There has been a recent revival in the interest and fascination of change makers, leaders and facilitators on the potency of stories as a tool for inquiry and transformative change. More and more evidence from projects, organizations and communities show its potentials for situation and stakeholder analysis. Since we were young, we have always been fascinated, inspired, and moved by stories. Stories of various genre simply recount events that happened to you or someone else you know, or even stories from other sources such as movies, books or plays.
An effective story is surprising, emotional but most importantly it must be credible. In organizations, stories are the texts, spoken or written, as well as visual (problem trees, mindmaps, asset maps, etc.) that usually involve a plot of different interconnected events, binding different characters together about a project, organization or community.
In his paper on Why some Leaders Inspire Action while Others are Mostly Forgettable (download here), Shawn Callahan of Annecdote.com shared four reasons on the importance of stories in organizations. Stories: (a) convey emotion effectively, and emotion plus a strong idea can be persuasive, we can feel and remember them and eventually, our emotions inspire us to take action; (b) are concrete and have the ability to transport us imaginatively to a place where we can visualise the events being recounted; (c)are memorable: we are up to 22 times more likely to remember a story than a set of disconnected facts (such as presentation dot-points); and (4) represent a pull strategy, unlike the push strategy used when we argue in a more traditional way. Stories engage the listener, pulling them into the story to participate in the conversation, rather than telling them what to think.
Professor Brian Sturm presents storytelling as a way of organizing information, conveying emotions, and building community. A model of storytelling as altered state of consciousness (the story trance) is presented that inlcudes 16 portals to altered states. Three stories are told to illustrate the theoretical model: Truth and Story; What happens when you really listen; and The stone cutter. Storytelling ethics and the need for trust and truth are discussed in this 45 minute video.
In a Pecha kucha way, Shawn showed us how stories can handle even highly complex and chaotic situations requiring leadership and development champions.
Isn’t it time that we start collecting, sharing and exchanging stories?
