Peter Gruber on sharing stories to engage and communicate effectively

Here’s a great interview on storytelling with one of the masters, Peter Gruber, chairman of the Mandalay Entertainment Group.

Gruber maintains that we are all wired to tell stories.

Language is an organizing principle for human cultures and allows us to communicate values. We are not wired to remember information; only when it is embedded in story does it become memorable and actionable.

According to Gruber every great leaders is a storyteller, and it’s the stories leaders tell that move our hearts and excite people to action. Story makes people apostles and moves them to tell others. He reminds us that when if we tell people to move to the door – they don’t, but if we yell ‘fire’ - which is in essence a story – they run for the door.

Gruber talks about control and the viral nature of story, suggesting that control is in fact illusionary. He suggests that through story we provide the navigational stakes and the emotional connection and let others take and retell our stories.

Search optimazation: Engaging clients through your web stories

National Post journalist, Brianna Goldberg, writes amusingly about her competition to gain ascendance over her “googlegänger” – the other Brianna Goldberg - a pagan who worships the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and who consistently rated above her in Google searches.

There’s a secret need in all of us to be number one. As children we’re pretty straightforward about demanding attention. At school the popular kids have everyone talking about them – they get their stories out there. As we grow older our tactics become more subtle – but the aim is still to get people thinking and talking about us.

Brianna Goldberg #1 (our journalist) had some stiff competition from Brianna Goldberg # 2 (unicorn worshiper) – who had a story line to knock your socks off. Brianna # 1’s strategy involved a significant amount of social networking, including an article about her in Wikipedia. In other words she got people talking about Brianna the journalist. Brianna # 1 triumphed – first among Brianna Goldberg’s in Google-world.

If you are a business – being number one has very serious implications. Search-engine optimization is an expanding niche in online marketing.
Search-engine optimization is important, but it can only work if you have a genuine story to tell that connects with your audience. Brianna # 1 worked hard to tell her story. She told the story of Brianna the writer and musician. A story that allowed her to hook up with people interested in her world – as opposed to invisible pink unicorns.

Likewise if we are to engage prospective clients and customers, we must start with the real organizational story. The story of our pride and the journey our organization is on – and we must make it accessible. In other words find the emotional connection so people can relate to the organization. Most often this will be the stories of your customers, the stories of your staff – people stories that illustrate your service values.
With a real story to tell you are ready to connect with clients and customers and that’s where search-engine optimization can make a difference and get you noticed for what you are. I know some people say any publicity is good publicity, but I’d far prefer people come to me because of what I am, rather then what they think I might be – because that’s bound to lead to disappointment and recriminations.

Employee engagement and marketing - closely connected

There is quite a bit of buzz out there about a recent session entitled "Storyteller Marketing - How the Art of Storytelling Matches Up With the Business of Marketing". The session was moderated by Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor of ClickZ. Speakers included Gary Stein, Director of Strategy, Ammo Marketing , Sally Falkow, President, Expansion Plus Inc. and Larry Lawfer, Founder/President, yourstorys.com: .

Charlene Jaszewski does a great job of summarizing what was said. Check out her blog.

In her blog Charlene cites Larry Fowler who defines engagement marketing as "when your DATE says you are a good date", as opposed ot PR "Your mom says you had a good date."

I'm not a marketer. I use stories to engage and align employees. But what could be more powerful for employees to fully understand the impact they make - then the stories of their customers. Employees are the people who live brand every day - if your organization wants employees to be a "great date" then connect them to the stories of the customers.

Storytelling - an engaging corporate strategy for large and small

My friend Sherri, who works for a Credit Union in Eastern Canada, uses story. Every week Sherri sends out a much loved email/story that reinforces core behaviors the organization is seeking to develop. Sherri is a one person communication shop and her time is her budget.

Coca Cola, EDS and the Wynn Hotel group all use storytelling. These organizations have implemented corporate-wide initiatives that reach tens of thousands of people. They use story to engage and align employees to the corporate journey so that they understand, not only what the corporate goals and objectives are, but also their role in meeting those objectives.

Like Sherri’s much smaller initiative these programs illustrate the kinds of behaviors that employees must adopt to live the organizational values. The programs these organizations have adopted are integrated into their very fabric. Wynn for example uses story in hiring, training, to reward and for marketing.

Sherri and the high paid execs at Wynn understand that story works. Where facts and figures might alienate or bore us, stories are real and memorable. In a world of information overload they are a quick means of illustrating the complex and immediately helping employees understand how they contribute and indeed what is expected of them.

