Using stories to empower

- The best tool in our arsenal to drive change is a great story. People remember how you make them feel, not necessarily what you said and through a storyteller, through someone that tells a personal story from beginning, middle, and end. We release chemicals in our brain. We start to have compassion, empathy for the other human being. We put ourselves in their shoes for a moment in time and say, "What if that were me?" When you tell a story for work, what it does is let someone into you about who you are as a human being, how you are raised, when things worked or didn't work, your biggest surprise at work. And, oh my gosh, and like, "Oh, I want that surprise." And you pull people in with that story, but I want everyone to tell the story. And if you tell a story and you tell it from how it means to you, then you've created a bond with this other person that is forever there. And I remember learning about this from Greg Walton. Greg Walton's a professor at Stanford and he did a study and has been doing a study now for well over a dozen years about uncertainty. And uncertainty happens when you move, when you go to college, when you get married, when you become a parent, like these are big uncertainty moments. Every human being goes through this big arc. And he was looking at studies about people with lower economic opportunity, people of color coming into a dominant white affluent university, huge uncertainty just going into that university and then not knowing your own path like, will I fit in, will I thrive? And so these students, he would discover, would try to mask. You're adopting language. You are adopting your clothing. You're adopting your use cases to fit in to be herd. You will never tell your company that you are gay if it is illegal to be gay. So you make up a whole other life, every day. Imagine emotional energy takes to do that. So if I can tell stories about how I came out at work or how so-and-so navigated something and showed their journey, then people like that will say there's an opportunity for me to be great. I can be successful. So Greg Walton realized that pretty quickly. And so what he ended up doing is creating this cohort of storytellers in these universities. People that have been there for 2, 3, 4 years, graduated even, and come to these freshmen and say, "Here's how I navigated this university. Here's what I discovered. Here's how I show up." And just by seeing someone else that looked like me navigate this bigger world, this crazy world in a successful way, increased courage and confidence. And through these storytelling, he was able to track those that got that story higher graduation rates, higher GPA. And most importantly, for me, more friends they had more joy. Emotional wellbeing was way off the charts. Those that did not have the story statistically difference in graduation rates and GPA and emotional wellbeing. You have to be intentionally, you have to create this space and you can kind of sneak it in. You can do an icebreaker. How many teams do icebreakers? We all do. So here's 10 questions, pick three of 'em and showcase what was your most, your biggest mistake at work, your biggest career risk that you took, what's your favorite family moment? So little business, little personal. And by telling stories of who I am and being a little more vulnerable and the risks I've taken, you create the bond and it's a great icebreaker, and I know the person not their job. So storytelling is powerful.