Communicating on Two Legs: 7 Ways That Storytelling Augments Business Commuicaiton
Stories are powerful. They have been used since prehistoric times and have an important role in modern organizations.
But most business leaders have been trained not to talk in stories. Instead, they have been trained to talk in bullet points, to “cut to the chase”: to get to the core concept.
As a result, stories can appear to leaders in organizations as, at best, needlessly verbose and time-consuming—and, at worst, artsy and utterly unbusinesslike.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH BUSINESS
COMMUNICATION?
Think of the business meetings you've been to. Some of them, of course, went smoothly and were a productive use of everyone's time. But too many went something like this:
A team made a proposal, backed up with charts and graphs. They spelled out the logic of their proposal with PowerPoint. Then the group responded.
At some point, someone began to criticize one point made in the presentation. Then someone else countered that criticism. After a time, another person said, "But there's another problem with the proposal."
Before long, the meeting's time was up. At worst, the goals of the meeting had never been met. At best, everyone viewed the meeting as adversarial rather than enlightening.
Even when such a meeting actually leads to acceptance of a course of action, though, it’s likely to result in incomplete buy-in by the participants. Therefore, the follow-up and execution of the proposal suffer.
Sadly, such difficulties aren't confined to meetings. They can happen any time you communicate, whether to a direct report, a superior, a supplier, your board of directors, or your customers.
Why Does This Happen?
There are many factors contributing to these all-too-common problems with business communication beyond what I can discuss in this article. But one important factor is the exclusive reliance on conceptual forms of communication.
As it turns out, a careful combination of story talk with the customary conceptual talk can go a long way toward making your business meetings (and all your other business communication) more effective, more memorable, less adversarial, and less draining of energy. This also leads to increased imaginative participation by those present and a corresponding increase in their emotional and cognitive commitment to implementation.
To help you understand why and how story communication can add to and complement conceptual communication, I will describe seven ways in which these two communication modes differ. Along the way, I'll help you know when to add stories and when not to.
The Beggar and the Poet
Let’s begin with my version of a true story*:
It’s the 1950s in France. A poet, Jacques Prevért, was walking down the street. On the pavement, he saw a man sitting on a blanket. In front of the man was a hat with a few coins in it. Propped up next to him was a cardboard sign: "Blind. No pension. Please give."
The poet said, "How is it going for you?"
"Not well. People are stingy. They rush by without stopping."
"Maybe I can help," the poet said. "May I change your sign?"
"Change it?" The beggar hesitated. "Well, write on the back. I can always turn it over again."
The beggar heard the scratching of the poet's pen on the cardboard sign.
A few days later, the poet returned. He said, "How is it going now?"
"Fantastic! People have become so much more generous. I have to empty my hat three times every day!"
”I am so glad. Well, good luck to you.” The poet turned to leave.
“Wait,” said the beggar. “What did you write on my sign?”
The poet paused. “I wrote something very simple,” he said. “I wrote, ‘Spring is coming, but I will not see it.’”*
One value of a story is that it can transform the purely informative into an experience that can change a listener's point of view. The beggar's original sign had all the necessary information—and even a “call to action.”
But the poet's version caused the passersby to participate in the beggar's point of view. Only then were they motivated to act.
Take a Moment to Notice…
Before I can explain how stories can help your business
communication, I must ask you, the reader of this article, to close your eyes for a moment and answer a question about your experience of the above story:
In your mind, what color were the clothes the beggar was wearing?
It's okay if you don't have an answer. But please notice whether you do. And if you didn't imagine the color of the beggar's clothes, perhaps you’ll have an answer to one of these questions:
How was the beggar sitting?
What was the color of the blanket he was sitting on?
Were there buildings on the street around him? (If so, how
tall? If not, what was there?)
Almost everyone fills in one or more such details, spontaneously and effortlessly, in the course of listening to the story. That means that they actively create images in their minds.
By the way, your images may not have been visual:
Did you hear sounds from the street?
Did you imagine the sound of the beggar's voice? Or the poet's?
Did you imagine the sound of the pen scratching?
The above three are auditory images.
By the way, why do I call them “images”? Because they weren’t physical experiences, but sensations you imagined.
But you may have also created (spontaneously):
Tactile images (the feeling of the cardboard sign in the poet's hand)
Smells (olfactory images)
Kinesthetic feelings (the poet bending over to talk, or the beggar's gut wrenched with anger or hopelessness).
In other words, you may have created images in various sensory modes.
The Central Act of Storytelling
As you’ve just experienced, story listeners create images (in a variety of sensory modes) in their mind.
I call this the “Central Act of Storytelling.”
Please notice that this “central act” is not performed by the storyteller. Rather, it’s performed by the story-listener. The key job of the teller, in fact, is to stimulate your listeners to imagine.