Take this story from Wynn for example. It’s about an employee who helped an elderly guest recover important medication left in a cab. The employee painstakingly reviewed video footage of the guest’s arrival and identified the cab license plate in the rear view mirror of the car in front. For fellow employees stories like these are not only good for morale, but they also illustrate goals and objectives in action and how they translate into behaviors.

I’d like to hear about your employee stories in action and post them on this site.

Hiring with culture in mind: engaging potential employees with the true story

This morning my husband and I were coaching our teenage daughter on how to respond to behavioral interview questions. She is now on to her second interview for a position with a well known coffee retailer. At one point she asked my husband about his first job interview. He recounted the following exchange:
“Interviewer: Are you any good at tutoring math?
My much younger husband: Yes
Interviewer: Good, when can you start?”

How times have changed. We have friends who have had to go through grueling six-month, ten interview procedures – only to come in second. Hiring has gone from instinctual (I like you) to left brain gone-wild process. It’s no surprise we’ve headed in that direction – employees who are happy and engaged in the organization are significantly more productive. On the flip side the cost of hiring and training a new employee can range from 25% to 200% of annual compensation (American Management Association).

I do agree that the implications of poor hiring decisions are ugly, but I am wondering if part of the problem is that we are so focused on getting the “best candidate” that we forget about the other half of the equation – our organizations and ensuring we are sending out the right messages. Here’s a story to illustrate what I mean.

Some years ago I was involved in an organization looking for a senior HR consultant. They spent a year searching for the right person. When they finally hired she lasted three days. What she thought she was getting and the reality were entirely different. Sensibly she cut her losses and moved on when she discovered her values, and those of the hiring organization, were at odds.

Organizations need to be very clear, not only on what they believe they need, but also on what they have to offer. They need to look beyond the best candidate to the best fit. It’s rather like searching for the perfect mate – you have to be sure about who you are and where you are headed - before you can find your ideal partner.

It’s the job of communicators to ensure that our corporate story is clear – and that it is an accurate picture – one that is lived every day within the organization. A snow job will get you bemused employees disappointed that they are not living in a winter wonderland.

Waiting at airports

I don’t know about you but my regular life seems to be filled to the brim. So when I’m thrown a curved ball – which happens – it brings with it a healthy dose of perspective.


Right now I am sitting in an airport waiting for a delayed flight. I may not be able to deliver the workshop I am flying over for. I can choose to fret pointlessly or I can use my time productively. Not much of a choice!


So here I am writing this blog and doing one of my favorite things – people watching. It’s not often we get to observe our fellow travelers in life. Given the flight was scheduled to leave at 7 am there are a lot of suits and Blackberries.


Everyone is trying to reschedule meetings. The man seated next to me needs to deliver a sealed tender document. There’s a missed funeral and a divisional meeting that’s going to go ahead without its senior leader. Despite all this juggling people are remarkably calm.


It’s astonishing the different stories evolving in this cramped little room; everyone is on a journey – aside from the actual flight we are all trying to make. Hopefully soon we will all be joined in making a common journey. When that happens there will be a great sense of camaraderie and shared experience. Organizations too need to find ways to make sure all their employees are getting on to the same flight.

On shoes and fish

Some weeks ago we had dinner with dear friends. No dinner party is complete without a good story and this one was no exception. The story was told by our host who is a keen fisherman. It involved a salmon – and a pair of Kenneth Coles. Shoes are important to our host. He is the CEO of a large shoe store chain.

Our friend was escaping a very frustrating day at the office. Still dressed to deal he went fishing to relieve the tension, and eventually landed every fisherman’s dream - a 20 lb salmon. (This is his story – not mine.) The Kenneth Coles were mentioned frequently and appear to have stood the test of reeling in a 20 pounder while battling the currents and avoiding large sea-faring vessels.

What’s amazing about this story, other than the fact that I remembered it, is that I now know the name of a brand of men’s shoes. And this is important because I do not buy men’s shoes. Personally I avoid shoe shopping – it’s a painful experience for me. And because I find buying shoes so stressful – I see no need to be involved in the purchase of shoes for others. Good heavens my husband actually enjoys shoe shopping and probably owns more pairs of shoes than I do. I’ve no doubt he bonds with our children while the three of them are out shoe shopping. So why I ask you should I remember any brand of male foot attire?

I remember Kenneth Cole because someone told me a really good story. And if that isn’t a powerful business tool I’ll eat my shoe.

Tall tales and why we tell them

We changed the format of our blog and for a brief period of time all the blogs I had written since May disappeared. My first thought: “Someone on our team doesn’t like my blogs, they’re trying to get rid of them.”

Utter nonsense of course. It was nothing more than a technical problem. But I am human and like most of you I need to make sense of my world. So when something happened that I didn’t understand, I made up a story, namely that my colleagues hated my blogs and were hell bent on getting rid of them.

