Cathy: Welcome everybody. I’m Cathy Boeckmann, and I’m your host for this episode of The Knowing Kenning podcast, a series where we explore topics related to supporting leaders, building teams, and improving performance.

I’m thrilled to be joined today by my colleague, Ramya Mahalingam, who is formerly a product designer and a consultant. Ramya works in the same space as the rest of us at Kenning. She facilitates team collaboration and does executive leadership coaching. And as you’ll hear in this episode, she brings a keen interest in the power of storytelling to her work. Welcome, Ramya.

Ramya: Thanks so much, Cathy. It’s so great to be here.

Cathy: All right, our topic today is storytelling, and I will say, to get us started, that I do a fair amount of coaching focused on communication. I help people formulate a clear message and organize their facts logically to support that message, and it’s an effective form of coaching. It can be really powerful for people, but the results are often a little bit dry. So that leads me to my first question for you, which is why is it also important to tell stories?

Ramya: Yeah, stories are one of the best, most effective ways to help your audience retain your message, to make it sticky for what you’re trying to say. It’s actually an age-old practice for how we’ve passed down information from each other in some way. We’re wired for stories. We’re wired to receive information and give information that way. You know, it’s a practice that was used between humans to pass down knowledge, to pass down experience, even before we had a written form.

And it’s empirically proven that stories work. There are a number of experiments, two of them I’ll highlight for you. In a book called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they talked about how they had a bunch of students in a class tell stories in presentations and had a bunch of students not tell stories and just give statistics, and then they went and did some other stuff, and then they came back and tested the students on how much they remembered. 63% of the students remembered the stories and only 5% remembered literally any other thing. So stories are really effective. They really work.

Another professor, Jennifer Aaker at Stanford, showed that stories are remembered 22 times more than facts alone. You know, you could quibble about the numbers, but every which way you look at it, stories work.

Cathy: Wow. That is, intuitively that makes sense to me. I think I remember information better in the form of a story, but I wouldn’t have imagined that it would be 22 times more.

So I think as far as explaining “why stories?” it’s very powerful. It sounds like, for getting people to remember and retain information, there are empirical studies. But what have you noticed in your own work?

Ramya: In my own experience, stories have been incredibly helpful in making me feel more comfortable and more memorable to my audience.

I actually had an experience just a couple weeks ago where I went back to an organization that does conferences. I’d done a talk with them eight years ago, and I showed up and started doing my thing with the MC of that session. I realized that she had actually been in that conference eight years ago when I’d first spoken there. We didn’t know each other, we hadn’t been in touch in this entire eight-year period. You know, we weren’t even friends on LinkedIn or any of the platforms. And she remembered me almost instantly when I started telling my story because it felt so familiar.

That’s the power of something like storytelling. It is a way for you as a unique, individual, authentic person to really sort of arrive and be sticky to your audience.

Cathy: That sort of leads me in my head to thinking about people who are focused, in particular, not just on being memorable, but being good leaders, right? I work with these people. You work with these people, they want to grow as leaders. They want to advance in their careers, just generally have more mastery in their field. And it’s feeling to me like you would recommend that storytelling is one of the skills that they should focus on, is that correct?

Ramya: Storytelling I feel can be such an effective tool for leadership. There are three main reasons I think storytelling works as a tool for leaders.

First is it’s a way to externalize your meaning making. And what I mean by that is we’re constantly trying to make meaning of the world around us. We kind of live in this exterior world where things happen. You know, they’re observable, they’re facts. And we live between there and this interior world where things happen and we draw meaning from them And it’s because of something else and we feel a certain way about it. We’re kind of always moving between these exterior and interior spaces.

And stories are so powerful in bridging these two things, to say “the sky is blue outside” and “it’s a beautiful day and it’s gonna be a wonderful walk that we’ll have later”. And even when you don’t tell a story, your audience is still making meaning. They’re still, in some sense writing their own stories about you and coming to their own conclusions.

And when you tell your own story, you do that work of externalizing your interior narrative and therefore bringing them into your own world where you can own the meaning and the context that you’re creating for them.

