TELL STORIES AND CONNECT EMOTIONALLY WITH EMPLOYEES

Each of us has our own unique "mental vocabulary", an internal library of words and pictures that we associate with certain events, places, people and feelings. When we hear a story about a little girl in Africa who is hungry and would like to go to school, our internal library is hard at work looking for associations and eliciting emotions - and it is these feelings that will make us decide to act.

Skeptics might argue that all we have done is create an imaginary scenario in someone's head. But imagination and action are very integrated. Electrodes placed on a person's brain while he or she visualizes an activity will see the same parts of the brain turn on as if that person were actually doing the activity. Top sportsmen know this and integrate visualization into their practice routines. Similarly if we want employees to act, we have to get them to the point where they are visualizing their own actions.

The key is to reinterpret all the contextual information we provide; relate it to what is happening in your organization. There are two strategies we can employee to do this. The first is the more traditional reporting of information in the newsletter with statistics and interpretation and through the established cascade process. This is good and should be continued. It begins the process of making the information relevant to the front line. The only trouble is that it does not provide employees with a blueprint for how they should act.

That's where stories and examples from within the organization come in. Real stories of people who have understood the urgency and taken action are personal, powerful and provide a clear framework of expectations and behaviors. With stories we tap into an individual's internal library and we take a step toward connecting with them emotionally.