How to use storytelling to nurture your organisational culture
A storytelling offsite for Thomas Cook Money (Ian Sanders Company - November 2017)
In the late ‘00s, under the leadership of the late Tony Hsieh, the online retailer Zappos had a reputation for two things: a unique culture and exemplary customer service.
How did Tony preserve that secret sauce at the heart of the company? Every year Tony emailed each team member. He asked them to hit reply and tell them what it felt like working at the company.
Zappos published all the replies in a Culture Book. The Culture Book was a collection of what people experienced and felt. It formed a record of hundreds of stories that showed the world what Zappos stood for. It was also a wonderful touchstone internally that reminded people what was so unique about the company, and provided a useful tool when hiring and onboarding staff.
The Culture Book was a tangible way to cement its culture. Everyone could get a sense, at a glance, what was so special about the company. Hundreds of stories documented the Zappos experience.
Culture can feel intangible. But we all know how a company’s culture informs team spirit, talent retention, productivity, health & happiness - it’s vital. The challenge for leaders is how, when your culture is strong, to protect it. And then when behaviour needs changing, how to steer it in the right direction.
Here are three ways to do that with stories:
Tell stories to spark change. Ask yourself, what is a behaviour I want to change or encourage within my team? Then identify a story that best illustrates that. You want to inspire resilience - tell a story about when you overcame a difficulty. Or you want to encourage more diverse hires - tell a story about prejudice you’ve experienced or witnessed. Particularly with key organisational tenets like D&I or integrity, there is typically so much information internally. Downloads, presentations, guidelines. Uncover the human-led stories that can trigger change, making these abstract issues more gettable. Your team will find a human story more memorable and engaging than a 72 page PowerPoint deck.
Hold a culture-capture. Take a leaf out of Zappos’ book and think about ways you can hold up a mirror and capture that secret sauce. One smart question to ask your team - which is one I’ve been using for years, is from author and culture expert Dan Coyle: “Tell me a story about our culture that wouldn’t happen anywhere else.” Capture these stories in words and videos and share these internally and externally.
Start some story rituals. As a leader, think about the opportunities for continually seeking and sharing impactful stories. What are the rituals you can start to surface and share stories with your team? An all hands meeting. A coffee & bagel session. A team offsite. Pass the spark. Get everyone thinking about the stories around them. Embed storytelling in your organisation to connect and inspire (pictured above is a storytelling session I ran for Thomas Cook Money).
If your leadership team needs inspiration on how to use stories at work, our training programme ‘Storytelling for Leaders’ includes practical activities alongside plenty of opportunities for discussion and engagement, showing participants how to incorporate story in their leadership toolkit. Recently we’ve delivered Storytelling for Leaders for ten leadership teams across 12 countries for Ericsson, and also as a half-day offsite session for Amazon Web Services.
“Working with Ian on a storytelling workshop for the talent acquisition leadership team at Amazon Web Services has been fantastic. Ian made a real effort to design the workshop according to the team’s needs and took a lot of time to understand what we wanted to achieve. The session itself was excellent, really engaging and fun and everyone walked away with at least one story for their story bank which we have all since used to drive engagement with our teams.” Selina de Ruiter, Senior ID&E Manager Talent Acquisition, Amazon Web Services