Cathy: I hear two things in that. I think in my coaching, I talk a lot about facts, you know, things that a video camera would capture, and then I talk about the thought bubble that is above your head, that’s kind of above everybody’s head, where we form an assessment of those facts. And that’s normally some version of thumbs up, thumbs down, you know, is it good? Is it bad? Is it valuable? That kind of thing.

And I think what I’m hearing you say is that putting all of that together in a story allows you to stitch all that together in a way that’s visible to other people. But it also allows you to talk about that process of adding meaning to observable facts in a way that allows you to make suggestions to other people and influence what’s going on in their own thought bubble.

Ramya: Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s like a curated version of the “assessment soup” that’s going on in your head, that is actually a red carpet into that soup for your audience to get into.

Cathy: Yeah. So how would that work though? Can you give me an example of where a leader might try that out?

Ramya: Yeah. I have another personal experience with this where, one of the times when storytelling made a huge impact in my own life, was when I was an Associate Partner at McKinsey doing a lot of proposals. And I did this one project for a client. It was a big industrials client. We came in with a bunch of fancy PowerPoint slides. Immediate culture clash, where we came in for this big meeting, and all of the clients were sitting back, hands crossed, super defensive body language. You could tell that their sort of assessment soup was, “we don’t need you. Why are you even here? This is gonna be a waste of time.”

And I was proposing some design work that we were setting out to do, for which we had done a preliminary, you know, five or six guerilla interviews with their customers. Not a ton of work, but just to give us an idea of what we might do with them. And I had all of these fancy slides that I’d made, and I started going to them and it was just so clear that it wasn’t working. And I dropped the agenda and just started talking about what some of the stories were of their customers that we talked to, how they were actually really stressed, how they were in the pinch, and they were making decisions in a sort of very constricted environment.

And the whole tone of the room really changed. Like the hands came uncrossed and people started leaning forward and we started having an actual real conversation where I was externalizing some of the narrative that I had on why we could be so helpful to them in a way that was really inviting them in to have that conversation. And it totally changed the room, you know, and we ended up winning that proposal and a year’s worth of great work with them.

Cathy: I love that story. It had a happy ending. And I guess if I had to say what’s going on in that story is that you were telling them things, in a storytelling way, about their customers with a named person having a certain experience, and that this felt interesting and engaging to them, and it became for them a story about how you and your colleagues could have value for them as being people to help them engage their customers better or differently.

Ramya: Absolutely. And I think I did two other things that hit the nail on the head for them. The first was, it also communicated a level of confidence about us and our ability and our belief in our ability to help, where coming in and having a story that is somewhat of a curated version of the narrative in our meaning making, established a command of our experience in a way where we could really show up with an exclamation point and not a question mark at the end of our sentences.

And then I think it also showed a lot of authenticity. You know, it communicated a version of who we were as real people with real emotions who actually cared and not the sort of empty suit who you would expect to show up behind a bunch of fancy slides.

Cathy: Yeah. Okay. So to recap, I’m hearing three things. Any person who’s looking to enhance their leadership and effectiveness with others can choose to tell a story instead of walking people through slides or maybe in addition to walking people through slides. But that story helps them engage with the meaning making that’s going on in the room; it helps them feel more confident because just the storytelling stance inspires that kind of impression in others; and then they are authentically themselves in that moment, telling that story in a way that’s gonna help with empathy and connection.

Ramya: Absolutely. You know, in the storytelling workshops I do, I see this play out in this really beautiful way where I’ve had a couple clients come in where they’ve maybe had experiences of sharing in public forums that haven’t felt quite as good. They’re maybe living in a place that feels a little bit tentative or a little bit nervous, you know, and they come in with kind of an interior body language, a bit of a hunch. There’s a bit of a sort of like downward interior orientation.

And we’ll start workshopping stories and doing storytelling in a supportive group environment. And I’ll really see this transformation from going like this to going like this, where all of a sudden you feel heard and you feel understood, and you feel like it’s a space where people are excited about you and want to hear more. And it’s a totally different side of a person who comes out in this sort of environment.

