Chapter 6 Share personal stories
About ten years ago, I was running a workshop for a senior leadership team. I was told that the CEO was sceptical about the power of storytelling in business, but she eventually agreed to the workshop.
It became clear within minutes that the whole organisation was suffering within a toxic culture. In over 35 years of working in business, I have never seen such bullying by anyone, let alone the CEO to her direct reports. It was an environment of intimidation and fear, and was extremely unpleasant to witness as a facilitator.
At one point the CEO's aggression moved from her team to me. She crossed her arms in a show of disdain for everything I was saying, and declared she had no need to learn how to use stories to communicate. She wanted the facts and figures, and not anything else. She challenged me that if I could not provide her with one valid reason to stay and learn storytelling, she would leave.
So I went around the room asking her team how they liked to be communicated to. Did they prefer:
- facts and stats
- stories and examples?
As expected, the responses varied between the two options. Some of us are more left-brain aligned with our thinking, so we like lots of data, research and factual information. Others are more right-brain aligned, and like stories and examples that provide meaning to the data. But very rarely do we only rely on just one side. Most of us want a combination of both facts and stories.
I explained that this is the reason, ...