I am pleased to share the below article which is very interesting.
May be it is long and it is worth to read.
Regards
AVS
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A Tale Of Team Building.
From time immemorial, stories have fascinated children and adults alike. Stories are an important part of education and are used as a medium of imparting moral values. It is now considered an effective tool for gaining employee loyalty and commitment in the business world.
A well-structured story successfully ingrains complex issues in the minds of employees. This is because stories are
Easy to remember: According to a research by Roger Schank, Director, Institute for Learning Sciences, Northwestern University the human mind takes in the story and compares it with the available information. The differences and similarities make it easier to understand and remember the stories
Credible: Another research states that stories are more acceptable than actual facts because they show the consequences of a situation
Motivating: The listener relates his experiences and values to those in the story and aligns them with organisational values.
Nike has understood and implemented this well. It believes that “the best way for a company to create a prosperous future is to make sure all of its employees understand the company’s past”.
Nelson Farris, Director, Corporate Education of Nike, reiterates their storytelling values. Says he, “Our stories are not about extraordinary business plans or financial manipulations. They’re about people getting things done”.
A story for the teams
Companies like FedEx and 3M hail the power of storytelling in building teams. They claim that storytelling helps the team to
Disseminate core values
Share vision, knowledge and successes
The art of storytelling and the process of teambuilding are similar in various aspects. Hence, the former enhances the effectiveness of the latter. Storytelling, as also teambuilding, needs extreme diligence, time and attention to develop. Like stories, teams too have a beginning and an end, characters, plots, emotions and most essentially, a purpose. Team members go out of their way, take up challenges and strive to overcome them successfully like the hero in the stories. Through stories, listeners learn the finer details of life and gain experience. Similarly, team members take with them the knowledge, wisdom and experience to new teams when they disband.
How the plot thickens
The practice of storytelling could be initiated during the development stages of the team. This effort could help the team progress by leaps and bounds.
Forming: In this stage, team members come together and identify each other’s skills, strengths and weaknesses. They narrate their experiences and career development plans. This phase helps them relate to each other in a better fashion and identify expertise that could help the team to perform well.
Storming: This is the most crucial stage. Team members start planning to achieve the set goals and, in the process, express their concerns and personal views. As a result, differences arise. At this juncture, it is important to give every member an opportunity to talk about his previous successes and failures in order to trigger off quality decision-making.
Norming: During this stage, the teams set certain principles that would help them achieve their goals. These principles become milestones in the team’s success stories in future.
Performing: All the team members work towards realising collective goals. Once obstacles are overcome and challenges faced, it’s time for them to recognise each other’s contribution and celebrate the team’s success. These small successes would further energise them to work towards bigger goals.
Adjourning: This is the last stage where the project is completed successfully. Teams dismantle after this stage. They take with them a sense of pride and many heroic tales of success. The members finally share their heroic moments before they disband to relive their experiences. This helps them use these success stories elsewhere, to make a difference.
These stages do not necessarily follow the order mentioned above. For instance, a team that is in the performing stage may have go back to the storming stage owing to the arrival of new team members. Such situations perfectly restate the previous rules and values set by the team.
Telling your story
Every employee can excel in the art of storytelling by implementing the following tips:
Avoid pretensions
Genuineness marks an effective storyteller. False pretensions would only distance the listener from the storyteller. Pretending while narrating stories might sidetrack authenticity of the stories.
Believe in brevity
In other words, “Keep It Short and Simple”. Long stories with complex facts lose their charm and fail to impact the listener. Therefore, if the story talks about employee commitment towards the organisation, the storyteller must plainly talk about how it was gained and not embellishes it with unnecessary facts.
Do not rely on props
The storyteller need not make a power point presentation to make a story effective. The listener’s imagination and comprehension can do the job perfectly.
Relate it to the situation
A story is best interpreted when it is related to the current situation. It must give some insight on the following course of action. An irrelevant story is a colossal waste of time.
It’s story time
Nike is the epitome of hard work, commitment and success. It reminds them of Bill Bowerman, a retired track and field coach and co founder of Nike, Steve Prefonatine, the deceased Olympic runner, and CEO Phil Knight. This is because Nike strongly believes in corporate storytelling, which it has used to its advantage.
Their employees take pride in their heritage because Nike has left no stone unturned in ensuring that all their employees are aware of their past. Each story has its own learning curve. When Nike talks of how coach Bowerman poured rubber in to the waffle iron for making better shoes they are not talking of how the famed waffle shoe was bornbut of the value of innovation.
Similarly stories depicting commitment and hard work are the essence of their corporate story telling programmes. They have helped Nike steer away from tough times to better times. There is tremendous learning from such and organisation that has a rich heritage to talk about.
The end of the fairy tale
Storytelling should not be the only mode of communication in organisations. Information that deals with facts and figures cannot be conveyed in a story form. The type of information must decide the mode of communication.
There is no individual who has got no stories to tell its only how effectively they tell the story that matters. Bill Capodagli, the Executive Vice President of Creative Technology and Research, Walt Disney Imagineering says, “I’ve never seen a great military, or political leader who was not a great storyteller. Telling stories is a core competency in business, although it’s one that we don’t pay attention to”.
Source: Manage Mentor
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