And I think any leader has the ability and opportunity to create that in the environment they work in. And telling your own story is an amazing way to role model that for the rest of your team and your organization.

Cathy: Yeah, so your body, your voice, just the shape of you changes when you’re telling a story in a way that it has a positive, engaging effect.

Ramya: Absolutely.

Cathy: All right, so if there’s somebody listening to this right now who’s feeling inspired, what would your suggestion be for how they can start coming up the learning curve as a great storyteller?

Ramya: Yeah, I’ve got five tips to becoming a better storyteller.

The first is really about the micro story. For folks out there who have experience with business writing or really anyone in the kind of business communication world, you probably are in a practice of structuring your communication either through the pyramid principle or some, you know, situation / complication / resolution, some sort of framework around structuring your communication.

And that is really important so that it’s not just a kind of word vomit. But once you’ve got your structure, one thing you can do is to think about the micro story in the context of your structure. If you look at your communication structure, if there’s a most important point you wanna land, what might a micro story around that point be? What could it look like to tell something that is a little bit more of a linear narrative that fits within the broader communication structure?

And that can be a really great way to start to figure out how to weave storytelling into your overall communication in a way that feels purposeful, oriented towards a goal, helps you land the broader message you’re trying to make and not, a diversion or kind of a side ramble that I think a lot of folks sometimes can fall into when they first try to start storytelling.

Cathy: That sounds like a great tip. So tip number one is, keep your business structure to your overall presentation. You know, you still need to have an A, B, C there, but pick a small story that you plan ahead of time that you’re gonna use to illustrate and bring to life something in that overall flow.

Okay, what’s tip number two?

Ramya: So now once you’ve got the idea of where your micro story is gonna live, the next thing. I would recommend doing is to really think about how you’re building the world for your audience. You want to set the context or create an environment in which the story happens. And specificity here is really key.

So instead of, “we talked to a bunch of customers and we hear these things,” try instead, “we talked to a number of customers, there was this one person who was really interesting and they were a blah, blah, blah in a big warehouse with huge lights.” Some little elements that add specificity can really help create a world for your audience to enter. You know, think about great movies that you’ve seen. Probably the first 10 to 15 minutes are all doing this work of building the world so you can kind of go inhabit this, as an audience or as an audience member. That’s what you wanna do as a storyteller.

Cathy: That makes perfect sense to me. So step two is really find the specificity, create a world, ground us in something descriptive in a particular person in a particular place.

Ramya: Exactly. So then you can move to step number three, which is really focusing on this particular person. People in your story are your protagonists and your antagonists. These are the “emotional beings” that your audience is going to really be attuned to. You have a few choices here in structuring your story.

You can use first person, which is really great for personal experience. It’s an “I” story. Very helpful in building trust and connecting with your audience, lending credibility to what you’re saying.

You could use second person. This is the “You” story. “Imagine a world in which you X, Y, Z.” So this is really helpful for a future vision or if you’re pitching a better world or a better future.

And then you have the third person. And this is really helpful if you’re sharing insights or patterns or learnings. You know, “we talked to Francisco and he was really blah, blah, blah, and he did this and we learned all this stuff.”

These are the three approaches you can take to tip number three, which is really constructing the journey of the person that you’re focusing on.

Cathy: Yeah. It’s so funny you would say that, because I do hear people tell second person stories a lot more than I used to. If you listen to actors being interviewed, instead of speaking first person, sometimes they’ll slip into second person. Like, “well, when you’re a waiter, it’s really hard to learn how to be a good waiter, and you really need to…”, and it really does actually create this sense of “both of us have had this experience” or “anybody would have this experience.” I love the idea that people can be really intentional about first, second, and third person in storytelling.

Okay. What’s step or tip number four?

Ramya: So then tip number four, step number four, is once you’ve got your micro story, you’ve got the context that you’re setting, you’ve built the world, you have your protagonist, then you then have your narrative, which is what your protagonist is doing. And here I find it very helpful to work in this exterior-interior frame that we were talking about before, where something observable happens and then something interior is revealed.

