Storytelling is best way to engage your teams!

Once a bird asked a bee, “you prepare the honey after continuous hard work. But men steal that in a jiffy. Don’t you feel sad?” The bee replied, “Never”. A man can only steal my honey, not the art of making honey.” A simple story from my book “Move Mountains – one story at a time” with a profound message. We must invest time and energy in self-development and building new skills that will always remain with us. 

What better time than Covid19 to build new skills for your team when the teams are working in isolation. The Question is what can an organization do to bring the team together?  The answer is in building a culture of storytelling in the organization. Storytelling will not only engage them but it will build long lasting relationships and make people care for each other. 

Believe it or not, stories have always been an interesting piece of our survival mechanism. It is one of the most powerful means you can use to involve, influence and inspire your teams. This is an excellent tool to convey the culture, history, and values of the organization. Everyone has stories to tell and this initiative will help your team to leave their comfort zone and enter into unfamiliar situations, adapt to it and change. This will help them to know each other better, have candor conversations, share ideas and in the process a strong foundation of trust gets laid down. 

What you should do? Here is a simple process for your to follow: 

1) Send out an invite to your team for an “Engagement Session” on zoom or any other platform you use.

2) Pick up 10 people from the team and ask them to come prepare with a 2 minute story from their personal or professional life. It could be an incident, event, trip, achievement or a milestone of their life. In the first meeting these 10 people could be some extroverts, senior management or HODs. 

3) Give these 10 people a simple framework to prepare the story. Remember if they are able to do it – great, if not, it is still great. 

a) Opening of story – Use one of these technique

1.Start with action or dialogue.Ask a question 

2.Describe the setting so readers can imagine it.

3. Introduce themselves to the audience in a surprising way.

b) Body of story : While they are sharing their story ask them to try the following

  1. Bring Characters in the story 

  2.  Some Tension in the story 

  3.  Some fun part 

d) Closing of story : Ask them to close the story with these two things

  1. What they learnt from this story

  2. What message they want their colleagues to take back

3) Before you start this session, you should lead by telling a story in this framework so that people in the team get motivated to open up. 

4) After every story, ask a few other audience members (2-3) about their takeaway from the story and where they can apply.  

5) If time permits, ask them the kind of emotions they experienced while they were listening to these stories. 

6) Announce in the meeting that 10 more members will get mail from you to prepare the story so that they are ready with it for the next meeting. 

Storytelling always has a compounding effect on the teams. With every story they get to know their colleagues better, get to know their blind spots, get to know that they have also made bluders in life. This process of openness gives them confidence to speak up, be authentic and vulnerable while sharing their stories. Authenticity + vulnerability = Credibility!

Every story is GOLD in itself and has power to motivate and impact people in a big way. You will be surprised to hear these stories of struggle, perseverance, sacrifice, failures, success, adventure, talent and so on. 

This is the time to dig this mine of gold. These stories can awaken your teams to their potential. Go for it !