However, if you really want to develop a service culture and change employee behaviour, perhaps the most important thing you could do is to tell stories. What do you think communicates customer service most effectively – a company mission statement and customer service “guidelines”, or a story of an employee who personally delivered a pair of replacement shoes to a customer whose original purchase was left out in the rain by the delivery company? How about the story of the employee who cheerfully refunded the price of two returned snow tyres even though the store doesn’t sell tyres? These are two of the many stories highlighting the Nordstrom department store’s exceptional service to the customer.

Storytelling is a powerful communication tool and one that needs to be in your leadership arsenal. Effective storytelling can be as important as financial acumen, decisive decision-making and innovative thinking when it comes to creating an organisational culture, communicating a vision and executing a strategy.

What makes stories so powerful?

1. Stories are remembered. As human beings, we remember stories much better than we recall facts and figures. They have plots, give us context and colour, relate to our everyday lives and experiences. They also connect with our memories on multiple levels. As a result, we can usually recall a story much more readily than the hard facts. I don’t know many details about Federal Express, but I’ll never forget the story that the idea was first proposed in a college term paper ­- and received a “C” grade.
2. Stories are personal and evoke emotion and connection. They allow us to see ourselves in a situation and either empathise or disagree with, the protagonists. In either case, we begin to internalise the lesson of the story.
3. Stories are easily shared. Because they are easily remembered, and because everyone likes them, they are easy to communicate. Stories will travel throughout your organisation infinitely faster than your latest annual report. Given the breadth of today’s social media, they’ll also travel across your markets and customers.
4. Stories sell. They are a key sales tool, whether you are selling your vision to your employees or trying to land a multi-million dollar order from a new customer. Describing the benefits of your product or service through a story is extremely powerful. Stories help your customers make an emotional connection to your company and really “see” the benefits of your product. Most large NGOs who rely on donations for their funding know this well. Their fundraising efforts typically include a selection of stories about how your donations have helped meet the needs of a specific child/family/animal/people group. These stories are always much more powerful than simply talking about the benefits in the abstract.
5. Stories humanise. Too often large companies – and their leaders – can appear to be estranged from their customers and employees. Stories can help provide a more humane and relatable face to the organisation, helping to build trust and connection with both markets and employees. If the stories are about the company’s leaders, so much the better.

So, if you want to communicate more effectively with your team, your organisation or your customers, think about how to improve your storytelling. Collect stories and examples as they happen. Practise telling them to yourself. Create a collection of anecdotes that highlight key features of your product or focus on important values of your company. Tell them regularly. Of course, you’ll want to base your decisions on facts and analysis, but you’ll be more effective if you communicate those decisions in a story.

This article appeared in Education Post as The Leader as Storyteller