Corporate Golpo is a joint service by Your Story Bag and Strongkofee Leadership Communications.
What is Corporate Golpo anyway? How can we help? This post is all about making Storytelling a powerful Leadership, Organizational, Business & Communication Tool.
But before that…Golpo is the Bengali word for ‘Story’. It also means ‘having a conversation.’ Golpo or Stories are the bedrock of all communication and that is why we believe in empowering you with the right stories.
What is Storytelling?
Storytelling is the use of stories to connect, communicate and influence an audience. Stories and storytelling is an ancient form of communication, in fact it is as old as humanity itself! Imagine a community of people sitting around a fire to share the events of the day, the real, the magical and the imaginary! We all tell stories, consciously or unconsciously in our conversations, in our anecdotes, in recounting our experiences we are telling stories. Just that we don’t realize the power stories contain and we certainly don’t use them effectively!
Isn’t Storytelling meant for Children?
Everyone has a story to tell. In fact, everyone has to tell stories.
Like a child bursting with camp stories, or a parent raising a reader, or a teacher weaving a story in the lesson plan. Like a young student writing his first college application, or facing his big interview. Like a young professional making his first presentation, or a manager taking on a new team. Like a start-up making a pitch to an investor, or looking for likeable partners. Like the sales and marketing teams selling services and products in the cloak of stories. Like a CEO taking over the ship of a new organization, or having 100,000 people working as a unit.
Everyone needs to tell stories. And to think that storytelling ends with childhood?!
Why should Storytelling be used in an Organization?
Humans are naturally tuned to understand stories. Stories let us connect the dots, look for meaning and derive lessons. Stories give us ideas, answers and solutions. Stories when told and shared effectively trigger emotions and therefore inspire reactions and behavior. Stories humanize organizations, brands and products. It gives a face to the faceless identity of an organization. And sometimes it even humanizes humans!
How Can Storytelling Be Used As A Leadership Tool?
As a Leadership Tool, storytelling helps a business leader to take his experiences through stories to his workforce. A story is a great leveller, where every member of the audience has an invitation to play the principal character in your story. It gives answers, of what a person can do if he is walking in the same shoes. It gives them ideas, what they should do in their current circumstances.
How Can Storytelling Be Used As An Organizational Tool?
As an Organizational tool, it empowers the organization to harness the internal stories of the workforce. It acts as a knowledge bank, a repository of stories and experiences that gives everyone a shared experience of how the organization works and is perceived. Storytelling in the organizational space helps in team building, recognizing and awarding talent besides being an excellent platform to get feedback how the company’s products and services are being received and perceived. From the Corporate Suite, to HR, design & development, sales and marketing, storytelling finds place in almost every floor, in every cubicle of the organization.
How Can Storytelling Be Used As A Business Tool?
Storytelling isn’t a one-day affair, or an annual day event, it is an on-going journey that when practised effectively over a period of time affects everyone – the corporate leadership, the employees and all stakeholders including clients and customers. Using storytelling as a business tool is to harness the power of stories in creating a sustainable business. This involves drawing out stories from the organization, training people to effectively turn their experiences into stories, remembering that not every experience is a story!
How Can Storytelling Be Used As A Communication Tool?
Storytelling can be used both as an internal and external communication tool. Through internal newsletters, campaigns and blogs, storytelling for communication is driven towards generating conversations. As an effective external communication tool, it is about bringing in a transparency in the organization and taking the relevant stories out in the world. Storytelling is beyond PR, advertising, marketing and social media – it is the organic incorporation of experiences and stories that determine how to strategize the organization’s PR exercises, advertising, marketing and social media campaigns.
Building a Culture of Storytelling
Storytelling is not about making that one speech. It is not about achieving the year-end target through inspirational stories. It is definitely not about painting a rosy picture for the customer on social media. Storytelling is a cultural shift. For an organization to believe in the power of stories it has to create an eco-system where stories are nourished and nurtured. It is about dedicating resources that is trained to harness the power of stories. Building the right competencies and capabilities within the organization is a must-do exercise that truly wants to make storytelling a culture.
