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Persuasion through stories >

Since ancient times, stories have held the power to move people into action. In the corporate world, persuasion is the keystone of business activity. Customers must be persuaded to buy your products or services, employees to commit to the company's values or new strategic direction, stakeholders to invest time and money, business partners to agree the next deal. Sales and the art of persuasion has always been about the transference of feeling and emotion. All too often, the emotion and feeling gets lost in powerpoint slides, glitzy presentations, technobabble, and executive missives, It is no surprise then that even the most carefully constructed arguments are met with cynicism, lassitude and outright dismissal.

A big part of a manager's job is to motivate people to attain their goals. To do so requires stimulating their heart and mind - engaging their emotions not just their intellect. The conventional approach is to argue the rationale through rhetoric, calling upon facts and statistics to support the case for a business decision. Unfortunately, whilst you're trying to persuade them the audience will tussle internally with counter arguments based on their own set of experiences, perceptions, statistics and models. And, if you do succeed in persuading them, you will only have done so at the intellectual level which is not good enough because people are not inspired to act by reason alone.

Storytelling on the other hand is a much more powerful persuasion tool as it unites the key ideas with an emotion. Through stories, you not only weave a lot of information in a way that is easy to understand and intuitive to each listener as he/she internalises it, but you also arouse their emotions and energy. The drawback is that the conventional approach is widely taught and generally understood, whereas persuading through storytelling is hard. Anyone can sit down and make structured lists of points - it demands imagination, creativity and storytelling skill to arouse enough emotional power for it to be memorable and energising.

We believe in the power of stories and metaphor to help people at all levels in organisations learn. Stories are evocative, emotive and a great tool for communicating. They empower the listener and teller. They provide a structure and framework for people to understand the key learning points and to relate to experiences.

We have all worked in organisations where the CEO's vision is not seen let alone lived by those on the shop floor. If a vision isn't seen - it isn't a vision. By framing the vision in a story, employees are able to connect with the purpose of the vision and are moved to act.

We can work with your management team to communicate your goals in ways that will engage and energise. We can also help your management team learn how to imagine the future as a story and to articulate that story to persuade others.