Even small stories are better than no stories
Last week I ran a workshop for an investment firm to help their senior leaders appreciate their role in fostering their culture.
Before the event we collected 36 stories in a few anecdote circles and tagged and rated them in Zahmoo. When I read through them I was a little worried they weren’t dramatic enough.
Never mind, I thought, I would just get the participants to use these stories to trigger other more impactful stories.
On the day of the workshop, to my pleasant surprise, the 50 leaders were highly engaged with their stories.
It was a great reminder that people love to hear the stories from their colleagues no matter how small because each person carries with them a multitude of background books that fill in all the gaps and bring each small story to life.
It reinforced my belief that working at the small ‘s’ end of the story spectrum is not only quite different to most practitioners, it has an enormous impact.
Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on: