“Our knowledge of the world is more or less equivalent to the set of experiences that we have had, but our communication is limited by the number of stories we know to tell…. Storytelling and understanding are functionally the same thing.”
Roger C. Schank, Tell Me a Story

“God made man, because he loves stories.”
Elie Wiesel

In the innocent bygone days of 1999, a gaggle of consultants found themselves in Paris, delivering a sales course for over a hundred participants from all over Europe. As the participants went off to prepare for their afternoon role-plays, the trainers, I among them, gathered in the back of the room. Somehow a discussion of improvisational storytelling techniques began. We shared various storytelling activities and moved on to an increasingly enthusiastic exploration of their use in training situation. Our ideas for application ranged from capturing participants’ attention to assessing needs to increasing retention to enhancing teamwork to reducing conflict and solving problems. By the time our training participants finished their task, we had decided that story was the foundation of all learning and communication, and the seeds for StoryNet LLC, my first consulting company, had been sown.

We were incredibly proud of ourselves. What geniuses we were to realize the profound value of storytelling. Of course, we were not alone in our assessment. Storytelling is an age-old method of communicating. From the bonfire gatherings of cavemen through the Ancient Greeks to modern times, stories have formed the foundation of our historical and cultural awareness.

In the intervening decade, storytelling has become a widely popular tool in corporate America. Harvard Business Review, Fast Company Magazine, and dozens of books, including Stephen Denning's seminal Springboard, The Story Factor, by Annette Simmons and Doug Lipman, Tell Me a Story , by Roger C. Schank, Tales for Trainers by Margaret Parkin, and Managing by Storying Around by David Armstrong, advocate the immense value of stories to aid communication and learning. Consultancies and professional organizations, such as Michael Margolis' Get Storied (www.getstoried.com), examine story application in ways significantly more comprehensive and profound than our little group of idealistic trainers could have dreamed back in the day.

Organizational leaders now routinely turn to storytelling to develop effective branding strategies, build cultural norms, and capture organizational knowledge, as well as teaching storytelling skills to develop individuals' general communication and ability to influence others.

Why? Stories engage us more deeply and completely than presentations of mere facts without context. Stories trigger our emotions, stimulate our associations, and activate our memories. That is why politicians have such success with anecdotes. The guy with the sweet story beats the guy with the accurate facts more often than not. On a fundamental level, Jerome Bruner, noted cognitive psychologist and learning expert says, "Story IS meaning." (Acts of Meaning, 1990) He believes that our brains are making stories all the time, taking bits of data and weaving them into meaning. Explicit storytelling satisfies us because our brains are attempting to make meaning all the time. And if the teller can provide context, intention, coherence for us, we have received a gift. Often, we think of story as the opposite of facts and data. But, in fact, when looked at in this light, data only exists as the building blocks of narratives that we create. If a marketing manager puts up a sales graph, she is presenting a story. By learning to interpret and articulate the meaning in that graph explicitly, the speaker assures that the story being received is the one she wanted to impart. The question becomes not, "Should we tell stories?" but "What stories do we want to tell?” And how? David Armstrong, the vice-president of Armstrong International, believed so strongly in the power of storytelling as a management tool that he incorporated it into every aspect of his family’s business, and eventually completely replaced the policy manual with it. In the forward to Armstrong’s book, Managing by Storying Around, Tom Peters says,

The wild and woolly marketplace is demanding that we burn the policy manuals and knock off the incessant memo writing; there’s just no time for it. It’s also demanding that we empower people – everyone – to constantly take initiatives. And it turns out that stories are a – if not the – leadership answer to both issues.

So what do improvisers have to bring to this table? Story, of course, lies at the heart of the theatre’s power to entertain, move, and provide catharsis. Audiences get to love, fight, grow old, die, and sing through the journeys of the characters that they watch. So as theater professionals, improvisers take the ability to create and tell good stories very seriously.

Because improvisers, by definition, create new and fresh stories each time they take the stage, they have a special perspective on story crafting and storytelling. Whereas many storytelling books and coaching focuses on having a few, “perfect” stories, improvisers focus on developing storytelling skills. We want to be able to tell a well-structured, compelling, meaningful, and different story every time – a story uniquely suited to the moment and the audience in front of us.

What is more, improvisers believe that because of the ancient, organic, and pervasive nature of storytelling, storytelling training comes down to making the unconscious processes that we already employ conscious. Simply put, we believe EVERYONE is a storyteller, and everyone can become a good one. Johnstone says, “It must be obvious that when someone insists that they ‘can’t think up a story’, they really mean that they ‘won’t think up a story’….” Here are some of the skills improvisers advocate and practice.

Story Skill 1: Pay Attention

Good storytellers are good observers. They see and hear offers that the rest of us miss. By noticing and tracking details, a storyteller receives the raw material that allows them to have insight and communicate it in vivid ways. Whereas most of us might go to the DMV, for example, and stand in line impatient, bored, distracted, and then leave grumbling about the waste of time, a good storyteller will depart with a treasure of new narratives. She will have gathered information about the people around her – how they look, what they care about, why they are there. She will have noticed the falling ceiling tiles and the blinking fluorescent lights, the bickering between the vapid new young clerk and the seasoned, hoary one. It will not be a coincidence that when she has her colleagues spellbound and laughing as she recounts her tedious encounter the next day.

Paying attention does not just give us grist for our entertainment mill. Storytelling increases understanding – not just for the listener, but for the creator. By paying more attention to what is going on around us, we can gather more information about the who, what, why, how of our lives, and by doing so, we expand our ability to assess situations and solve problems. Our understanding and analysis all hang on how rich our data is. When we pay more attention, we may tell different stories, not just more or more entertaining ones. Perhaps our DMV patron, rather than telling the clichéd story of being a victim of idiot bureaucracy, comes home with a story about how the clerk helped a nervous first-time driver. Or how the supervisor got around some Kafka-esque regulation to solve a problem. Or how the guy in front of her planned to propose to his girlfriend that night. Perhaps the leader who pays attention will come up with more nuanced understandings of his people and issues as well.

Story Skill 2: Make Connections

The quality that differentiates a story from a mere sequence of unrelated events is meaningful connection. Any data - quarterly returns, a breakdown in the supply chain, a interpersonal conflict, a design problem, a comment – begins to have meaning only when it is given context. Improvisers know that even the most innocuous offers can become seeds of delight when they are revisited in the narrative at a later time. We call this reincorporation, and the best storytellers are masters of it.

The next time you go to a movie, pay close attention to the first twenty minutes or so. Make note of the cut-away shots – the shots, not of people, but of objects or scenery. Chances are that if there is a cut-away shot of an object that seems unrelated to the action in the moment, that object will be important later on. I became conscious of how obvious these plants are after a screenwriter friend and I went to see “What Lies Beneath,” a standard, rather pedestrian, supernatural thriller starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford. At one point early on, the two of them are driving across a country bridge, on the way to a party. Ford’s character decides to check messages on his cell phone. He cannot get through, and Pfeiffer says, “Oh, you can’t get a signal while you are on the bridge.” My friend turned to me and said, “Someone’s gonna be trying to call for help while crossing this bridge….” Sure enough, 90 minutes later, Pfeiffer was screaming into a dead phone, racing for the other side of the river.

Filmmakers, of course, know how the movie will end, and can plant foreshadowing events. Improvisers, since they do not know how the scene will end, need to make whatever they set up at the beginning important after the fact. Paul Zuckerman of Chicago City Limits calls this driving by looking in your rearview mirror. Reincorporating is foreshadowing in reverse. From the audience, the results look like magic. “How did they know to do that thing with the cell phone?!” an improv audience will think.

In real life, sometimes good storytellers act as screenwriters, carefully crafting a complete narrative, planting offers at the top to reincorporate later on. Sometimes, however, good storytellers act as improvisers. Either way, the principle of reincorporation proves a nifty tool: Whatever you set up in the beginning, you bring back at the end. As playwright, Anton Chekhov reportedly put it, “If you show a gun in Act I, it had better go off in Act III.”

If, for example, a speaker incorporates details from a previous speaker, or from a conversation with an audience member, into her talk, all of a sudden a potentially rote speech becomes fresh and relevant. The audience says, “Ah! She is listening, she is present.” And the listeners are aided in making connections (read meaning) that they might otherwise have missed. A leader who references a comment someone else made earlier in a meeting, or a sales person who articulates value by using an example the client shared earlier, wins trust and deepens commitment.

Here is an activity to practice integrating unanticipated offers into a narrative. Your task is to incorporate three random, unrelated words into a narrative. Here are your three words: “Book,” “Marmalade,” and “Leap.” (Coming up with three unrelated words taxes the mind at least as much as creating a story, by the way. Another Johnstonian exercise asks pairs of improvisers to trade off back and forth, stating unrelated words until someone notices a connection. The game almost never goes more than four or five words before some relationship is evident.) Now, make up a story. You have 60 seconds. Go.

Here is what I came up with. (The following is an unedited transcription of the story I improvised.)

Once upon a time, there was a bear who loved two things: books and marmalade. Everyday, he would sit curled up in bed with his Big Book of Stories on his lap, and his paw in a jar of sweet and sticky orange marmalade. He never went anywhere. He didn’t need to. His books transported him to far off places of intrigue and romance, while at the same time, his bed allowed him to feel safe and warm, and the marmalade sated his hunger and stimulated his senses. One day, however, something terrible happened. The marmalade from his paw had, after constant flipping of the pages, made them so sticky that they were impossible to part. The book became impossible to open. The bear panicked. What would he do now? Should he get up? No, he thought, he was too comfortable. And for a while he sat there suckling marmalade and staring out the window. Without the stories, though, to occupy his mind, he grew bored. He looked out the window and saw other bears in the distance. “I wonder what they’re doing out there.” The bed was still safe and the marmalade still sweet, so he stayed, but soon the marmalade disappeared - without the book to distract him he ate it up fast. With no stories and no marmalade, there was no choice. As scary as it was, the little bear made the leap. He left his bed and headed out into the world to find new adventure, new sweetness, and whatever else might be in store.

How did it go for you? Was it easier than you expected? More difficult? Where did you get stuck? Were you aware of censoring yourself? What rules did you make up? What surprised you? Wasn’t it satisfying to hear the words reincorporated? How did you decide what should happen next?

Story Skill 3 – Find the Game

Del Close builds on simple reincorporation by talking about the “Game” of the scene. Any of you who have children will know that patterns can be captivating. A child will play peek-a-boo for hours.

A strong crowd-pleasing scene at BATS Improv with the aforementioned Stephen Kearin illustrates finding a “game.” The scene began with Stephen lying on the floor, clearly in pain, but putting on a brave face, and saying to two others, “Now, kids, no more practical jokes.” The rest of the scene became a series of increasingly outrageous practical jokes played by the kids on the father, culminating in the explosion of the family dog. The audience went wilder with each successive repetition of the pattern. The pattern went like this:

The father says, “Ahh, ow! Grr. Don’t do that, again, kids.”

The children say, “Yes, Daddy, sorry.”

“OK. You’re forgiven,” say Dad. “I’ll just go over here and…Oops! AAAh….” That was it. Over and over again. People ate it up. We love patterns.

In a business presentation, the “game” may take the form of a metaphor or theme that is carried throughout. “Achieving our goal will be like climbing a mountain…. Here are the tools we’ll need to reach the summit…. If we don’t work as a team, one of us could plummet to the rocks beneath.” Or the game could be a specific format for a presentation. Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture created a format called PetchaKutcha in which all the presentations must be exactly 20 Power Point slides, no one of which can be shown for more than 20 seconds. ISPI (The International Society for Performance Improvement) often opens its conference with a night of 99- second presentations. Sometimes the game takes the form of some kind of audience interaction – perhaps literally a game like Jeopardy or Family Feud with business content. Sometimes the game can be a call and response with an audience, or telling your story through questions.

Thinking about the “game” of a story or presentation can increase the entertainment value and engagement levels, as well as aiding retention and understanding. Repetition lies at the heart of learning, and games (patterns) allow repetition to be fun.

Story Skill 4: Structure Events

Some of you may have been thinking. Okay, yeah, anything that is connected can be considered a story, but what about that whole beginning, middle, end thing? Good point. Let’s take a look at how improvisers think about creating narratives that “go somewhere.” Because they are looking to tell new and fresh stories every time, and because they are often creating stories collaboratively, improvisers have broken down the story structure into some very simple and ubiquitously useful models. By mastering the fundamental principles of story structure, a leader or trainer can not just craft more compelling and clear stories in advance, but learn to create well-made, meaningful narratives in the moment. How valuable is that when fielding questions from confused participants or hungry media types?

The first and simplest way of looking at story structure is to simply as the question: what should happen next? This question, “What comes next?” is the definition of narrative action. Johnstone turns this straight-forward question into a game. One actor behaves as the puppet, and other improvisers tell her what to do. She asks, “What comes first?”

They tell her. “You pick up a newspaper

She does, and says, “What comes next?”

“You see a picture of your long lost husband.” She does.

“What comes next?” she asks.

“You read the story next to it, which says he was discovered on a desert island.”

“What comes next?”

“The doorbell rings”

“What comes next?”

“You answer the door.”

“What comes next?”

“Your husband is standing there.” And so on.

An activity as simple as this can help us as non-performers with our critical thinking, instructional design, and problem-solving skills. Do our processes really make sense? What am I leaving out? If I am coaching someone, do the steps I am suggesting flow logically and directly from each other. How can I make sure I am putting one foot in front of the other, doing the next most obvious and useful thing? All processes can be thought of as simple stories, and many organizations use storytelling in this way to capture best practices and transfer information.

At a slightly more complex level, a story can be said to result from establishing a routine and then breaking it. Johnstone explains this in terms of establishing “platforms” or boring, familiar situations, and then introducing a “tilt “ or surprising shift. Del Close and Charna Halpern talk about setting up a relationship and an environment and then introducing some kind of “event,” which changes the status quo. Although the language is different, the concept is the same. It is this establishing of routine and then breaking it that initiates any story: a small, timid Hobbit happily celebrates his Uncle’s birthday and hangs in the Shire as he always has. Then one day (bump bum) he gets tapped for a harrowing journey to destroy a magical ring and save the world. An inveterate bachelor enjoys a carefree existence, until he inherits a baby. A company has a corner on the phone market until a new touch screen technology hits the scene. A long-time employee knows exactly how to do her job, and gets along with all her colleagues, until she is promoted to manager. By knowing what it is that breaks the routine in your narrative, you are well on the way to having a well-structured story.

The Story Spine

At Freestyle Rep, Kenn Adams explored the nature of
story structure even more fully. Through his work in creating full-length narratives, Adams developed a number of tools to help improvisers build well-made (in the classic sense) stories. Among his tools is a template that we dubbed, “The Story Spine.” It has come to be valued not only by improvisers, but by keynote speakers, CEO’s, advertising departments, marketers, salespeople, screenwriters, and trainers worldwide. It is by far our most popular tool, and it goes like this:

Once upon a time…
Everyday…
But one day…
Because of that…
Because of that…
Because of that… (Repeat as needed)
Until finally…
Ever since then…
(And the moral of the story is…)

This template builds in a platform, a change, consequences, and a resolution. Virtually all stories (at least in Western culture) possess this structure. When a story does not fulfill this model, we feel unsettled. Sometimes the storyteller deliberately skips a piece - like leaving a chord progression unresolved - to create tension and provoke thought. Sometimes, pieces are left out unintentionally, and we are left unsatisfied. Either way, if the storyteller does not complete the structure, the listener, in his own mind, will. (Americans are especially fond of stories that straightforwardly fulfill the Story Spine structure. Compare the French film “La Femme Nikita” with the American remake, “Point of No Return.” The second follows the structure much more rigidly, whereas the French version leaves some narrative connections ambiguous. The most glaring example of this appears about a third of the way through the film when Nikita completes her first assignment. In the French version, she delivers room service and walks away having no idea why. In the American version, as she is leaving the premises, the building explodes behind her.)

Here is a more detailed analysis of the Story Spine, with an example of a story you might recognize, mapped into it:

“Once upon a time…”

This is the introduction to the setting and characters in the story. The platform. The exposition. It gives listeners the context and sets the stage.

Example:
“Once upon a time, in the same city, there were two prominent families who despised each other.”

“Everyday…”

The platform continues and develops.

Example:
“Everyday the members of the family feuded, fought and killed each other.”

“But one day…”

This is the catalyst, the instigating event. This reason that the story is being told, the “why today is different” moment.

Example:
“But one day, the son of one of the families crashed the birthday party of the other’s daughter.”

“Because of that…” (Repeat at will)

This is the main body of the story; the consequences that ensue from the catalyst. Each event leads to another event, building suspense and tension.

Examples:
“Because of that, the son and daughter fell in love at first sight.”
"Because of that he snuck around to her balcony, and wooed her."
“Because of that, they secretly married.”
“Because of that, the son did not want to kill her family.”
“Because of that he stepped into the middle of a fight and inadvertently caused the death of his best friend.”
“Because of that, in agony and rage, he killed the killer, his wife’s cousin.”
“Because of that, he was banished.”
“Because of that the lovers needed to employ a complicated plan to be reunited.”
“Because the plan was complicated, and depended on other people, communication broke down.”
“Because the message didn’t get to him, the son didn’t realize his wife was only faking her death, and he thought she was really dead when he found her in the family tomb.”

“Until finally…”

Here is the climax. The clincher. The moment for which we all wait!

Example
“Until finally he killed himself. Just as the daughter awoke to find her husband dead beside her, she plunged his knife into her own body, joining her husband in death.

“And ever since then…”

The resolution. The conclusion.

Example:
“And ever since then, both families have mourned the death of their beloved children and stopped the nonsensical war between them.

And the moral of the story is: Feuds are stupid. Make love, not war.

Adams builds a complete structure to guide the storyteller through the different elements of a plot. Improvisers internalize the template to track where they are in a story and what kind of offers are needed to keep the narrative on track and satisfying.

The story spine highlights a valuable aspect of story as a communication and problem-solving tool. When our stories are clear and cohesive, then our message is, too. Good storytellers keep the POINT of the story in mind. Then the decide where to start, where to end, and what the steps of that journey are in service of that point. It is often the case that when one’s structure is messy, one’s thinking is messy. The story spine provides a template for use when initially crafting a story, or for doctoring it (checking and revising it) after the initial drafting. It can also be used as a critical thinking tool as we will discuss in our application section.

Story Skill 5: Include Vivid Description

Of course, there is more to great storytelling than just what happens next. My retelling, above, of Romeo and Juliet was okay, but it certainly did not rival Shakespeare’s. Why not? As a matter of fact, why have all the versions of Romeo and Juliet, pre- and post Shakespeare, been considered inferior to his? Some of it does in fact relate to the spine. Shakespeare did an excellent job of structuring his version. All of the events build on each other, creating the inevitable end. Ultimately, what distinguishes his version from the quick one related here, however, is not action, but description.

Shakespeare writes exquisitely beautiful language. His characters are robust, heart-wrenching, and entertaining. His environments echo and support the emotional action. We all know that Shakespeare (whoever you believe he was) qualifies as the Master of English theatre. Perhaps no one will ever match his genius. But even we lowly mortals can enhance our stories through adding character and color to our narrative skeletons.

“Color/Advance" is a terrific activity for distinguishing action from description and developing descriptive skills. Originally based on a Spolin exercise, “Color/Advance” works like this: One player begins to tell a story. Periodically, a partner coaches him to “color” or describe some aspect of the story (e.g. a physical object, an emotion, an action). When the coach is satisfied, she calls, “Advance,” and the storyteller continues the action of the story. Like so:

Storyteller: Once upon a time there was a sales manager named Stewart.”

Coach: Color “Stewart.”

Storyteller: Stewart prided himself on his extensive bowtie collection and colorful suit shirts. But as sharp as he appeared on the outside, Stewart was tired. He training Turbo-Pro industrial cleaning VAC salespeople for 26 of his 35 years with the company, and it seemed he understood and was appreciated by each generation just a little less. Stewart ate mostly in airports, and these days seemed to have trouble remembering what city he was in at any given moment.

Coach: Advance.

Storyteller: Everyday Stewart took out his frustration on the salespeople who reported to him. He yelled at them; he overworked them; and he undermined their effectiveness.

Coach: Color “undermining their effectiveness…”

Storyteller: Stewart would go along on sales calls and interrupt his salespeople, make fun of their technique, and intervene to close the sale himself.

Coach: Advance

Storyteller: One day, Stewart arrived at work to find a summons from the Director of Sales on his voicemail…

And we will leave Stewart here to whatever his fate may be.

Using coloring and advancing like an improviser allows the storyteller (writer, teacher, lecturer, presenter) to scale their story, and meet the needs of a specific audience. The structure of a lesson or points in a presentation may be very simple, but how they are illuminated may be very different depending on the circumstances. For example, imagine a sales proposal on a new IT system. The structure of the story:

Once upon a time (now) your company worked like this….
Everyday you had to spend time of these outdated and time-consuming processes
But one day (now, we hope) you implemented our fabulous new system
Because of that you were able to do X, Y, Z more efficiently
Because of that your had better, more useful information with less time and effort.
Because of that you were able to save a significant amount of money.
Until finally, you became the number one company in your industry.
And ever since then your stock price has gone through the roof.

That story presented to the CEO, in order to be effective, would probably need to color significantly different details than the story presented to the IT Director. How many technical specifications should the salesperson include, for example? How much financial analysis? A sense of what details to color, and how to color them vividly and in a meaningful way, results in great stories aligned with a specific audience's needs.

Story Skill 5 – Be Flexible

There is no such thing as one right story. Or one right way to tell a story. The power of a story, as we have been discussing, lies in its ability to connect with a specific audience in a specific moment and share a specific experience or message. A story that may play perfectly in one context may fall terribly flat in another. Employing all the skills we have investigated so far allows you to maximize the probability that you will be able to connect with and impact your audience.

An example: I was once hired as a keynote speaker to talk about teambuilding. The audience was made up of the remote ticket counter personnel (the ones not located at the airport) of a major airline. For the event, I prepared all sorts of great stories and activities about collaboration and teamwork. GREAT stories. Then I arrived at the venue. I had specifically been asked not to sit in on the morning session, so I came around lunchtime, 45 minutes or so before I was scheduled to speak.

"Hi. We're so looking forward to your talk. Oh, and by the way, we just let everyone know that within the next two years we will be closing all the remote offices and they will all be laid off."

My stories about teamwork and trust suddenly seemed less fabulous. "Oh," I replied.

I stared ahead at the throngs of eating, soon-to-be-unemployed attendees. Above the stage where I would be speaking was a banner that read, "There is no 'I' in team." Ah! Thank goodness, I had gotten in the habit of collecting stories. I remembered an interview I had heard with Michael Jordan the week before. The biggest star the basketball world had ever seen had been presented with this very phrase. His reply? "Yeah, but there is in 'win'."

So I told that story. A story with exactly the opposite point that I had been hired to relay. Everyone laughed – a huge relieved laugh. How humiliating for all of us, if I had simply stuck to my script. And perhaps most amazingly, I was then able to talk about teamwork skills: how to apply them to job interviewing; how to create opportunities for each other; how to create a supportive environment, especially in the hard times; how to find strength in solidarity. The participants knew exactly what I was talking about. And the client, by the way, was perfectly, obliviously happy.

When the disconnect between what we have planned or anticipated and the reality of the moment is less stark, it is easier to overlook. But there is a price for missing it. The next time you start to tell as story, ask yourself , “Why am I telling THIS story to THIS audience at THIS moment?” And, “Where might I want to depart from my script?”

Story Skill 6 – Build Your Library; Browse the Stacks

Storytelling is personal. In fact, that is one of the reasons thought leaders tout its value. A story, well-chosen and well-told, opens a window into the teller and reveals what makes him unique and complex. The same story told by two tellers can feel profoundly different. What we choose to emphasize and how we choose to perform is as individual as our DNA. What is more, we all have many stories. The old question, “What’s your story?” misses the point. We are an amalgam of dozens of dozens of stories that we tell ourselves and others and that define how we and our audiences see the world.

Therefore, the more stories one gathers, crafts, shares, the more power she has to communicate specific messages and to connect in varied ways.

I was struck by how many stories each us has when doing some media training with Paralympic Athletes. As you may know, the Paralympic Games run parallel to the Olympic Games and allow disabled athletes the ability to compete at the same elite levels as their Olympic counterparts. Under the auspices of Performance of a Lifetime, we were working with the “Ambassador” athletes on developing their personal stories. The stories were meant to introduce the athletes to the public and to promote the Paralympic organization and their programs.

You can imagine, I am sure, the intensity and drama inherent in personal stories told by any athlete who is at the top of her field and has also learned to navigate amputated limbs or blindness or cerebral palsy. So when the stories initially struck us as deeply moving and meaningful, we were not surprised. What was surprising, though, was how quickly we seemed to become immuned to some version of that story. As inspiring as the stories were (and they were inspiring, even though many of the athletes balk at the term), after a few iterations they lost their full impact. It seemed the athletes fell into a habit of telling their stories in generic ways – the way they thought the story should go. In other words, we heard the mainstream, predictable Hollywood versions. Time after time, the story went something like:

Once upon a time I was an able-bodied, elite athlete
Everyday I engaged in strenuous, high-level athletic activity
But one day, I got injured
Because of that I had these physical problems.
Because of that I got depressed and almost gave up
Because of that my friend (family member, doctor) connected me with Paralympics
Until finally, I realized that I could still live life fully and even compete physically
Ever since then I have felt happy and whole.
And the moral is, through the Paralympic organization, you or your loved ones can discover fabulous opportunities and a new lease on life.

After just a few minutes of conversation, however, it became clear that these athletes were - of course – richly three dimensional people with hundreds of individual and strongly differentiated accomplishments and attitudes toward their sport and their roles as ambassadors. By rummaging just a little more deeply in the filing cabinet of their experiences, each athlete discovered something – no, many, many things - to share that proved more personal, less predictable and therefore more moving, enlightening, and memorable. One example that has stuck with me was told by Sam Cavanaugh, an elite cyclist who rediscovered his passion and talent for cycling after losing a leg in an avalanche while skiing with some friends. Now, as we said, this story already has plenty of drama inherent in it, but when Sam thought deeply about a message that he profoundly believed and cared about, he came up with a story smaller in scope than the one that fit the template above. And I think, one with even more impact. With his permission, here it is. (Of course in real life, we need not literally use the Story Spine language, but for the sake of illustration and comparison I’ve recorded it in that format.)

Once upon a time Sam was recovering from a double amputation, after surviving a horrific skiing accident.
Every day he sat in his living room barely able to move. When he needed to go to the bathroom, he would drag himself there, and was so spent by the effort that he would need to rest for 45 minutes before returning to the couch.
But one day, his wife dragged out his stationary bike and said, “Okay, it’s time. Get on.”
Because of that, Sam was pissed off.
Because of that, he said, “What the ____? Are you crazy? I can barely move, I can’t ride that thing.
Because of that, his wife said, “Get on!” They fought for a while, but she insisted, dragging a chair over to support his stump and helping him on.
Because of that, Sam rode for two minutes or so, and then nearly collapsed from exhaustion.
Because of that, he was terribly depressed, and when his wife cheered for him, he said, “What are you talking about? I could barely do two minutes. I used to be able to ride for 8 hours straight.”
Until finally, his wife replied, “Yeah? How much did you do yesterday?”
Ever since then Sam has remembered to appreciate the SMALL victories and accomplishments, and by committing to incremental progress, he has become a world-renowned Paralympic cyclist.
And the moral is, “Remember to celebrate the two minutes.”

Sam’s message has personal meaning for him, so it has meaning for his audience. And for any audience. One need not be struggling with a lost limb or striving for athletic achievement to identify with Sam’s story. This story is uniquely Sam’s, and it delivers a universally useful and moving message. One we can all benefit from.

Sam’s story is also flexible. When speaking to an audience who may have an injured relative, Sam focuses on a different moral – that sometimes a push is the best kind of support, for example. Sam has many other “small” stories, too. By harvesting his experiences for moments that have special meaning for him, he has become as as elite a speaker as he is an athlete. (You can find out more about Sam and follow his career at nolimbations.com)

Leaders and trainers, too, can have more impact and build deeper relationships if they move away from simple templates of the stories they think they are supposed to tell, in favor of truly personal and specific narratives. Although knowing the “six kinds of stories every leader should have” may be helpful in theory, the power of story quickly erodes when it becomes reified or paint-by-the-numbers-y. By paying attention to yourself and your own experience, you will discover that you have many more stories to share than you may think.

Application

The field of storytelling in business had grown alongside the field of applied improv in recent decades. There is much too much literature and application of story in organizations to capture here. (See the top of the chapter for a few recommended resources.) But simply looking at the activity of formal training, we can find a plethora of useful applications. When we can make the process of narrative creation conscious, our training and organizational effectiveness skyrockets. Specifically, use stories and storytelling activities in the following ways.

Pique Interest

Stories make the content interesting. No matter how brilliant your information is, if people are not engaged, they will not absorb it. Stories can be used to break the ice, establish credibility and empathy, or frame the intention of a policy. They can add humor, suspense and drama. Look for opportunities to tell stories at every turn.