If the central act of storytelling is the teller stimulating listeners to imagine, the central fact of storytelling is that this happens in every story.
Further, each listener creates their own unique images! (They also create their own unique interpretations of what those images mean to them —but a fuller exposition of “story meanings” is beyond the scope of this article).
The Seven Key Differences
Now we can talk about the seven key differences between story talk and conceptual talk—because they all stem from the central act:
in response to stories, listeners create their own, unique images—based on their own experiences and predilections.
DIFFERENCE #1: MODE OF LISTENING
When you listen to a story and you actively create images, you are in creation mode. When you listen to conceptual talk, on the other hand, you compare (and contrast) what someone else says, to what you already know or think. That is, you are in evaluation mode.
What’s the difference between being in creation mode and evaluation mode?
For starters, when you create an image in your mind, you are more likely to remember what you heard.
After all, which do you remember from elementary school: a list of George Washington’s achievements, or the cherry tree he supposedly admitted to chopping down?
Further, these two modes put listeners into different frames of mind.
In one psychological experiment, for example, three groups of people were given five one-dollar bills and a choice of how many of them to contribute to a worthy cause. Before being asked to give some of their money, one group was given a conceptual task, another was given no task, and the third was given a task that involved calling up images.
Which group gave the fewest dollars? Those who had been put in
conceptual mode. Which gave the most? Those in image mode.
So putting people in creation mode can be useful, not just for getting them to participate imaginatively and to remember, but also for
changing their attitude toward you and what you are describing.
DIFFERENCE #2: ESSENCE
First, a warning: stories and concepts are not as utterly separate from each other as I portray them in this article.
They are actually poles of a continuum. (When I work with clients in depth, I help people navigate the gradations between story and concept. But here, for purposes of establishing their differences, I'll treat them here not as shades of gray but as black and white.)
The essence of a story, in its extreme form, is a concrete, unique
event: in one place, at one moment, one character makes one action. (For example, “in a French street, one day a poet speaks to a beggar.”)
On the other hand, the essence of a concept, in its extreme form, is abstraction. The power of concepts, of course, comes from their applicability to many situations, not just one.
Stories, though, are closer to experience. After all, we only live one moment at a time. But concepts express what applies to many experiences.
The concrete, of course, is not necessarily better than the abstract (and vice versa). Instead, stories and concepts are two different ways of thinking and communicating.
Each of these ways of communicating is like a human leg. Either can support you. You can move around on either one. But you move much more effortlessly and efficiently when you alternate gracefully between them.
DIFFERENCE #3: CAUSES AND EFFECTS
When I said at the start of this article, "Stories are powerful," I was speaking conceptually. This abstract concept, though, may possibly have invoked in your mind a particular time when you experienced the power of stories.
In other words, concepts are abstract in nature but may sometimes cause you to think of a specific experience. Conversely, stories are specific but may cause you to form an abstract conclusion.
For example, you may hear the beggar-poet interaction and then think, “Yes, there are times when it makes sense to make a
situation personal so people can relate to it more.” That's
a concept—that you may have created or reaffirmed from the example of the beggar.
Therefore, if you want people to reach a conclusion (such as "This is an excellent product and will be a good value for me") the best way to proceed may not be to simply state it.
Why? Because the simple statement tends to put your listeners in evaluation mode. They may immediately jump to "Well, maybe it's not. Prove it!" If this happens, they will have put their minds in opposition to the very conclusion you want them to reach.
But if you tell a concrete story, your listeners will often create their own abstract conclusion from it.
If you tell the story of your product (or of someone who has used it), for example, they may conclude, “This sounds excellent. I can see our company getting good value from it.”
We tend to assume that the most effective way to get people to accept a concept is simply to state it.
But it is often more efficient to tell a story that will cause them to formulate the concept themselves. After all, the conclusion that they create is the one they will act on most readily and most lastingly.
DIFFERENCE #4: OWNER OF THE MEANING
Because story-listeners create images and then endow them with
meanings, they feel a form of ownership of the meanings that they create in response to a story.
Therefore we can say that, in story communication, the listener is the owner of the meaning.
But when you hear a concept, it belongs to the one saying it. Initially, you evaluate the speaker’s meaning. Later, you may accept it as your own, but, at the moment of communication, it still belongs to the person expressing it.
In other words, in conceptual communication, the speaker owns the meaning.
This fourth difference has enormous impact when it comes to the question of buy-in and of commitment to a course of action.
People tend to remember and act on their own ideas, not on yours. Therefore, if you want people to act on your idea, help them make it their own. One way is by telling them a story—and then trusting them to interpret it.