We do this all the time, especially in the complex corporate world. If relationships and communication are muddy we create stories to fill in the gaps. And frequently we don’t bother to go and check the accuracy of our interpretation.

But here’s the scary part. We then go and tell friends and colleagues our stories, who in turn tell others and these stories create a new reality.
This is not healthy. The only way to stop it is through open and honest communication. The basis for which is trust; strung together in this way these are four of the most challenging letters in our alphabet.

Body Shop founder Dame Anita Roddick leaves storytellng legacy

Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop died yesterday after suffering a brain hemorrhage. She was 64.

Roddick began her beauty and retailing career in 1976 in a little hippie shop in Brighton England . She set herself apart by underscoring the ethical properties of her formulations, created with natural ingredients, and often sourced from the developing world.

In 2006, The Body Shop was purchased by L'Oreal Group, but remains an independently run company. Today there are nearly 2,000 body shop stores in 50 countries.

In addition to being a visionary entrepreneur Roddick was also a great storyteller. Here is a story from a woman who went boldly where others would not:

“My first shop was between two funeral parlors. They objected to the name Body Shop because of course they had coffins passing by all day. I remember thinking “they can’t stop me, but I can have some fun with this”. So I called the local newspaper - anonymously with the hankie over the mouthpiece - and told them I was being intimidated by “mafia undertakers”. It was my first free publicity and I have never paid for publicity since.”

Anita Roddick, 2007

Silent movies allow us to co-own the story

I'm probably one of few who hankers after silent movies.
This weekend my husband and I, and our 11 year old son, laughed and cried our way through The Gold Rush; one of Charlie Chaplin's most successful silent films. First made in 1925 the black and white film is a masterpiece of physical humor and pathos.

We watched both the original 1925 version and the one Chaplin edited and added narration to in 1942. All of us agreed that the original was a far more powerful piece of cinema.

A good story puts you right in the middle of the action. You feel like you are part of the drama. With silent film much of the interpretation is left up to you. You project your own thoughts and feelings (and words) onto the characters. You make the story part of your own experience - your own lexicon - and that is powerful. Powerful because once it becomes your story - you begin to integrate it into your belief system.

The same may be said of radio drama where you are encouraged to imagine an entire world based on conversations between people.
When people use storytelling in a corporate setting they offer listeners an opportunity to co-own a story - to make it their own. Replace the story with facts and figures and people struggle to make the story personal and integrate it with their belief systems.

Stories make connections around the globe

Travel broadens the mind, and in my case, the hips as well. The good meals and interesting conversations I had last week in the UK are to blame.

I am struck, as always, by the cultural differences between our polite and charming European cousins and North Americans. I am also, as usual, struck by the similarities. Let me explain: In all nations we face the common challenge of ensuring our people are thoroughly engaged in the organizational journey. In all countries we struggle with the challenges of making our most expensive and most precious resource, people, highly productive.

We have long been schooled in cultural differences. North Americans and Europeans seek eye contact, the Japanese avoid it. In India you indicate yes by shaking your head, in North America that means no. In the rush to honor differences we sometimes overlook the similarities.

I attended a large corporate event in London. It was within a stones throw of Hyde Park, which certainly lent a little grandeur to the occasion. Initially I was so focused on the differences that I couldn't see the commonalities. There were obvious differences in language, humor and culture. For example I have never been to a North American corporate event where the CEO sent everyone off to get a drink before he closed the session.

But in one respect we are the same the world over. We all need to make that human connection; to be acknowledged and build relationships. Whether you are in London, Chicago, Toronto, Tokyo or Delhi that need remains constant. It also seems the hardest to fulfill, certainly within the business context. Stories do it. At the meeting in London, executives and employees used stories to talk about how they met objectives. The real human stories of endeavor and success made it right to the hearts of the attendees. Our language might change depending on where we are; our emphasis and manners might differ. But we all achieve the same result when we tell a story - connections that speak volumes to our common humanity.

Role of management to engage all by reflecting diverse employee stories

Last week I was out hunting for behavioral stories for a client. I began my search with a contact list of middle to senior managers. I also had some basic information about each of the areas including some engagement scores.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In the areas with high engagement scores – I had no trouble at all in getting stories of front-line employees living the desired behaviors. In the areas with lower engagement scores the stories, while all very worthy, were about middle managers and senior professionals.

Stories about building a new division or bringing a consortium of partners are valuable and should be told; but so too are the stories about re-arranging the stock room for improved efficiency and finding a way to get a package to a client quickly.

Managers need to understand that it is their job to ensure every employee feels valued and understands how he or she contributes to the organizational goals. Managers need to tell all their employees stories.