TEACH : HOW TO EDUCATE STORYTELLERS
A woman at one of my training sessions told me about a time that she had shared a story in a business situation. She said it was a bit personal and certainly showed vulnerability, but she told me it didn't work. In fact, she received feedback that the story was inappropriate. Some of her team even laughed at her, which sounds horrendous … and guess what? She never tried storytelling again. When I hear stories like this it really saddens me.
Maya Angelou said, ‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you’, and that is true. But having the courage to share a story and not doing it effectively because you didn't know how, and being scared to the point you never try it again … now that is agony.
The choice for leaders in business and organisations is not whether to be involved in storytelling, they can hardly do otherwise, but rather whether to use storytelling unwittingly and clumsily or intelligently and skilfully.
This quote is from Stephen Denning's book The Leader's Guide to Storytelling, which is a book that changed my life. It was one of the catalysts for me leaving my corporate life and embarking on a mission to teach businesspeople how to use stories intelligently and skilfully, and not, as Steve puts it, clumsily and unwittingly.
Denning's book, and this quote specifically, reinforced to me that storytelling is a critical business capability, but also a skill that can be taught.
Storytelling is a skill. Like ...
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