The Manager 151 - Business Story Telling
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The Manager - Edition 151 - Business Story Telling
Hi,
I hope you are safe and well. Things are good here at Lambert Towers. We went to our very first outdoor music event last night in a neighbouring village. A chance to get some glad rags on, enjoy some beers and watch some live music with friends. Loved it. Missed it.
I’m busy creating a new online course about business storytelling. I covered many communication aspects in my existing communication super power course, but this new one is a deep dive into storytelling. I don’t talk about it often but as part of my role as VP of HR in a previous company, I was also in charge of corporate comms. As such, I weaved in a lot of storytelling.
Why story telling?
Well, just the other day one of the coaches in my team was asking for advice on how to move a group of managers and leaders into action. She had presented them with facts, data and evidence, but still no movement.
I told her she needed to try and make them feel something - and this is where stories and visuals work. Stories go where facts cannot - we covered this in the online course. But how do you tell stories about work?
Here are a few ideas worth playing with - I will cover these in depth, plus more ideas in my new course - hopefully coming soon!
Motion and Emotion
To get people into motion, you need to use emotion. Motion and emotion come from the same word. When we feel something, we move. If it’s good, we keep doing it. If it’s bad, we often do something to avoid it. Hence, we need to try and pull-on people’s heart strings if we want them to move. In a nice way, not manipulative. As I mention in the comms workshop - we use these super power skills for good, not evil.
You can't "make" people feel anything
But you also cannot “make” people feel anything - they must do that themselves. But you can deploy communication tactics, like storytelling, to try and get them to feel something. If you watch a Disney movie you will see this in action. One scene we’re laughing, the next scene we’re crying. They are masters of movie story telling. We can learn a lot from this.
Visuals tell stories too - stapling
Simple visuals tell stories. I avoid all jargon related to systems thinking, agile, lean etc when I work with stakeholders. It’s too geeky and means little to them.
Resonating with the audience is essential and it’s important to use language like they do. If they’re familiar with techno jargon - go for it, if not, find other ways to explain the concepts. One concept I talk about a lot is stapling yourself to work items and joining them on their journey.
This works because it’s not jargon, but also because it’s a story. You are telling a story about a work item. You are joining it on its journey. You have made a boring work item (think requirement, customer case, backlog item) more personable. You have brought life to it. When you map this journey out on a wall/tool and create a visual, you have created a visual story that anyone can resonate with.
What was the journey like? How did the poor work item survive the process we put it through? How could we make the journey better for it? How can we help the work item win?
Visuals help to tell the story; just be sure they are visuals of a story and not just dashboards with facts. Remember, stories go where facts cannot.
Help people become part of the story
As such, if you map out a process, like my coach did, and you gather people around it, they can then become part of the story. There is a protagonist (our work item), on a journey with obstacles to overcome. It is a classic story telling arc. Think Star Wars, Finding Nemo, The Goonies - all the same. People overcoming obstacles and becoming better for it. But they always have help - and this is where leaders and managers come in. How can they help the poor little work item?
Seems silly - and I would never explain the science behind it to managers and leaders, but it’s the same concept. They become part of the story.
Don't discount the existing story
One last idea - we should never discount the existing story. It’s often tempting, certainly in coaching or when joining a new company, to look at where the team are and say (at least in your head), how bad the situation is. But that is to discount the story the team or business have been through.
You are joining them in the story where they are now. It may be the beginning of your story, but it likely isn’t for them. So, embrace the history and past - and try to understand what happened. You can then start to understand why the team are where they are and how to write the next few chapters of their story.
Storytelling is a powerful mechanism for getting people into motion but be careful not to simply tell stories for the sake of it, there should be some business angle in there. Tell stories about other people who have overcome similar obstacles, tell stories to make points and share ideas, tell stories about the work and embrace the fact that everyone is already in a story of some kind.
I have about 12 core modules I’m working on and hope it will be a useful resource when published. It’s another one of those all-consuming projects. I will share how I write stories, how to get ideas, how to construct, how to edit, how to communicate them and how to stand a high chance of resonating with the audience. As you can tell, I’m excited about this one.
Other Interesting Things
This week I recorded another episode of Stationery Freaks with my friend Helen. As you know from previous newsletters - I came off the rails for a short period. It’s happening many times before and it will happen again - I talked about how getting back on the rails is where your strength is. In this episode we talk about how we’ve both got back on the rails and got a grip of life again. For me it was nature, disconnected from the web and immersing myself in learning. For the learning I’ve been diving deep into the many courses on Domestika - chocked full of creative stuff.
How to escape the vicious cycle of distraction. We could all do with some of this sometimes.
Austin Kleon on feelings. Feelings are information - and how you act on that information is important.
The UK Government are cracking down on sexual harassment in the workplace and pushing more legal obligations to employers. Good.
I am working on a new video about photography and learning to notice. Noticing the world around and us and what's happening in our business is a key skill I see leaders missing. So, fortune had me stumble upon this completely non-work related post. A photographer has noticed (and taken a photo of) the entire alphabet as found on butterfly wings. Impressive.
How to create a culture with fewer meetings and more time for work.
Use the Out Of Office message to aid you in getting things done. I use the OOO even when I'm in work and I use the MS Teams "status" update to explain how I may not respond and for what reasons. Gives people a message before they write to me...I wonder how many people hold off contacting me and solve their problems on their own....?
Managers should not be blind to wellbeing, especially during a pandemic. If more managers did their weekly 1:2:1s and built a trusted professional relationship with their team, they'd already know how people are feeling - and then be able to deal with it accordingly.
Seth Godin on making a point or making a difference.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear - what does this mean for those folks embracing their older age? Younger recruiters more likely to recruit people their own age.....
Until next week
Rob...
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