One of the most powerful techniques you can use in your communication practice is to animate your message through storytelling. Humans are hard-wired to make sense of the world around us through stories – it’s the way we’ve connected and communicated since the tribal age. Stories help to instantly provide relatability, understanding and context – engaging narratives that are the natural counterpoint to the more dispassionate, empirical tone of most corporate communication.
The Results Map® Storytelling Tool – part of the Results Map® System for Strategic Communications – provides a framework for creating effective, consistent stories through core elements such as markers of time and space, characters and dialogue. A great way to build your storytelling muscle is to make a point to spot stories in your environment and help curate them to animate your communication. It’s an instant boost for the relatability of your message – one well-crafted, tight story will give you much more mileage than pages of corporate-speak.
Be on the lookout for stories and have fun with it – collecting vignettes of the unexpected or snapshots in time that capture the meaning of your organization or its impact on stakeholders will deliver communications gold.