Use Stories for Introductions

Another reason that stories are such a powerful communication tool is that they are dynamic. The story resides as much in the mind of the listener as in the mouth of the teller. Students become more involved in their own learning when they engage in a story – even if it is just listening to one - rather than being asked to receive rote facts. Supplying opportunities for others – learners or team members – to share their own stories has added benefits. As a form of introduction, stories communicate more personal and memorable information than mere statistics, such as title, years of experience. Objectives. In addition to telling the story of their name, as above, some examples of stories that participants may share include:

Pivotal stories from their work life
Their most exciting adventure
The story of how they arrived at the workshop – starting from whenever they wish – birth, that morning, their first day at the company.

Assess Needs

Stories can provide information about learners’ expectations, previous knowledge, and applicable skills. In formal learning environments, participants, themselves, may not be aware of all of the intricacies of their needs and relevant experience. Through stories, you, the trainer, can gather robust and relatively complete data about learners’ pedagogical and personal needs. Some specific ways to elicit this information include having participants:

Tell the story of what they got out of the workshop at the beginning of the session, as if it were over.
Share a true story of a great success they have had, in order to gather best practices and tips to share.
Relate a story of frustration or disappointment as a way of determining some specific objectives and challenges.

Another way to assess needs through storytelling techniques is to modify the “Color/Advance” activity described above. Teach the color/advance vocabulary to the group, and allow people to prompt “color” or “advance” as you lecture. This enables participants to express their needs in the moment as you present.

Finally, stories need not be formally incorporated into training designs in order to provide clues to the needs of the learners. Listening to the stories people tell at breaks and probing for stories when questions come up are also excellent ways of harvesting needs. Leaders gain at least as much from soliciting stories as by sharing their own.

Increase Retention

Because learning is innately a storytelling process, the conscious use of storytelling activities assists in the process of retention. As review activities, you may:

Have participants – individually or in groups – create a story that illustrates a learning point or principle.
Provide a story that illustrates a process or incorporates data as a mnemonic device.
Have participants write the “story of the workshop” as a way of assessing retention and evaluating understanding.

When asking participants to create stories, Adams’ Story Spine has proven to be an excellent tool. The structure works as a guide and tends to relieve whatever pressure individuals might feel to tell “good” stories. If you are asking people to work collaboratively, the Spine also helps to align the create efforts.

Enrich Visioning and Problem-solving

Traditional visioning activities can result in beautiful pictures but often leave the path to those Elysian Fields murky. Through the use of storytelling, groups are able to flesh out the process as well as the goal. Again, the Story Spine works in this context. If the “vision” is the happy ending – the “ever since then” -- what is the story that will get us from here to there? What obstacles will be overcome? How will each team member contribute?

Another story format that can be adapted to problem-solving sessions is Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is an analysis of the ubiquitous quest structure found in works as disparate as Star Wars, Homer’s Odyssey , and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. A breakdown of the formula can be found in Campbell’s own A Hero with a Thousand Faces, as well as in storytelling and screenwriting books, including, Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is a more specific and focused expansion of a structure like The Story Spine, and includes archetypes such as the reluctant hero, the wise mentor, and the monsters, which can be useful metaphors for anyone’s movement toward a new goal.

Build Teams

Remember how bonded you felt to your camp friends? There was nothing like hanging around a campfire singing songs and exchanging ghost stories. Somehow other relationships never felt as satisfying and intense. All the ways that we have discussed so far to improve teamwork - getting to know each other better, enhancing empathy, building on each other’s ideas, listening well – live in storytelling activities. The effect is enhanced when the group creates stories together. It hardly matters what the content of the stories are. Whenever there is an opportunity to share stories or invent them collaboratively, we recommend it.

Key Points:

Storytelling is an historic, current, and profound learning tool.
Stories are the heart of theatre, and the heart of communication.
The difference between a list of events and a story is connectivity.
Reincorporating is the foundation of a story.
“What happens next” is a fundamental question of stories.
Stories establish a routine and then break it.
The Story Spine defines the structure of a well-made story.
Detail enhances the action of a story and makes it more compelling.
Be flexible with how you tell your stories and which stories you tell.
Build your library. The more stories you gather, the more powerfully you can communicate your messages.
Pique interest through stories.
Use stories in learning environments:
- For introductions
- To assess need
- To Increase retention
- To Enrich visioning activities
- To Build teams