The Power of Good Stories

Once upon a time, not so long ago, when I was a 10 year old girl, I wrote a story for a charity contest. We needed to create something that would inspire people to donate.

I made up a superhero called Charity Boy (including cape), and wrote about his adventures. The book was printed with the rest of the entries and sold for donations, and more kids in my district got involved in volunteering.

I didn’t know it yet, but I had tapped on to the power of storytelling.

Over the years, I lost the magic and drive to make up and use stories.

I got swept up in the world of processes, data, and financial results. As a junior finance professional, I believed storytelling was not for ‘us’. Data, facts and objectivity were what mattered.

• How can we be more engaging when we share numbers?
• What do we want to convey?
• How do we connect with each other and our stakeholders?

We can choose how we convey the facts, and how to keep our audiences’ attention. We can also use anecdotes to build rapport and trust, to diffuse tense situations and drive a point across during a meeting.

Storytelling was always there.
It’s just that storytelling and finance weren’t always mutually exclusive.

Two months ago, I discovered how ‘stories’ could be an active driver of understanding. I was in the process of working on myself, learning negotiation skills and practicing… but I couldn’t get pass my mental blocks and limiting beliefs.

Forget negotiating, I couldn’t get myself to ask for anything. I didn’t have motivation to push out of my comfort zone and really change.

Then I thought…

Well, the worse case scenario is that I’ll get a story out of it.

I started worked on what I call ‘passive storytelling’, or how I could best help my team and the business with my point of view. I tried, developed a funny story from my failures, and shared that with my network. Then I tried again, and again.

• Tackling a new project? Sure I will have a story to tell if nothing else.
• Volunteering in areas that interested me but never thinking I had a chance? Why not try.

Having a story to tell became my reason for doing whatever scared me. The more I did, the more fascinated I was to learn how to be a good story teller, attending workshops and joining writing challenges.

This doesn’t have to be the way for everyone.

I hope my experience shows that storytelling can be an effective tool… and not just for writers and marketers

If you have a story to tell, please share yours in the comments.

PS: If you’re interested in learning more about storytelling with facts and figures, check out Storytelling With Data. It’s a great place to learn and I highly recommend it.