How Actions Become Stories - 5 Tips on Business Storytelling

The phone company double charged me. It took hours on the telephone, fax transmissions containing my bank account details, and three trips to the downtown store to finally get a refund. Time wasted, that’s my AT&T story.

Meanwhile, I stopped for lunch. When the employees informed me that they didn’t have any rice, they apologized, gave me a (no-rice) burrito for free, and handed me a coupon for my next visit. Outstanding courtesy, that’s my Chipotle story.

Business storytelling is more than a ‘Unique Value Proposition’ told on an elevator. It goes beyond giving an entertaining PowerPoint presentation. Your business story is made up of every action you take. The better you know your story, the easier it is to actively embody it. Keep the following tips in mind when creating your ever-unfolding business narrative.

1. You Are Always Making and Telling a Story

All of your actions, all of your services, every customer you meet, it all adds up to a story. You are making a story right now. Is it boring? Exciting? Does the story you’re creating center on serving you or serving your customer?

2. Understand the Narrative Elements

Your clients are characters in your story and you are a character in your customer’s story. What is the motivation that drives your customer? What evil forces are we battling? Are we helping or hindering each other as we zoom through the universe?

3. Embrace the Struggle

Every good story centers on a particular struggle. Do you clearly understand the struggle your customers are experiencing and do you provide a solution to empower them? How does your customer help you overcome your struggles?

4. Make it an Epic Adventure

You don’t want your business story to be able to be told in a three-minute elevator ride. Your elevator pitch is just that—a pitch. Make sure your movie is better than your movie preview! Your business plan, your business narrative, your ‘about me’ page, your customer service interactions, the product or service you sell, these are all scenes in an exciting tale of action, romance, and adventure.

5. Listen to How It Makes You Feel

Did you ever hear the saying, “People don’t remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel.” Storytelling and business are all about human emotions. We buy, or buy into, a product, service, or concept because it makes us feel a certain way. So, are you making people happy? Perhaps most importantly, are you happy? If not, it’s time to change your story.

Framing: The Fall of the Saddam Hussein Statue

After watching the short video above, it’s easy to see how people can be manipulated by playing to their emotions rather than their intellect. In other words, show and tell them what they want to see and hear and you can get them to do what you want them to do.

Recently, when Mike Daisey was raked over the coals, so many people were quick to persecute him. I argued that his foibles weren’t so bad to which people would angrily declare, “But he lied!”

It was almost as if people would have looked the other way if an angry crowd surrounded and stoned Daisey to death. It is my belief that the framing in the This American Life radio show that retracted Daisey’s work—playing the audio interview where Daisey struggles between awkward pauses after being punishingly questioned—created the firestorm that followed.

Framing is one of the most powerful things a storyteller can do. How, where, and when a story gets told is vitally important. The location and form of the telling actually informs the audience what to think, how to feel, and the way they should react.

12 Leadership Tips I Learned from Storytelling Marketers

If you’re already using social media, here are things you can start doing right now that will improve your social and business status.

1. Exaggerate

Storytelling is about stretching the truth, but not too much. When you stretch the truth, make sure there is some truth to it. You don’t want to tell anyone you’re an astronaut if you’ve never been in space, for instance. However, if you race to work every morning you can call yourself a race car driver.

2. Use Fun Words

Talk about things as if they are the greatest, the most exciting things ever. Use zany words rather than business words. Business being business-like is so 1990s. Today, business is epic, sick, and wicked!

3. Weave In the Facts

You don’t want to say, “I’ve sold 1,000 widgets” and stop there, but you do want to get that figure across. So weave it into a larger picture like, “I’ve sold 1,000 widgets and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that people like the color red.” In other words, use the fact as a figure that serves a purpose in your story. Otherwise you’re just bragging.

4. Bigger is Better

You have a blog. Who cares? Everybody has a blog. Stop calling your blog a blog and start calling it a global resource as in, “I’m the author of a global resource.” It’s totally valid, especially if people from around the globe have visited your site. Doing this will get people thinking they’re reading a global resource when they’re at your website instead of just visiting another blog.

5. Show Your Many Hats

As a modern business person you’re not just one thing anymore. You’re an information architect, a manager, a visionary, a leader, a teacher, a coach, mentor, and designer. Weave that into your story and name all of your skillsets.

6. Repeat Your Tale

You can’t tell your story just once and expect people to remember it. Bring up your backstory at every opportunity but vary the telling slightly. Let people know where you’re from and reference those places again and again. The more important this seems to you, the more important it will become to others.

7. Talk About How Social You Are

You should mention how you threw a party the other night, how you dominated the golf course with your colleagues yesterday, or how you guided a bird watching tour at your local nature center. If you paint an image of yourself as a leader who people want to be around in your personal life, chances are people will want to be around you professionally.

8. Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

This is business, not work. Yes, we’re passionate about what we do these days but life (for you) is a party. Chill out. Everyone knows you’re not actually a race car driver and that you drive to work in a Toyota Prius. In real life be yourself but online be a superhero.

9. Create an Insider’s Group

When you say you’re a race car driver even though you’re not, those who know you’re exaggerating feel “in” with you. The more people who feel in with you, the better off you are, the more outrageous stuff you can say, and the easier it is to make calls to action that people will follow.

10. Use Wise Imagery

Storytellers are keepers of wisdom and knowledge. If you want to be a thought leader, you need imagery that shows you are in touch with a higher spiritual power. It could be as simple as showing a photo of really old trees on your website or using an “about me” photo of yourself in a place of power, like at the White House or on a mountain top.

11. Wear Something That Stands Out

This isn’t to say you should don a tunic or head off to work in green velvet, although you could. For most environments you might just wear a colorful or stylish looking ring, necklace, hat, or scarf that has some kind of story associated with it for when people ask. 

12. Knock ‘em Dead

These days, 12-year-old kids are putting out videos that are more entertaining and witty than classic Saturday Night Live skits. If you’re in business today you had better be at least interesting, otherwise you’re just past due.

Norma Cameron: Cultivating Narrative Intelligence

In this TEDxVictoria video, Norma Cameron looks at the evolution of story. As we evolve into a global community, the skills of a storyteller—cultivating imagination, embracing listening and exercising perceptual agility—are needed more than ever before!

Daniel Kahneman: The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory

In this TED talk, Mr. Kahneman explains how the remembering self (storyteller) dominates the memory of the experiencing self. Our future is made up of anticipated memories. My favorite part is when he asks about what kind of vacation you’d choose to take if you knew you were not going to remember the vacation. Would you still go?