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...storytelling reaaffirms values and passes on wisdom in an entertaining and memorable manner...
It's a living cliché. The audience hangs on every well-chosen word.
First there was the woman who recognized that her other-than-business relationship with the boss was wrong.
Then the candidate who admitted he lied on his job application and was hired just because he made that admission.
And the waitress who paid such close attention to detail that you'd think she owned the restaurant.
The laborer who says it's his job to do, not think, because the boss
only tells him what to do but never gives him sufficient information to
think through a situation.
The attorney whose boss told him
to "lose" records, and though the case was settled out of court before
he had to choose between his boss and his ethics, he still left the law
firm.
The mine operator who refused to give up even four days
after a mine explosion, and ultimately found 18 dead – but five people
still alive.
J.G. Pinkerton is that former mine operator, and
he tells stories. Stories about work. Stories about work that other
professional storytellers send him from around the world via e-mail.
PawPaw is what he calls himself. And no doubt that's what his seven
grandchildren call him, too. You can just imagine a preschool,
pig-tailed listener climbing on the knee of this man who looks just
like Santa Claus, and reveling in tales of life in the small, rural
Texas town were PawPaw grew up.
From Junction, Texas, through
World War II and university studies, and working for a natural
resources company in the United States, Australia and Panama, PawPaw
listed and remembered. Seven years ago, he was a corporate manager when
he found himself a captive audience of an airline in-flight magazine,
reading an article about the renaissance of storytelling. Now he is
"retired" and dedicated to the art. He has traveled six continents
performing and teaching and promoting storytelling.
"Storytelling keeps the present in touch with the past, reaffirms
values, and passes on wisdom in an entertaining and memorable manner,"
Pinkerton says. If that sounds like something a grandfather should do,
it is. It's something business people should do as well, he says.
A growing number of corporations see storytelling as a critical piece
of knowledge management. Eastman Chemical, IBM, Walt Disney
Imagineering, Ernst & Young, Hewlett-Packard and Capital One are
among many companies training employees to apply storytelling to
business concerns such as narrowing the cultural gap that hinders the
transfer of information. They are working through the National
Storytelling Association (www.storynet.org), and PawPaw is one of its
6,000 members, having served six years on its board of directors.
Might storytelling be the communication approach to instill values most
effectively and create understanding in the global marketplace?
Pinkerton says there are three kinds of storytellers. Situation
storytellers create narratives about the recent or distant past, as in,
"Remember when grandma said…." You run into them regularly at reunions.
Platform storytellers are the performers, the professionals, who
actually keep a distance between themselves and the audience.
Then there are the conscious cultural storytellers. You probably know
one or two at work. They pass on cultural and ethical stories. They
capture stories, and they have a positive one to balance every negative
rumor. (Otherwise, it's just the whiners meeting for a beer after
work.) With attention to details, they invite others to visualize and
connect.
"I want my audience not to just know 'his leg
hurt'; I want them to see him limp down the street," Pinkerton says.
But that doesn't necessarily translate into long, drawn-out stories.
"Brevity helps both storytellers and listeners." You know he's skilled
when he can take you through an entire narrative, feeling all the
emotion, and conclude in two minutes.
It's clear his talent
is in face-to-face communication. But storytelling is not limited to
that mode. It can't be, with the growth of online communities. Our
ancestors may have gathered around flickering fires to hear the
generations tell stories. Today we gather around the flickering screen
to read them. Tradition, morals, and rituals are finding a home in
keystrokes, not just syllables. Yes, we lose the gestures and the
sound, but not the words. And it won't be long before the gestures and
sounds are online for everybody, too.
© 1999, Sheri Rosen. This article first appeared in Communication World, October-November 1999, published by the International Association of Business Communicators.
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