Businesses can use stories to get clients to better understand the company’s work, to connect employees to one another and to management, and to give a voice to those who don’t otherwise have one. — Entrepreneur
Narativ’s work with New York Habitat demonstrated that storytelling “changes the way [team members] relate to one another” and “builds camaraderie.” The relevant section of the article is quoted below, or read in full “From Bedroom to Boardroom: Why Storytelling Matters in Business“.
When Marie-Reine Jézéquel, founder of real-estate company New York Habitat, hired Narativ, a training firm that focuses on storytelling, she wanted help making her workers a more cohesive unit. “I heard about [Narativ] on the radio and liked their depth of analysis and methodology,” she says. “It was very hard for me to delegate—I needed to build trust and a team.”
The Narativ staff coached Jézéquel’s realtors individually in telling a poignant story about a grandparent. Then everyone gathered, told his or her eight-minute tale and received feedback.
“After they told their stories, one by one, I told my own,” Jézéquel recalls. “They really made you tell things you didn’t want to, but they pushed you to be authentic.”
It may sound like an odd business strategy, but Jézéquel says it worked to build camaraderie—more so than holiday parties or staff meetings—because people had their guard down but felt they were in a safe environment where they could be honest.
“It changed the way people related to each other,” Jézéquel says, explaining that hearing one employee’s tale of an ill grandfather altered her perception of that person. A proofreader, she adds, spoke of a grandmother who was always finding faults, so “I understood why she was so good at her job.”
