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As humans, it’s in our nature to be drawn to stories. A good story grabs our attention and helps us visualize and understand information. It connects us to both the storyteller and the characters within the story. A great story can change an ordinary interaction or presentation into one that compels people to take action or breaks down very complex information into something relatable and understandable.

Storytelling is a skill and, when used correctly, can be a powerful tool to demonstrate the value of your company, your people, your processes, your solution, and your potential. While senior leaders, marketers, and sales professionals must be good storytellers, the question is, do all employees need to be able to tell a story?

The answer: Yes, they do. (1)

Good storytellers are generally good at communicating a message. It’s this message that translates to the image of the organization. The culture, that is, how stakeholders view and interact with members of the business, is essential to attracting and retaining top talent, enhancing productivity and efficiency, cost management, satisfied and loyal employees, attracting customers and key investors, and gaining repeat and referral business.

Employees, therefore, are essential to the organization’s image in the eyes of all stakeholders. Therefore, selecting the right workers, especially those with intrinsic storytelling skills, is important. Even more imperative is how employees feel about their experiences in the organization starting from day one.

These six actions provide a roadmap to have a positive effect on employee motivation and engagement.

  1. Create Consistent Hiring and Onboarding
    Savvy job seekers do their due diligence and are likely to know far more about your company than what’s on your website. This means the story you want to tell needs to start with:

    • What does your company reputation look like online? What do customers and former employees say about their interactions with you on sites such as GlassDoor, Google, and with a deep Boolean search? What story do these review and feedback sites tell that you might not know, and what can you do to address issues if they exist?
    • Does part of your marketing strategy include testimonials, case studies, etc., from stakeholders that aren’t your buying customers? For example: How does your organization work with vendors and other strategic partners during challenges such as supply chain issues, financial bottlenecks, mandates/regulations, etc.? What social good are you providing in your community, and what feedback does the community have to say about the efforts you provide?

PRO-TIP: It’s one thing to take big actions. It’s another to be vested enough to understand the impact of those actions. Stakeholders, especially employees, want to know how you will care for them long-term.

    • What is your standard hiring process? One of the more frustrating aspects of job seeking is not understanding the hiring process. Create a formal process that covers your standard hiring process. This should include how long applications will be collected, reviewed, interviews conducted, the job offered, job start date, and how all applicants will be notified.  This should be published, so that job seekers are clear about your hiring process.
    • What’s the story you want consistently told during the hiring process and thereafter? For example: general information about the company, benefits, information about job roles, functions, what will be the stages for reviews, promotion opportunities (if that’s important), training, cross-training, or other information they need to know. Is there only one source of this information (e.g., the HR department), or is this available within an employee-only website that can be searched and read after hire?
    • What’s your official onboarding process? While the onboarding process for applicants may be a bit more proprietary in nature, it’s still important that one exists. How long is the onboarding period? Does this include training? Is the training formal such as in a classroom environment or one-on-one? Are there skills reviews or tests required; if yes, when? What are the expectations for new hires during the onboarding process?
  1. Balance Motivation
    Often employers assume that employees need to be motivated by their own intrinsic nature. Most workers are indeed driven by excelling at their jobs, public recognition for their efforts, and opportunities for money and/or promotion. Other employees may not be motivated by money or promotion, but they will be motivated by achieving mastery in their work, providing additional education, and giving them a degree of autonomy to do their job. While self-motivation is a necessary component of doing any job, organizations and leaders must invest in their employees. Workers need to know that they aren’t just a number or a body in a seat. Every employee needs to feel that the work they do makes a difference, they matter, their job matters, and they can’t easily be replaced. Employees need to see, feel, and hear that they are appreciated. This is an ideal environment to use storytelling.

    • Tell stories, in public, including illustrations about how a specific employee or team served the company.
    • When selecting awards, always tell a story. Perhaps the story is one of appreciation or for overcoming obstacles and never giving up. A reward can tell a story about finding new opportunities, preventing costly errors, exceeding quotas, etc.

      PRO-TIP: When selecting awards, consider giving experiences over monetary bonuses. Experiences, such as incentive travel, exclusive retreats, etc., aren’t only memorable, but they provide stories for a lifetime!

  1. Know Each Employee Personally
    Employees are motivated by different strategies, methodologies, and behaviors. Leaders, specifically managers and team leaders must understand what motivates each employee. Not all workers are motivated by career advancement and money. In fact, there are many motivators that employees desire, such as learning, job autonomy, work/life/health balance, social impact, feeling fulfilled, and so forth. While the organization may have a story about the ideal candidate to fill a specific job vacancy, the reality is that unique individuals will actually perform the role and its necessary duties. They will interact with each other, come with their own baggage (both good and bad), and have their own aspirations on both a personal and professional level. Leaders must allow employees to tell their own stories about goals professionally and personally to manage workers effectively. They need to understand what motivates each worker and set individual goals and how to develop career paths, motivation programs, etc., that are unique to each employee.
  1. Help Solve Problems
    No great leader or well-rounded department can work well in a silo that’s isolated. If they hear rumors or notice behavior patterns, they need to investigate and act immediately. Proactive is better than reactive. That is worth saying again – proactive is better than reactive. Managers are the closest to the employees, but it is often others that may notice a signal that something is amiss. Take for example, this story: A good but relatively new worker suddenly increases the number of sick days. Timeline extensions are often requested. More mistakes than normal are made. The worker seems to be less engaged in team meetings and often isn’t aware of updates sent via email. Other co-workers are often seen delegating projects. The direct manager is often out of the office.This story could be a sign of trouble. Perhaps the employee is experiencing a personal crisis such as health issues, family, or financial problems. Alternately, it could be that the organization is at fault, such as the worker has too many responsibilities and is burned out, there’s a team culture or a direct manager issue, or the worker is distracted by gossip such as a merger, company financial issues, etc. Without further investigation, this problem will only amplify.