You have an action, you know, someone does something. Your customer said something in an interview. You in this future, beautiful future vision are doing something and then there’s some meaning, there’s some sort of interior monologue, or there’s some value, or then, you know, then I realize that something, something, something. And this can be a really helpful, construct in trying to connect the sort of exterior world to why it matters and what you want your audience to take away.

Cathy: Okay, so what would that sound like?

Ramya: So it could sound like, if I were telling a story about forgetfulness, maybe I could say something like, “I got dressed, I walked out of the house, got into my car, and I was pulling out of the driveway and I realized I didn’t have my engagement ring on.”

And there I’m describing this experience, oh my God, I forgot something, but without actually having to say I forgot something. I’ve sort of brought you into my interior world where I thought this thing in this driveway. And so now you’re kind of in that moment with me.

Cathy: Yeah, I hear how you did that because I sort of pictured the movie as the camera is following you as you get into the car. But then as soon as we get to the engagement ring comment, then I’m in your head and I’m imagining how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. That sounds really powerful, and it seems like that leads pretty naturally into what I believe is your fifth tip, which is about emotion.

Can you talk a little bit about emotion?

Ramya: Totally. The heart of all of this, and the reason, I believe, why stories are so powerful is because we’re emotional beings and that’s how we get invested. And once you do this work of exterior-interior externalizing, you can figure out what emotion you wanna convey and then do that work of telling your story without actually labeling that emotion.

I might continue with the engagement ring story with something like, “I rushed back into the house. I shoved open my dresser drawer. My ring wasn’t on my stand. I tore open my jewelry drawer. I couldn’t find it anywhere. Time was ticking. I was gonna be late for my meeting with the CEO, and I had to choose should I get my lucky ring or do I make a good first impression.” I’m clearly stressed. I’m clearly out of time. You know, but I never said any of those things. But you got it because of the world I was building, the interior that was being externalized.

In writing, often they say “show don’t tell.” And this is really kind of what this final tip is about. Your first draft might be you telling the audience how you were feeling. But then to go back and look at what you’ve drafted and take a lens of, okay, how do I convey this without actually labeling the emotions? It can make your story so much more powerful because your audience is arriving at that for themselves in a way that’s so much more sticky.

Cathy: Yes, you’re engaging their logical and their emotional brain at the same time because they wanna fill in the gap of naming the emotion. You’re not naming it, and so you pull them into that, that sounds very engaging to me.

I’ve noticed as you have gone through this story about the missing ring, you’ve gotten very animated. Your voice has had a lot of variation in pitch and volume, and I’m assuming that’s intentional.

Ramya: Absolutely. I think your voice is one of the most important parts to being an effective storyteller, and it’s something that you can start working with tomorrow. It’s such an asset to how you’re presenting what you’re presenting or how you’re communicating. You know, it shows when you’re full of life. Shows when you’re calm and serene. Your voice can do anything in building this world for your audience.

I think a lot of folks who are starting as storytellers can think more creatively about how they’re speaking or how they’re communicating. They might feel a little bit stuck in a certain range, the default range that your voice lives between. Start to push a little bit in terms of what does something slightly louder sound like or what does something slightly softer sound like? Or what does your version of an exclamation mark, how does that live in your voice? It can be a really helpful first way to start dipping your toe into some of these storytelling tips and techniques because it is so powerful. And again, communicating who you are, what your authentic voice is, and starting to give you some signals maybe of what your micro stories are can be really powerful.

Cathy: Use your voice like an instrument. Use the full range of color and tone, pace, volume. Great advice.

Ramya, I’ve learned a lot. you mentioned a storytelling workshop that you have hosted. I assume you still host them. What should somebody do if they’re interested in learning more about them?

Ramya: If you’re interested in finding out more and would like to investigate some storytelling support for your yourself, your team, your organization, you can visit my profile page on the Kenning website and get in touch.

Cathy: Fantastic. That’s kenningassociates.com. That’s it for this episode of Knowing Kenning. I hope if any of you are feeling inspired by this, you’re ready to start working a little storytelling magic into the way you communicate with the important audiences in your life.

Thank you, Ramya.

Ramya: Thanks, Cathy.