It’s based on the development of one BIG Idea woven through four structural components: setting, characters, conflict, and resolution. We’ve written volumes about this framework (and even a book!).
The most powerful thing about adopting a storytelling structure is that, once learned, the opportunities to use it are infinite! Managers eager to get their team to communicate more strategically — with crystal clear insights at the forefront — should take every opportunity to remind their team that storytelling strengthens all forms of communication. From emails to marketing collateral to conference calls to elevator pitches… opportunities to tell stories are everywhere.
2. Make sure anyone presenting ideas knows who their audience is
Oftentimes — particularly on sales teams — similar stories are presented over and over again. Of course, people will always try to save time by reusing slides, data, text or whatever components they are using to tell their story. There is nothing inherently wrong with this if audiences are always exactly the same. But in reality, audiences can shift dramatically depending on their unique needs and care-abouts, the industry they come from, the role they serve, the level of decision-making authority they have, and so on. To foster a successful team of storytellers, managers should ensure they carefully consider exactly who is receiving their ideas. And then, they must customize their narrative to best suit that specific audience.
3. Systematize peer-to-peer coaching for high-stakes communications
They say “practice makes perfect”, but more importantly, practice makes permanent. Managers should model and coach their team in the story-building process whenever they can. And it’s perhaps even more important to integrate peer-to-peer coaching in their daily process.
Whether managers assign peer-coaching partnerships or let people select their own partners (depending on the project they’re working on) the key is to normalize and systematize the coaching practice. What’s more, smart managers will have peer coaching partners share the results of coaching sessions during internal meetings. They’ll discuss:
- What path did your coaching questions take?
- How did the coaching session change the story from beginning to end?
- What was the ultimate outcome of the story?
There are three strategic advantages to having teams share their coaching process:
- It elevates the importance of coaching as an integral, developmental step in all high-stakes communication
- It brings out storytelling techniques that will benefit the rest of the team, such as adapting narratives for different audiences
- It really engrains the storytelling framework in everyone’s mind, so it becomes progressively more familiar every time a team member uses it
4. Link great storytelling with the promise of real career advancement
One mistake story-happy managers should be wary of: letting your team think storytelling is extra work with an unclear payoff. Always make sure it’s clear that storytelling not only offers immediate benefit to current projects and business outcomes, it is THE way for anyone to strengthen their performance in their role and advance their career. Sell the message: the better your storytelling skills, the faster you will sell your ideas – and yourself. The long-term reward of learning this skill is to help everyone (including managers) move up.
5. Consider formal storytelling training
Managers who want to leverage the power of storytelling for all team communications and embed the practice of coaching should seriously consider formal training. Corporate workshops are an effective way to bring teams together to learn strategies, ask questions, receive peer and expert coaching, and get equipped to immediately apply their learnings on the job. Training will also equip a team with reinforcement tools to help people use the concepts they learned long past the workshop.
Managers are the Engine of a Storytelling Culture
Business storytelling has the greatest effect when it’s actively instilled into the culture of an organization. Managers are at the helm of this movement by coaching their teams and encouraging them to coach one another. With steady reinforcement, they’ll ensure the practice will permeate their department and their organization at large.
Are you spending hours reworking your team’s decks? Do you feel compelled to review every high-stakes communication before it’s delivered? Check out our storytelling training options that fit the needs of any size of organization.