Four Ways Storytelling Helps Build Effective Teams

Over the past few years, Storytelling has emerged as a critical communication skill. Stories help us establish emotional connections with our audience, community, customers, and contributors. These connections can build over time and create brand loyalty that goes beyond purely ‘business’ transactions.

Story, however, is much more than a tool for communication. It also is one of the most effective, efficient, and powerful tools we have to build effective teams.

Here are four ways that incorporating storytelling as a core practice can deepen engagement and increase effectiveness in teams:

1. Storytelling Builds a Culture of Communication
   Connecting through a structured storytelling exercise or workshop gives team members the opportunity to build relationships and bonds that are based on their shared humanity rather than their functional roles. When people see each other as human beings rather than job titles, they are more likely to approach each other with questions, ask for help, and navigate conflict more effectively.
   
   
   
2. Storytelling Helps Team Members Connect with a Sense of Purpose
   There’s an old apocryphal story about a man who passed three laborers on the road. He asked the first what he was doing. ‘I’m baking bricks,’ he said glumly.
   
   The second worker, moving lethargically, responded that he was mixing mortar.
   
   The third worker had noticeably more energy. ‘I’m building a Cathedral,’ he said while stacking bricks into a wheel barrow.
   
   When we connect our functional duties with a larger vision, we work with a greater sense of purpose and energy. Bringing team members together to share stories about how their work, or the work of fellow team members, has contributed to a broader movement helps them stay motivated by placing what could be seen as menial tasks in the context of a collective mission and narrative.
   
   
   
3. Storytelling Helps Incorporate Team Members at All Levels in Decision Making
   There are tons of ways to involve teams in decision making: surveys, brainstorming sessions, suggestion boxes, committees, and so on. Incorporating storytelling into the process takes this involvement to a deeper, more human level. By their nature, stories put humans at the center of strategy and business decisions. That sense of human connection enhances the investment that people feel and allows them to see themselves and their lived experience reflected in the tactical decisions that result from the process.
   
   This type of storytelling requires an up front investment of time, but the payoff in terms of long term engagement, retention, and productivity is worth the work!
   
   
4. Storytelling Helps Foster a Sense of ‘Psychological Safety’
   In 2015, Google identified ‘psychological safety’ as the primary characteristic of effective teams. Coined by Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson, psychological safety simply means ‘a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.’
   
   That ‘risk taking’ may show up as asking each other for help, taking accountability for mistakes made, expressing and sharing innovative or ‘crazy sounding’ ideas, and seeing each other as human beings first and functional roles second.
   
   By creating a safe, structured, fun way for teams to build deep, empathetic, human connections, storytelling lays a strong foundation for risk taking. When we hear another human being’s stories and share part of our own, we transform the relationship in a lasting way. Instead of approaching A Supervisor with an idea, we approach a fellow human. Far from threatening team dynamics, this enhances the the relationships within and effectiveness of the team.

As with any powerful practice, implementing storytelling techniques responsibly requires guidance, consideration and structure. For a primer on bringing storytelling into your team, check out the StoryCircle Guide!