DIFFERENCE #5: PRECISION OF MEANING
When a concept is communicated well to listeners who have
sufficient background in common, the concept’s meaning is well
shared.
No short sentence can transmit a complex meaning exactly, but if you know what I mean by "stories" and by "powerful," for
example, then the sentence "stories are powerful" is likely to be
understood with a relatively high precision—that is, with a fairly
narrow range of interpretations of meaning, among the people
listening.
But with stories, the precision is smaller. That is, the range of
meanings received is relatively wide. In other words, the meanings received are diverse rather than shared.
This means that, if you have just announced at a staff meeting that layoffs are impending and you next want your listeners to know that no one in that meeting will be laid off, then you should not convey that information by saying something like, "A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about the value of loyalty...."
Instead, you need to reassure them before they begin to react out of fear for their jobs.
But later, when they know that their jobs are safe and when you are helping them figure out how, in the future, they could make
decisions based on the same principles you used, then you can create individual buy-in for those principles by telling the story of how you decided not to fire them.
The trade-off for this increased commitment (or increased participation or increased creativity) from people is almost always decreased control of exactly what people think. Conversely, increased control usually reduces things like agreement and commitment.
In every encounter, therefore, it makes sense to use an appropriate mix of the two forms of communication (images and concepts) to create the best balance between shared meaning and listener buy-in.
DIFFERENCE #6: SCOPE OF THE MEANING
Conceptual communication gives the listener the literal meaning of
the concepts. The conceptual statement, "Our highest value is
customer service," for example, tells you the relationship the speaker
is positing between our company and customer service. But it doesn't
give you an experiential context in which to interpret that
relationship. That's why I say that concepts convey a literal (as
opposed to contextual) scope for a meaning.
Stories, though, are not removed from experience. By describing
actual or imagined experience, they include a context in which
concepts are turned into actions. So, when new Nieman Marcus
employees hear as part of their training the story of the clerk who
gave a complete refund—without a receipt—for a set of tires, the
employees get a more specific idea of what is meant by valuing
customer service above all. And when they are told further that
Nieman Marcus never sold tires, they have an example that suggests
an even broader interpretation of what they might be expected to do
in order to act on the high value attached to customer service.The Seven Differences Between Stories and Concepts
DOUG LIPMAN PHONE 781-837-1940 FAX 206-202-7719
P.O. Box 545, Marshfield Hills, MA 02051 TOLL-FREE (888) 446-4738
EMAIL doug@storydynamics.com WEB SITE www.storydynamics.com page 9
Both forms of communication give benefits here: the pure concept
gives maximum portability of an idea, but at the cost of helping us
understand how to apply it. The story, on the other hand, makes it
easier to know how to apply a concept in a real-life situation, but may
limit the concept to what is directly implied in the example. To be
most effective, flexibly combine the two forms of communication!
DIFFERENCE #7: EMOTIONAL RESPONSES
We can respond emotionally to concepts. If you work for me and I
say, "Our profits are down 50% and we have to reduce our
workforce," you are likely to care about that! Nonetheless, any
emotional response to concepts is primarily "reactive": listeners have
feelings in reaction to a fact or idea.
In stories, though, you follow the point of view of a character
through one or more actions. In the beggar-poet story, you perceive
the world alternately from the poet's point of view and from the
beggar's. And so your emotional reaction is empathic: You see, hear,
and feel the world as that character does.
In your business or other organization, when you need people to
change how they view and do things, you need them to have a new
perspective, an altered way of viewing the world. The only way to
get someone to accept a new perspective is to give them a new
experience—either a real experience or, in the case of stories, a
virtual, imaginative experience that nonetheless expands their
repertory of points of view. Long-term behavior change is unlikely
without such expansion.
We have learned from brain studies that emotion not only motivates
action but actually enables reasoning. As a result, trying to motivate
and explain without also creating empathy is a losing battle. And
stories are a key tool for creating empathic emotional reactions.
On the other hand, there are subjects that you may need to refer to
without engaging the full force of your listeners’ feelings about them.
For such subjects, rely on conceptual talk. Further, the reactive
emotional response can be sufficient for short-term motivation.
Think, for instance, of the motivating power of a statement like
“Clearance—75% off.”
NOW YOU CAN CHOOSE
Each of these seven differences between stories and concepts(summarized in Table 1) suggests times when each form of communication is more appropriate. When you understand what
each mode of communication offers, you can choose, at each moment, which to employ.
Skillful business leaders have a command
of both modes. They are also adept at flexibly alternating between the two to achieve their business goals.
How about you? Is your beggar's sign factually accurate but unmotivating? Are you content to walk on only one leg?
*Guppy, Shusha: A Girl in Paris: A Persian Encounter with the West (1991)