Murray Nossel - Powered by Storytelling: Excavate, Craft, and Present Stories to Transform Business Communication

M y career in transforming business communications using scientific methods began 30 years ago. While I was completing my masters research in applied psychology, my father asked me to travel to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where his company had a pharmaceutical factory.

Zimbabwe had recently undergone a political revolution in which the old white government led by Ian Smith was replaced by the new black government of Robert Mugabe. The ministers issued a decree that black employees move into the supervisory and managerial positions that had been held mostly by whites since the factory began production.

The factory director told me, Weve got a huge problem. Trained in the Rhodesian army, many of the white managers had learned an authoritarian style and held racist views. The black personnel had worked the machines and conveyor belts on the factory floor. They hadnt been trained to lead. There was no way a white man would accept a black man as his equal or boss. It was impossible.

My father was already working on a project to transform race relations in the South African workplace. He collaborated with a U.S.-based industrial psychologist, Dr. Melvin Sorcher, who specialized in behavioral change in the workplace. Sorchers core belief was that racist attitudes were based on deep-rooted values and were difficult to change. However, Sorcher asserted that behavior was amenable to change. Over time, transformed behavior eventually would lead to shifts in values and attitudes. Focused on the ways people communicated, Sorcher developed a behavior modeling method to help people navigate conflict, resolve disagreements, and avoid emotional outbursts.

I trained in Sorchers method and spent much of the year in Bulawayo applying his techniques. My process included videotaping actors role-playing conflict situations and screening those films with employees, who then took turns role-playing the situations in dyads. For example, in a module in which a supervisor was correcting a workplace behavior, the first step was always to acknowledge the supervisee for work he or she had done well. This step was based on studies showing that employees were more likely to listen to criticism after theyd been acknowledged.

The pharmaceutical company survived 47 years of political turmoil and continues to operate in Bulawayo. I would like to think that the behavior modeling work had something to do with its survival. Although my path to applying storytelling to business communication had not yet formally begun, this experience made a lasting impression on me. I understood that there are inventive ways to improve communication in business.

After Bulawayo I returned to South Africa to complete research I had begun on methods for improving creativity. Working in the laboratory at the Wits University Department of Applied Psychology, I used a pre-post test experimental design. First, I measured creativity. Then I exposed research participants to different procedures: sensory deprivation, brainstorming, and a control group. In brief, my study showed that brainstorming, in which one generates as many ideas as possible by freewheeling thought association and suspending judgment, had a positive impact on creativity. My conclusion was that the most effective way of enhancing creativity was learning how to suspend judgment. This observation would resurface to play a critical role in my listening and storytelling method.

After a two-year stint working in mental hospitals in Cape Town, I registered with the South African Medical and Dental Council as a clinical psychologist. Then I received my army call-up papers. After boot camp, I was appointed to the position of chief psychology officer of the Natal Medical Command. My patients were soldiers. Many had returned from months alone in the African bushveld with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), vacant stares on their faces, and unable to speak.

Only one treatment worked. I asked them, What happened? and listened as they recounted tales of their encounters with enemy soldiers and wild animals. Whenever they got stuck in the telling, Id ask, What happened next? It was then that I first witnessed the power of coupling storytelling with open, interested listening.

These experiences were like gathering kindling. The spark that lit the fire that would become the Narativ Method of Listening and Storytelling came through my experience as a social worker during the AIDS epidemic in New York City. The stories I gathered from AIDS patients became tools that put a human face on the epidemic when we presented them to legislators in Albany. Amid the urgency and tumult of that tragic period, I grasped that there was a reciprocal relationship between listening and storytelling. I also understood that stories functioned as living entities unto themselves; they were not static but were something more like a communication exchange between two parties, between listener and teller. In , youll read the story of that moment during the AIDS epidemic. Telling that story is how I begin every training in transforming business communication.

Created during this urgent historical moment, when time was accelerated and choices were a matter of life and death, the Narativ Method of Listening and Storytelling has proved extraordinarily robust in settings with high demands and standards, notably business. Its ability to make audiences comfortable with the human dimension of workall the thoughts, feelings, emotions, insight, and creativity that we often relegate to outside the officecontinues to astonish and delight me. By reminding people of the reciprocal nature of all relationships, it paves a way for collaboration to deepen and communication to flourish.

I believe, and my method reveals, that we are all keen listeners and dynamic storytellers. We have stories to tell that pass on rich information about our jobs, our strategies, our conflicts and their resolutions, and our vision and the practical steps it takes for it to manifest. We have abilities in terms of listening and communicating that remain untapped and, once activated, will bring more fulfillment to our work by helping us unite our analytical abilities with our emotional intelligence.

In particular, when we bring the qualities of head and heart to teamwork, the result is closer collaboration, deeper bonds, and shared ownership. As youll read throughout the book, cultural and social hurdles can be overcome through listening and storytelling. In many companies, I frequently encounter something that author Jon Katzenbach describes in his book The Wisdom of Teams: teams in which some members feel invisible, as if their ideas dont matter. As a result, they remain silent, and a great deal of knowledge is lost to the company, and productivity suffers.

Some of the most brilliant people I know are shy and reserved and have to be coaxed out of their inhibitions to speak. We need them to speak and contribute so that we obtain the best insight they have to offer. Storytelling ability is not normally a job requirement, but it can be cultivated. The Grandparent Exercise, for example, which we discuss in , is designed to ignite our presentational skills. Ive yet to encounter any clients who, after participating in that exercise, dont leave with a fresh knowledge of the way they carry stories inside themselves and their natural ability to tell them.

I invite you to read and enjoy this book with a spirit of nonjudgment, the ethos of our method. Creativity and insight flow with nonjudgment. Empathy and understanding depend on it. Collaboration accrues in an environment of appreciation rather than criticism. Please take our method, developed over 25 years in thousands of person-to-person and group settings, and revolutionize your own approach to communication, as well as that of your team. The results will be nothing less than transformative.