Storytelling is a safe space for creative thinking, negotiating differences, and establishing commonality. Storytelling empowers the speaker and improves communication through speaking and listening. Stories are the most efficient way of storing, retrieving, and conveying information. Since story hearing requires active participation on the part of the listener, stories are the most profoundly social form of communication.
After watching the video here are some other questions to think about...
Can you detect the intersection of these two forces in your organization? How would you describe it?
If anything were to shift, what would look differently on a day by day basis in your organization?
I've posted this video on Voice Thread to allow folks a vehicle for responding with comments, audio, video, documents, etc... (all of these things can be done for free from the website):
I look forward to hearing your voice in this conversation...
I just returned from a wonderful conference in Singapore on Business Narrative. During one of the many rich dialogs with peers I stumbled upon a word I hadn't used in a long time. The word is "confer." Simple word but in the context of thinking about the nature of employee engagement and collaboration it brought to mind some new nuances. As an aside it's probably no coincidence that at a "confer-ence" I became more sensitized to the word "confer"
On the long plane ride back to California I captured the essence of the conversation in this stream of consciousness piece. I turned it into one of my short video conversation starters. Here it is:
Are clowns and other corporate amusements in your line up of employee engagement activities? Maybe we opt for more serious stuff like corporate score cards and employee surveys to produce the data our organizations thrive on.
Let’s be honest: what are our real intentions for doing these things?
Are we trying to placate employees or can we find an effective way of inviting our employees to mix together their energies, talents and visions
Are we committed to conferring with our employees? Do we understand when collaboration makes sense and when it’s possible? Can we stay engaged with our employees?
It turns out putting the multifaceted natural capacity of stories to work leads to a whole host of new organizational engagement strategies and tactics you may have overlooked.
Do you ever feel like your organizational environment needs to be vitalized? In the face of fatigue and deterioration what does renewal look like?
Are we cursed by our propensity for forgetting or are we just slaves to our sense making needs? Whatever the case may be remembering seems to play a central role in the act of renewal.
I’d like to suggest a template for renewal. I feel active reflection must be at the heart of it. Of course to quote a famous Greek guy, “An unexamined story is not worth having.” Active reflection begins by remembering our experiences, looking for connections between the past and the present and imagining new futures…
Spend two minutes with me...then share with me and others how you approach organizational renewal.
What role do you think imagination plays in our organizations?
My family’s recent trip to Disneyland tickled my imagination
It’s a small world is stilling vivid for me. So many beautiful countries, customs, symbols, joined in a chorus of diverse kinship
All of this made me pause to think about the role imagination plays in our lives and what place does imagination have in our organizations? Can such a child like capacity have any relationship to bottom line imperatives?
There are the obvious ways that imagination can be put to work in our organizations by driving problem solving, stimulating innovation and guiding creativity but these are not enough for me… I want to see how imagination touches our capacity for awe and wonder and how these deeply human expressions are operating even within the walls of our organizations
I am enamored with patterns – must be why I am such an afficiando of stories and narrative. I gaze at these animations of fractals and I begin to intuit a fascinating connection between how we are mini pattern generating contributors in a large ecosystem propped up by some structure
Could it be that imagination allows me to extend myself into a set of repeating possibilities? If I cannot directly apprehend or manipulate all the bytes of sensory and cognitive stimulus shaping my world maybe I can use my imagination to propel myself into a wider orbit …there I can be guided by the gravitational potential of bodies…ways of being and experiencing the world that are different than my own
Imagining who and how we are is vital to sense making and it never stops – whether we are in the private space of our own reverie or influencing organizational decision makers. Our capacity to encounter others…and to imagine frames of references other than our cherished set of values and beliefs is a creative act of monumental importance. The future speed of business is unlikely to accommodate anything less. What can you do to rev up your capabilities. Our performance depends upon it.
Here are a couple of thoughts on how we can put stories to work to help us develop greater organizational awareness of the small and large things:
We use stories to explain other people's behavior and develop strategies for how to interact with them.
We are also capable of considering alternative behaviors that go against our ingrained ones by being aware of what stories describe our nature and by imagining alternative ones.
Stories are the templates upon which new behaviors can be projected onto and actualized. We use stories to gain an understanding of who we are. Collectively our stories paint an accurate picture of who we are. If we can access this information, we give ourselves freedom. In other words we can break out of an old story and temporarily adopt a new one.
And for the final shameless product plug for a guy who loves to share but also does need to make a living I have a wonderful book of group process activities that can be used to help people experience these critical skills.
I find myself drawn to the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow...
"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness. So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another. Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence."
How do relationships in organizations stack up with Longfellow’s observation? Has technology accelerated our relationships or hindered them? Is there any way to gratify those human needs that infiltrate our workplaces in the oddest ways…our needs to be accepted, respected, and valued by others?
Like a blooming flower relationships take time. In the ethos of our organizations we are called to cultivate and nurture the people around us. Sunlight, water, time, and a host of other hard to traces forces work their complex magic…
There may be no short cuts to forming relationships but the shortest distance between two people is a story.
Draw the stories of people around corporate imperatives and watch how people are drawn to each other and become more engaged performers.
Spend 2 minutes with me reflecting by watching in this video and the share your thoughts...
In other words you can’t step twice into the same river. Habits are the ingrained patterns of behaviors and thoughts that we habituate. Change takes us outside our familiar zone of comfort.
There's a paradox here. Change is as natural to us as is habituation. Think about your body. Within seven years almost every cell in your body is replaced. There’s nothing permanent or stable about life. However, our perceptual system is designed to perceive the world as stable. If it weren't, we would have an awfully hard navigating the world.
For me change management is not about creating stability in the face of chaos; rather, it’s about giving people tools to imagine new possibilities.
What does a Greek philosopher, a raging river and the game of Fluxx have in common. Watch this two minute and see:
Create organizational and communication processes that are structured but flexible. Then let the possibilities emerge and the game begin.
How have you managed organizational communication and learning in your organization to support change/ How have stories been a part of that process? Have you considered how you might work with story-based communication processes to stimulate engaging, healthy responses to the raging change we find in our organizations?
These two ideas are hardly the beginning of a conversation. Can't say it all in two minutes and neither can one person.
Take a moment and reflect on the game of chess and then share your thoughts of the other ways chess informs our ideas of strategic organizational communication. And for crying out loud...if you've got a story about chess start divulging!
Fire is a wonderful metaphor for understanding some of the subtleties of stories. Spend two minutes with me and reflect on what light fire can cast on our understanding of stories...
Terrence L. Gargiulo, MMHS is an eight times author, international speaker, organizational development consultant and group process facilitator specializing in the use of stories. He holds a Master of Management in Human Services from the Florence Heller School, at Brandeis University, and is a recipient of Inc. Magazine's Marketing Master Award, the 2008 HR Leadership Award from the Asia Pacific HRM Congress, and is a member of Brandeis University’s athletic Hall of Fame. He has appeared on Fox TV, CN8, and on CNN radio among others.
Books: Making Stories: A Practical Guide for Organizational Leaders and Human Resource Specialists, The Strategic Use of Stories in Organizational Communication and Learning, On Cloud Nine: Weathering Many Generations in the Workplace, Stories at Work: Using Stories to Improve Communications and Build Relationships, Building Business Acumen for Trainers, Once Upon a Time: Using Story-based Activities to Develop Breakthrough Communication Skills, In the Land of Difficult People: 24 Timeless Tales Reveal How to Tame Beasts at Work, The Trainer’s Portable Mentor.
Terrence is a frequent speaker at international and national conferences.