    In the above example story, upon further investigation, it may be that the good but relatively new worker was experiencing burnout. Between welcoming a new baby and co-workers taking advantage of a new employee and an absent direct manager, the worker was overwhelmed and exhausted. Ensuring that the direct manager or an alternate was available, redistributing workloads, better aligning team culture with corporate culture, and allowing the employee to work from home for a week resolved the problem.

    PRO TIP:  Stories always have various endings. As an organization and as a leader, you can control a reasonable part of how stories turn out. If the goal is to have more happy conclusions than sad endings, work toward identifying crisis markers to identify problems before they become critical issues.

  1. Utilize the “You Can Do It” Mentality
    “Brave spelling,” that is sounding out a word and spelling it phonetically is encouraged in school classrooms. The reason? Children need to learn that they can do it, and they have the tools for when they don’t, such as a dictionary or spell check. Whether it’s a good teacher, parent, or another leader, there’s a time for assisting and a time for assuring someone that they are ready for the task at hand. Will there be mistakes? Likely…but hopefully only a few. But when mistakes happen (and they will), it’s essential to identify what was learned and what could have been avoided. Managers can encourage employees to use stories to reflect on what happened and think about the mistake, error, or negative outcome from the neutral perspective of a private investigator. What could have been avoided? What questions do you have now (that you didn’t then) that you want to ask? How do you think the issue happened? Where do you think you got stuck? Do you believe that there were too many people involved? Is it possible that you didn’t get the correct answers because you asked the wrong people? What systems can we put in place to prevent the same error?In the same respect, it can be easy to get stuck when you’re only seeing one solution to a problem. It’s like the adage: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you see every problem is a nail.” Sometimes all that is needed is a change of perspective. 

Encouraging people to find the answer while walking them through their knowledge (and filling in gaps if needed) empowers them to seek solutions and builds confidence. Once again, when leaders know their employees, it can be easy to use stories to help point them in the right direction. Often it can be as simple as, “Do you remember the XYZ project? How did you handle that?” Or it can be sharing a story from the leader’s past scenarios to get some ideas to draw on.

Leaders don’t empower workers when they tell them only to come to them with solutions. They empower them when they are helping them grow in confidence and knowledge. They mentor them when they treat them with respect and are willing to get into the trenches with them to explore complex problems, ask challenging questions, and are ready to risk mistakes for the sake of healthy learning, growth, and opportunities.

  1. Use surveys to uncover untold stories
    Let’s face it. Standard surveys collect data and information, but not the stories that need to be told. Regular surveys, often with scaled ratings (e.g., 1-5) or general scope questions such as “what could we do to improve?” doesn’t provide enough information to foster feedback. Illustrations and stories, however, do. For example:

    • Describe a time when you encountered an issue or problem.
    • Describe how your manager/leader handled the issue or problem.
    • How does your manager involve you in the resolution? What, specifically, did they ask you to do? What suggestions were made?
    • During the conversation with leadership, what tools, resources, assets, etc., were you made aware of that you didn’t know existed?
    • How do you perceive leadership felt about their handling of the situation?
    • How do you feel about the handling of the situation?
    • What did leadership do well? What could they have done better?
    • What made you decide to speak to leadership about the issue or problem?
    • What did leadership do that helped you address the issue or problem?
    • What did leadership do that helped you the least to address the issue or problem?

It’s better to keep the number of surveys at a minimum and instead develop a technique to share stories or incorporate illustrations with open-ended questions.

When providing feedback, either up, down, or sideways, a well-timed and well-delivered story can help your boss or a client visualize how your message will solve their challenge or make their life easier. To work, both parties need to be receptive and open to feedback, (2)

A great story with illustrations can make your personal story or presentation compelling enough for people to act.

Storytelling is a skill and can be a powerful tool to convince people of the value of your solution. But for storytelling to be truly compelling, you must nail the content, timing, and delivery. (3)

Successful leaders know that employee engagement impacts nearly every aspect of their business, ranging from revenue, retention, recruitment, etc. Employees engaged at work are more likely to work harder and smarter and motivate others to do the same. The result can be seen as growth in the bottom line.

 

Discover more inspiring ideas for exciting experiences that boost morale and engage your people. Contact Gavel International for details.

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SOURCES

  1. https://brooksgroup.com/sales-training-blog/7-tips-using-storytelling-sales-presentations/
  2. https://blog.bonus.ly/giving-feedback-to-manager
  3. https://www.recue.com/how-to-use-storytelling-in-your-marketing-strategy/

 

Jeff Richards
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