The emotional sway of stories

Why should managers even worry about stories? For professor Jennifer Aaker of Stanford GSB, it is because stories build emotional bonds that can be far stronger than the rational bonds that managers normally prefer. Good reason to become a master storyteller.

Old wisdom has it that in companies, it is the salespeople who have the best stories – not just the best jokes, but also those rib-tickling stories about mishaps on the road, showing up late for client meetings, and other snafu’s that punctuate their lives of cold calls and golf tournaments. For professor Jennifer Aaker of the Stanford GSB, what these salespeople have understood is the importance of storytelling.

“Our appetite for stories is a reflection of the basic human need to understand patterns of life – not merely as an intellectual exercise, but as a personal, emotional experience,” she writes in this refreshingly unorthodox case, worthy of a moviemaking school.

Why should managers even worry about telling stories? For professor Aaker, it is because stories build emotional bonds that can be far stronger than the rational bonds that managers normally prefer. Most managers will rely on reasoning and facts to make their point, yet a storytelling approach can help strengthen their pitch – without needing to jettison the facts.

So how can you become a good storyteller?
For professor Aaker, and her co-author Victoria Chang, there are certain fixed elements – stepping stones if you will – that can allow anyone to construct a lively and bonding narrative. See the chart synopsis below:

The hook
Get the audience’s attention fast. According to Andy Goodman (Storytelling as Best Practice, p. 16): “This is your story’s ‘hook’—the description of a place, circumstance, or premise that everyone understands and with which they readily identify.”

The characters
Focus on the protagonist or the character.  It is these protagonists to whom the audience relates, and they make the story a parable for lessons to be learned. “Deep within the protagonist, the audience recognizes a certain shared humanity,” claims Robert McKee, the author of Story, and one of the key quoted sources in the case. The characters of the story make it alive through their desires. The protagonists need to want something. These yearnings are important for the audience, since it will disconnect from a gutless protagonist with no desire. What interest for a watered-down Citizen Kane content to publish a local rag, or a timid Lucas Skywalker refusing to confront Darth Vader?  Ask yourself what the protagonist desires, leading to the major dramatic question of the story.

The plot
The next stepping-stone is the story’s plot (see box). One of the key elements of the plot is to identify the ‘major dramatic question’. What is the story about? The story’s purpose is also its central organizing force. For fiction, the audience is riveted by the suspense of knowing what the answer will turn out to be. A good plot must know which course to follow; in the navigation of its course, which elements should be kept and which thrown aside.

Obstacles to overcome
Another critical element for the plot is an obstacle for the protagonist to overcome. Prince Charming cannot just wake up one morning and seduce the princess. First there is the dragon to slay, then perhaps a few wizards to outwit. Perhaps even a vicious rabbit on the way to the castle of aaaaaargh!

Setting
Perhaps not of paramount importance, the setting is nonetheless important for the story. For it is the setting that places the reader in the proper mental environment. How frightening would Count Dracula be without his Transylvanian castle redoubt and lightning bolts? How heart-wrenching would Titanic have been without the five-star comfort before the iceberg collision?

The setting includes not just the location, but also the period, the duration and can even encompass the level of conflict (e.g. personal struggle à la David Helfgott in Shine or institutional conflict à la Erin Brockovich).

Point of view
Who is telling the story? Is it the very personal first-hand account of ‘I’? Or is it the more challenging ‘you’, which calls in the audience. Or is it the ‘he/she’ third person that provides more distance and different angles? Does the story also call upon a narrator to provide a third consciousness?

Although professor Aaker is not suggesting that managers take a script-writing seminar for the one-page memos that punctuate the daily grind, she does hint that managers should devote some of their time to the drama in work. Our lives may not be a ten-year odyssey replete with cyclops and sirens, but with some embellishment they can seem thus.


Reference:
Stanford M-323 (A)
“How to Tell a Story (A)”
Professor Jennifer Aaker and Victoria Chang
Stanford Graduate School of Business